Holding Up More Than Half the Sky

by Bao, Xiaolan

• ISBN13: 9780252073502
• ISBN10: 0252073509
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2006-05-03
• Publisher: Univ of Illinois Pr

Summary

In 1982, twenty thousand Chinese American garment workers--mostly women--went on strike in New York?s Chinatown and forced Chinese garment industry employers in the city to sign a union contract. In this pioneering study, Xiaolan Bao penetrates to the heart of Chinese American society to explain how this militancy and organized protest, seemingly so at odds with traditional Chinese female behavior, came about.Blending poignant and dramatic personal stories culled from over a hundred interviews with a detailed history of the garment industry, Chinese immigrant labor, and the Chinese community in New York, Bao shows how the participation of married women in wage-earning labor outside the home profoundly transformed their image and relationships.

Table of Contents

Foreword
by Roger Daniels	ix
Acknowledgments	xi
A Note on Interviews and Transliterations	xv
Introduction	1	(14)
PART 1: THE MILIEU
1. The Vicissitudes of New York City's Garment Industry: A Brief History	15	(12)
2. The Garment Workers: Gender, Race, and Class in the City's Garment Industry	27	(16)
3. The Growth of the Chinatown Garment Industry	43	(30)
PART 2: CHINESE WOMEN WORKERS BEFORE 1982
4. New York's Chinese Working-Class Families during the Exclusion Era	73	(16)
5. The Transformation of New York's Chinese Working-Class Families after World War II	89	(21)
6. Women in the Chinatown Garment Industry	110	(33)
7. Chinese Women Workers and the ILGWU	143	(30)
PART 3: THE 1982 STRIKE AND ITS IMPACT
8. Winds of Change: Preconditions of the Strike	173	(24)
9. The 1982 Strike	197	(16)
10. Continuing the Struggle, 1982-92	213	(32)
Conclusion	245	(8)
Epilogue	253	(2)
Glossary	255	(6)
Notes	261	(44)
Bibliography	305	(20)
Index	325