Japanese American Midwives: Culture, Community, and Health Politics, 1880-1950 (Asian American Experience) - Softcover

Smith, Susan L.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0252072472 ISBN 13: 9780252072475

Publisher: University of Illinois Press, 2005

Synopsis

In the late nineteenth century, Japan's modernizing quest for empire transformed midwifery into a new woman's profession. With the rise of Japanese immigration to the United States, Japanese midwives (sanba) served as cultural brokers as well as birth attendants for Issei women. They actively participated in the creation of Japanese American community and culture as preservers of Japanese birthing customs and agents of cultural change. 

Japanese American Midwives reveals the dynamic relationship between this welfare state and the history of women and health. Susan L. Smith blends midwives' individual stories with astute analysis to demonstrate the impossibility of clearly separating domestic policy from foreign policy, public health from racial politics, medical care from women's caregiving, and the history of women and health from national and international politics. By setting the history of Japanese American midwives in this larger context, Smith reveals little-known ethnic, racial, and regional aspects of women's history and the history of medicine.

About this title

About the Author

Susan L. Smith is an associate professor of history at the University of Alberta, Canada, and author of the award- winning Sick and Tired of Being Sick and Tired: Black Women's Health Activism in America, 1890-1950.
 

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Illinois Press
• Publication date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0252072472
• ISBN 13: 9780252072475
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 296