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Korean Military Brides in America (Nation of Nations, 25)
by Ji-Yeon Yuh
Explores the experiences of Korean military brides in the United States.
Since the beginning of the Korean War in 1950, nearly 100,000 Korean women have immigrated to the United States as the wives of American soldiers. Based on extensive oral interviews and archival research, Beyond the Shadow of Camptown tells the stories of these women, from their presumed association with U.S. military camptowns and prostitution to their struggles within the intercultural families they create in the United States.
Historian Ji-Yeon Yuh argues that military brides are a unique prism through which to view cultural and social contact between Korea and the U.S. After placing these women within the context of Korean-U.S. relations and the legacies of both Japanese and U.S. colonialism vis á vis military prostitution, Yuh goes on to explore their lives, their coping strategies with their new families, and their relationships with their Korean families and homeland. Topics range from the personal―the role of food in their lives―to the communal―the efforts of military wives to form support groups that enable them to affirm Korean identity that both American and Koreans would deny them.
Relayed with warmth and compassion, this is the first in-depth study of Korean military brides, and is a groundbreaking contribution to Asian American, women's, and "new" immigrant studies, while also providing a unique approach to military history.
"Sensitive and absorbing, Beyond the Shadow of Camptown probes a little-known but fascinating aspect of Asian-American history: the lives of nearly 100,000 Korean women who married American soldiers, and often live a silent, marginal existence in the United States. Professor Yuh gives eloquent voice to these women, linking their diaspora to a gripping and original account of the often appalling circumstances of American military occupation in Korea, while also locating many heartening stories of personal empowerment and triumph over the odds." —Bruce Cumings, author of Korea's Place in the Sun
"Where do marriage, diaspora, racism, and the politics of global alliances converge? In the dreams and dailiness of the thousands of Korean women living in the United States today. Ji-Yeon Yuh's engaging and revealing book shows us that by listening attentively to the Korean women married to white and black American men, we can become a lot smarter about the realities of globalized living." —Cynthia Enloe, author of Maneuvers: the International Politics of Militarizing Women's Lives
This information about Beyond the Shadow of Camptown was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Ji-Yeon Yuh is Assistant Professor of History at Northwestern University. Her work has appeared in the Chicago Tribune, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Miami Herald, and the Baltimore Sun, as well as in major newspapers in Japan and Korea.
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