Gendering the Trans-Pacific World: Diaspora, Empire and Race ed. by Catherine Ceniza Choy and Judy Tzu-Chun Wu (review)

As the inaugural volume of the new Brill book series "Gendering the Trans-Pacific World: Diaspora, Empire and Race," this work is a collection of essays that looks at the transpacific world as a site where gender, race, and empire (in all its forms and transfigurations) become important analytic frames in understanding macro- and micro-interactions. Divided into five parts, this anthology invites readers to pay close attention to the transpacific as a significant location for human activity that deserves serious academic exploration. The editors, Catherine Choy and Tzu-Chun Wu, identify the book's main intellectual contributions: (1) "to explore 'Pacific World' frameworks to understand the connections between the lands, people [sic], cultures, environments, and nations that are in and border the Pacific Ocean"; and (2) to "foreground the gendered nature of the trans-Pacific world" (3–4). The chapters in the book, which cover a "wide range of interdisciplinary or disciplinary approaches, historical actors, thematics, chronologies, and geographies" (5), are arranged according to the two stated objectives. The book is composed of what the editors call "traditional and non-traditional works" (5)—consisting mainly of scholarly and original research, and "think" pieces that reflect the authors' questions about, critiques of, or contributions to the field of transpacific studies.

Denise Cruz and Karen Leong, in separate essays in part 1, begin with a critique of existing scholarship, methodologies, and frameworks used in the study of the transpacific world and map out potential trajectories for transpacific studies. Cruz not only identifies best practices in transpacific archival research but also suggests a multisited approach to it. Leong, for her part, problematizes the transpacific as a geopolitical concept and critiques Asian American studies scholars for focusing their discourse on the US–Asia geographic imaginary while ignoring Oceania, the Pacific Islands, and settler-colonial logics.

The five chapters in part 2 reveal the geopolitics involved in American empire building and its racial, sexual, and gender implications. Tessa Ong Winkelman examines the emerging sexual geographies of interracial intimacies in different regions in the Philippines during US colonial rule. Erika Huckestein and Mark Reeves discuss the opposing geopolitical worldviews of British socialist Sylvia Pankhurst and Filipino political leader Carlos P. Romulo during the interwar years. Ji-Yeon-Yuh demonstrates how the overlapping empires of Japan and the US shaped Korean women's migration to Japan, China, Hawai'i, and the US and their subsequent remigration to Korea. These overlapping empires also shaped their individual and communal choices in their marriage, career, and work. Rumi Yasutake critically explains how racial and gender stereotypes, born out of a history of colonization, influenced the power dynamics operating among native Hawai'ian and Asian as well as local and mainland white women, in the women suffrage movement in Hawai'i. Lastly, Liza Keanuenueokalani Williams looks at the native Hawai'ians' experience of contemporary American colonialism, which is facilitated by Hawai'i's military–tourism complex and results in hypersexualizing and overrepresenting native Hawai'ian women.

In part 3, the essays illuminate how intimacies—familial ties, friendships, and intimate relationships—affect and are affected by larger sociopolitical and economic factors in the transpacific world. For instance, Gladys Nubla explores how America's civilizing mission justified the colonization of the Philippines and popularized the trope of the Filipina/Filipino as child, which later came to be sexualized. Chrissy Yee Lau looks at the development of multiple "affective economies" (198) in relation to the role of female Japanese immigrants in the US. Kimberly McKee explores male Korean adoptees' performance of masculinity in the US and South Korea, focusing on Dan Matthews's docu-series, which features his journey to South Korea and his reunion with his biological parents. Finally, Milian Kang shows that Asian and Asian American mothering are contested sites of racialized reproductive politics.

Part 4 allots space for assessments of beauty and body politics, underscoring these...