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From the beginning of the twentieth century to the present day, the image of the Asian woman as subservient, loyal, and family oriented has been popular. During the period of U.S. political and economic dominance over Asia after World War II, overfeminized images of Asian women became a catalyst for the rising visibility of intermarriage between Asian American women and white men. Studies of military wives and correspondence marriage (also known as mail-order or pen-pal marriage) have reported that such stereotypes are pivotal to white American men in choosing Asian women as wives over American women.1 However, the image of Asian women as “good wives” operates far beyond such marriages. Images of Asian femininity, along with those of idealized white masculinity as a sign of modern middle-class manhood, have been a major part of intimate transactions in postcolonial/neocolonial Asia–U.S. territories. The image of postcolonial and model minority femininity has served not only to stimulate white men’s attraction to Asian and Asian American women, but also as part of the self-image of the women and to generate certain patterns of marital dynamics. In this chapter, I examine how colonial/neocolonial mores, along with stereotypes of Asian women, have shaped marriages between Asian American and white people. I focus in particular on these men and women’s investment in their ideas of masculinity and femininity. I differentiate marital experiences of foreign-born Asian American women who immigrated to the United States upon marriage, and those of young second-generation Asian American women who grew up in the United States, because the former group’s unfamiliarity with American culture, its language barriers, and its diversity of immigrant histories had a large impact on the gender dynamics in the members’ relationships and in their male partners’ tendency to overfeminize them. To explore gender dynamics and its link to ideological tropes and political economy, I have divided this chapter into three parts. Chapter 2 The Good Wife 39 40 racing romance In the first, “The Asian Woman as a Good Wife,” I discuss three marriages, one that took place in the 1950s, one in the 1970s, and one in the late 1990s. The historical period of each marriage places it within a particular postcolonial /neocolonial context of American–Asian relations. The marriage that took place in the 1950s points up considerations of gender and race in the context of post–WWII relations between Japan and the United States. The 1970s marriage shows the cultural climate of marriage under the influence of the American military presence in South Korea. The 1990s marriage explores marital dynamics as shaped by neocolonial views of the Philippines and by conservative masculinity ideology. The Asian American women in these relationships, upon marrying, immigrated to the United States from Japan, South Korea, and the Philippines. In these three marriages, I explore how the white husband racializes the characteristics of subservience and domesticity of his wife, and how he controls marriage by viewing his masculine authority as sustainable only through his possession of his Asian wife. In the next section, “The White Man and Upward Mobility,” I shift focus to, exclusively, Filipina American women’s marriages that took place in the 1980s. Focusing on these women who grew up under the heavy influence of neocolonial/postcolonial images of America created by the American military presence in, and economic deprivation of, the Philippines, I explore how the women’s desires for and views of marriage with white American men unfolded and how their patterns of subordination followed. In the last section, “A Different Kind of White Man,” I question how the Asian American woman can be free from the neocolonial/postcolonial subordination, and I explore an egalitarian marriage occurring in the 1990s. I explore how the earning power of the woman in this relationship and the couple’s race consciousness make the relationship distant from stereotypes of marriage between foreign-born Asian Americans and white men. The Asian Woman as a Good Wife Having been married in three distinct periods, three couples I interviewed had entirely different personal, ethnic, and social backgrounds. Sachiko married George in the 1950s and entered the United States as a military bride from Japan. Soonja met Gary in South Korea, and they married in the 1970s. Melissa met Patrick in the 1990s, at a large corporation that had a branch in the Philippines, Melissa’s native country. Regardless of the differences among these individuals, the husbands all...

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