Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Chinese and Chinese American Women examines how Chinese and Chinese American women in the United States experienced and responded to the double threat of the COVID-19 virus and anti-Asian racism from 2020 to 2021 and how the global pandemic changed their daily lives, foodways, and identities. Ziying You addresses the social and cultural impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on Chinese and Chinese American Women in the US through the four key themes of racism and anti-racism efforts, foodways, gender construction, and community building. Drawing on virtual ethnography, interviews, surveys, social media analysis, and personal experiences of professional women, mothers, Chinese international students, lay Buddhist women, and Chinese adoptees, You shows that the racism triggered by COVID-19 echoes longstanding racist tropes such as " the yellow peril" and discriminations faced by Chinese people in different parts of the world throughout the history of the Chinese diaspora. You further explores how individuals relating to one or more identities can form communities in which folklore helps them bond and express shared, unique cultural values. Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Chinese and Chinese American Women highlights women's agency in response to the pandemic and racism as well as the dynamic process of their identity construction through foodways, religion, and community building in a time of crisis.
Ziying You is Associate Professor of Comparative Literature and Intercultural Studies at the University of Georgia. She is author of Folk Literati, Contested Tradition, and Heritage in Contemporary China: Incense Is Kept Burning (IUP, 2020) and editor (with Lijun Zhang) of Chinese Folklore Studies Today: Discourse and Practice (IUP, 2019).
Acknowledgments List of Abbreviations 1. Introduction: Global Asian Folklore Studies, Feminisms, and Anti-Asian Racisms 2. Building New Homes: Chinese Immigrant Mothers, Communities of Support, and Political Activisms During the Pandemic 3. To Return or To Stay: Chinese Women International Students and Their Transnational Experiences During the Pandemic 4. Coming Out of "the Fog": Chinese Adoptees, Anti-Racist Solidarities, and Remaking Chinese/Asian American Identities 5. "Going Home": Chinese Lay Buddhist Women, Diverse Agencies, and Hybrid Communities 6. Fluid Foodways, Racisms, and Everyday Lives 7. Conclusion Appendix: List of Contributors Bibliography Index
"Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Chinese and Chinese American Women is an important study that combines the best of belief studies with contemporary approaches to understanding trauma, public health, and quotidian creativity and sustenance. Dealing with anti-Asian sentiments and violence fueled by the Covid-19 pandemic, Ziying You brings women and their families into focus to flesh out moments where the practice of folklore both harms and heals, eventually revealing the complexities of race, ethnicity, and gender in times of crisis."-Solimar Otero, author of Archives of Conjure and co-editor of Theorizing Folklore from the Margins "A pioneering, decolonial, intersectional feminist, ethnographic study of the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on Chinese and Chinese American (CCA) women in the US, Professor Ziying You's monograph contributes substantially to the fields of American Studies, Asian American Studies, Women, Gender & Sexuality Studies, and Critical Folklore Studies. Especially compelling from my own Black feminist vantage point is her brilliant analysis of the anti-Asian racisms that were catalyzed by the pandemic and also reminiscent of earlier historical moments nationally and globally."-Beverly Guy-Sheftall, Founding Director, Women's Research & Resource Center at Spelman College
