On Issei, Nisei, War Bride
Glenn, Evelyn. Issei, Nisei, War Bride: Three Generations of Japanese American Women in Domestic Service. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988. pp. 290. Paperback.
Sociology is just such a hard subject to read for me, and I don’t fault Glenn for this. To me, the problem is that everything is pulled so far into abstraction and topics don’t link as well to one another as they do in other disciplines. Glenn’s intervention here is emphasizing the importance that labor played in pushing Japanese women into subordinate positions in the United States, but it can be difficult to lose this point throughout the course of the book. Glenn’s interviews are illuminating, as are her analyses, but the “so what?” is tough to reach. I know why this matters, and that Glenn does not deny the importance of other aspects beyond the subordination of Japanese women through labor, but none of this is very clear to me.