Coming home to China: Margaret Woo’s story

Abstract

ABSTRACT This study uses a historical approach that gives context to transnational and gender issues. It investigates how a second-generation Chinese-American woman negotiated her identity as she moved to China and then back to the United States. Margaret Woo (1912–1982) was born in China and emigrated to the U.S. with her mother in 1914. Her father, Woo Du Sing, had done so around 1882 and settled in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where he owned a restaurant. Du Sing was a classic sojourner: he had a house built in his Chinese home village and intended to retire there. He died in Minneapolis in 1935, however, and his family returned to China to bury his body there and to live in that house. As a young woman raised in America, Margaret disliked village life and left for nearby Canton to become a student at Lingnan University. She returned to the U.S. in late 1937 to escape the Japanese. This study is based on primary sources including interviews with Woo family members in China and the U.S., Margaret’s diary from her time in China, artifacts such as the Woo family house in Kaiping, and a collection of cheongsam (qipao) dresses owned by Margaret Woo, and Lingnan University records. Historiographic issues addressed include the so-called sojourner hypothesis, which does much to explain the transnational nature of early 20th century overseas Chinese, who built houses in their home villages; also taken up is the role of fashion in exemplifying Chinese feminism and modernity, and the assimilation of second-generation Chinese-American female immigrants into American life.