Customer Reviews

Unsubmissive Women: Chinese Prostitutes in Nineteenth-Century San Francisco

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The book gives a brief account of the experience of Chinese prostitutes in nineteenth-century San Francisco. During that period many Chinese women migrated to the United States and and sold their bodies for economic improvement. They daily encounter racism, discrimination, exploitation, and violence. The biggest weakness of the book is that all the facts are contradictary to the thesis. Although the author attempts to challenge the stereotype of the Chinese prostitutes as hapless victims of economic, racial, and sexual exploitation, the stories in the book have failed to support its argument. Presenting only the misery and sufferings of the prostitutes at the hand of men, the excessive details of those immigrants' unpleasant experience in the American West contradict the thesis. There is no evidence of "unsubmissive women" in the book at all. It just reinforce the stereotype. Many portions of the book seem to be simply a collection of various unsorted episodes with no analysis. The research is incomplete. The author's incapability to read any document in Chinese has greatly hampered his research and also limited his knowledge about Chinese immigration history. In general, this is a poorly researched, weakly argued, carelessly written book. Agreeing with many other professional reviewers, I don't recommend this work to the general audience.

This book makes a unique contribution to documentation of prostitution and Chinese immigration in the 19th century. This highly readable work discusses the adverse conditions for women in the brothels as well as social/legislative response to the brothels and red light districts.

This book was informative & well written. I now view Chinatown of San Francisco with much more intrigue than I ever did.