Tiger women: analyzing the Chinese American women experience in Western United States
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Abstract
Chinese American women encountered sexism and racism as they immigrated to the United States in the middle to late 1800s. To overcome these challenges, this group of women utilized church resources and relationships to better understand and assimilate into American culture in order to lessen the burdens of racist laws and cultural norms. Today, much literature on Chinese immigration heavily emphasizes the male perspective. Historians who do write about Chinese women usually focus on either immigration policies or Chinese prostitution. This thesis contends that Chinese American women encountered equally damaging restrictions from both the white culture and their own Chinese communities. My essay also discusses the actions taken by these women to enhance their circumstances. Studying the difficulties faced by Chinese American women in early American history can also help reveal some of the contexts that contributed to the rise in anti-Chinese attitudes brought on by the coronavirus outbreak. To construct a narrative of the experience of Chinese women who immigrated to the United States, this article draws from a number of primary sources, including newspapers, internet archives, and secondary materials.