Embracing the East: White Women and American Orientalism

mari yoshihara

As exemplified by Madame Butterfly , East-West relations have often been expressed as the relations between the masculine, dominant West and the feminine, submissive East. Yet, this binary model does not account for the important role of white women in the construction of Orientalism. Mari Yoshihara's study examines a wide range of white women who were attracted to Japan and China in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century and shows how, through their engagement with Asia, these women found new forms of expression, power, and freedom that were often denied to them in other realms of their lives in America. She demonstrates how white women's attraction to Asia shaped and was shaped by a complex mix of exoticism for the foreign, admiration for the refined, desire for power and control, and love and compassion for the people of Asia. Through concrete historical narratives and careful textual analysis, she examines the ideological context for America's changing discourse
about Asia and interrogates the power and appeal--as well as the problems and limitations--of American Orientalism for white women's explorations of their identities. Combining the analysis of race and gender in the United States and the study of U.S.-Asian relations, Yoshihara's work represents the transnational direction of scholarship in American Studies and U.S. history. In addition, this interdisciplinary work brings together diverse materials and approaches, including cultural history, material culture, visual arts, performance studies, and literary analysis.

Embracing the East was the winner of the 2003 Hiroshi Shimizu Award of the Japanese Association for American Studies (best book in American Studies by a junior member of the association).

Genres historyjapannonfictiongender

256 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1,2002

This edition

Format: 256 pages, Hardcover
Published: December 12, 2002 by Oxford University Press
ISBN: 9780195145335
ASIN: 019514533X
Language: English

About the author

mari yoshihara

Mari Yoshihara was born in New York City and grew up in Tokyo. She attended high school in Yokohama and graduated from the University of Tokyo before earning a master's degree and doctorate from Brown University. Yoshihara has taught at the University of Hawaii at Manoa since 1997 and served as chief editor of the journal American Quarterly since 2014.

She played the piano since the age of three, but took a break from playing while in graduate school. As an adult, she has entered competitions like the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition as an amateur, and won in the 2014 Aloha International Piano Festival's amateur division.