How Chinese and Japanese people were depicted and treated in San Francisco had a lot to do with the creation of the American “Oriental,” argues Amy Sueyoshi in a new book. She links stereotypical portrayals of Asians to the process by which white San Franciscans viewed and addressed changes to their own sexual norms and gender roles.
Amy Sueyoshi, Discriminating Sex: White Leisure and the Making of the American “Oriental” University of Illinois Press, 2018