Love Letters From Janey: 50 Years of Breaking Barriers Together

Born in 1938, Janey Mildred Young was determined to have a career in science despite discrimination against Chinese Americans and women and her parents' view that she should devote herself to her husband rather than a career. Influenced by the changing social mores of the 1960s, Janey studied micro-biology at Stanford and the University of Oregon Medical School and received a doctorate in education from Rutgers. She was a laboratory assistant for a Nobel Prize winner at Stanford Medical School, where she was mentored to conduct her first independent research study. She became a California state-certified microbiologist and a systems engineer at Bell Laboratories, where she was the first Asian American woman to win the company's highest technical award. She was also a devoted wife and mother to three sons.

During their courtship Janey wrote 167 letters to her future husband, Richard Cheu, while they were separated at different schools. In her letters she talked about her dreams for her career, the tedium and excitement of lab work, reconciling the young couple's values with their parents' expectations, and preparations for their elaborate wedding in San Francisco's Chinatown. Love Letters from Janey is a compilation of the letters and a reflection on Chinese American life in the 20th century.

Richard Cheu's sixty-five oral histories regarding the effects of America's Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 on 20th century Chinese Americans are archived at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. The author of "Living Well with Chronic Illness: A Practical and Spiritual Guide," "Love Letters from Janey: 50 Years of Breaking Barriers Together" is his latest book. An economist who created the economic plan transforming Taiwan into a modern economy, he is a neurophysiologist who received a U.S. Patent for inventing a method for improving vision. He is a chaplain at Bellevue Hospital, New York, and an auxiliary chaplain of the New York fire department. A National Park Service volunteer history interpreter, he's given 90 talks onboard Amtrak trains. A Ph.D. student in World History at St. John's University in New York, he is a graduate of Stanford University (A.B.), the University of Oregon (M.A.), Northwestern University (MBA) with graduate studies at the University of Oregon Medical School. He is an ordained Catholic deacon and lives in New York.