Picture Bride, War Bride

Picture Bride, War Bride: The Role of Marriage in Shaping Japanese America By Sonia Gomez. Picture Bride, War Bride examines how the institution of marriage created pockets of legal and social inclusion for Japanese women during the period of Japanese exclusion. Sonia C. Gomez begins with the first wave of Japanese women's migration in the early twentieth century (picture brides), and ends with the second mass migration of Japanese women after World War II (war brides), to illustrate how popular and political discourse drew on overlapping and conflicting logics to either racially exclude the Japanese or facilitate their inclusion via immigration legislation privileging wives and mothers. Picture Bride, War Bride retells the history of Japanese migration and exclusion by centering women, gender, and sexuality, and in so doing, troubles the inclusion versus exclusion binary. While the Japanese were racially excluded between 1908 and 1952, Japanese wives and mothers were permitted entry because their inclusion served American interests in the Pacific. However, the very rationale enabling their inclusion simultaneously restricted and defined the parameters of their lives within the US. Hardbound: 200 pp.