The crippling custom of footbinding is the thematic touchstone for Judy Yung's engrossing study of Chinese American women during the first half of the twentieth century. Using this symbol of subjugation to examine social change in the lives of these women, she shows the stages of "unbinding" that occurred in the decades between the turn of the century and the end of World War II.

The setting for this captivating history is San Francisco, which had the largest Chinese population in the United States. Yung, a second-generation Chinese American born and raised in San Francisco, uses an impressive range of sources to tell her story. Oral history interviews, previously unknown autobiographies, both English- and Chinese-language newspapers, government census records, and exceptional photographs from public archives and private collections combine to make this a richly human document as well as an illuminating treatise on race, gender, and class dynamics.

While presenting larger social trends Yung highlights the many individual experiences of Chinese American women, and her skill as an oral history interviewer gives this work an immediacy that is poignant and effective. Her analysis of intraethnic class rifts—a major gap in ethnic history—sheds important light on the difficulties that Chinese American women faced in their own communities. Yung provides a more accurate view of their lives than has existed before, revealing the many ways that these women—rather than being passive victims of oppression—were active agents in the making of their own history.

Judy Yung is Assistant Professor of American Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She is the author of Chinese Women of America: A Pictorial History (1986) and the coauthor of Island: Poetry and History of Chinese Immigrants on Angel Island (1980, 1991), which won the Before Columbus Foundation Book Award.

"A thorough and engrossing social history. . . . Yung illuminates the larger canvas of social change with the stories of specific women from the first and second generations and their quests to improve their lives. The book is particularly valuable for its analysis of class differences within the Chinese community.”—Library Journal

"Yung skillfully documents, retells, and analyzes the life experiences of these women as immigrants and as daughters and wives of immigrants marginalized by their race, class, and gender statuses."—Choice

"[This] is really the story of all Asian immigrant women's lives. What distinguishes the book from most historical accounts of this era is Judy Yung's use of new and original materials taken from unpublished manuscripts, private papers, oral histories, and local Chinese- and English-language newspaper articles. At the same time, by including her own family's immigration history, Yung's generously documented social analysis becomes a personal search for her identity as a Chinese American woman."—Mitsuye Yamada, Women's Review of Books

"Yung's writing has a humane quality and a degree of intimacy that is only achievable by a homegrown historian. The personalities of her subjects also come across to readers vividly, a result of the author's rapport with her interviewees. Unbound Feet is a significant contribution to minority ethnic studies, and it provides a piece necessary for the completion of the bigger picture of American history."—Journal of American History

"A rich mosaic of stories—including some taken from her own family—[Yung] shows us this history as the women lived it, and fills in the background with explanations of political, economic, and cultural developments. It's women's history that connects the private and the public, the personal and the political."—San Francisco Bay Guardian

"Yung's book not only provides a record of, but was possible because of, a multigenerational effort to overcome a racist, patriarchal society.”—Asianweek

"A microcosm of the larger Chinese immigrant experience. . . . Adds much to the scholarship of the Chinese immigrations experience and inspires the Chinese American women of today. It reminds us that it was not in the too-distant past that Chinese women were encouraged to be illiterate, dependent on males, cloistered, and crippled.”—Northwest Asian Weekly

"The empirical richness of this book stems from Yung's expansive use of sources, including government documents, census data, archives of Christian and Chinese women's organizations, Chinese and English-language press, unpublished dissertations and theses, relevant secondary sources, oral histories, personal memoirs, and photographs. . . . An illuminating historical journey."—China and Information

"'Unbound feet' symbolize the painful but undaunted process of Chinese women's long journey to overcome both gender and race discrimination from the late nineteenth century to the end of World War II."—MultiCultural Review

"A compelling social history of Chinese women."—San Jose Mercury News

"A meticulously researched account."—City on a Hill Press

"A stunning and sweeping piece of historical scholarship. It represents a major contribution to research in U.S. women's history."—Vicki L. Ruiz, author of Cannery Women, Cannery Lives: Mexican Women, Unionization, and the California Food Processing Industry, 1930-1950

"Judy Yung's latest and most impressive work demonstrates how an engaged, community-based scholar can reclaim an experience otherwise silenced."—John Kuo Wei Tchen, author of Genthe's Photographs of San Francisco's Old Chinatown

"Judy Yung possesses a humane and deep feeling for her subjects. A good listener, she allows these women to emerge in her pages as interesting and complex. Sweeping in chronology and comprehensive in scope, her study invites us to reach toward an intricate understanding of the making of our multicultural society."—Ronald Takaki, author of Strangers from a Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans

"Yung's book combines the richness of a community study, including engaging cameo biographies, with a broad survey of Chinese American women's history."—Mari Jo Buhle, author of Women and American Socialism, 1870-1920

"This is passionate and illuminating scholarship that adds a needed dimension to the discourse of women of color in general, and Chinese American women in particular."—Paula Giddings, author of When and Where I Enter: The Impact of Black Women on Race and Sex in America

"Students and teachers of U.S. women's history will be grateful for Yung's compelling overview of the history of Chinese American women and for the ways her focus on San Francisco brings women's community, family, and personal conflicts to life. A memorable and important book."—Kathryn Kish Sklar, author of Florence Kelley and Nation's Work: The Rise of Women's Political Culture, 1830-1900

Winner, Robert G. Athearn Award, Western History Association
Jeanne Farr McDonnell Award, Women's Heritage Museum of San Francisco
Outstanding Book on the subject of human rights in North America, presented by the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Human Rights in North America