Want to create an interactive transcript for this episode?
Podcast: New Books in Gender
Episode: Sonia C. Gomez, "Picture Bride, War Bride: The Role of Marriage in Shaping Japanese America" (NYU Press, 2024)
Description: 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. Gomez’s work joins together an analysis of picture brides, or Japanese women who migrated to the United States to join husbands whom they married [in absentia] in the early 20th century, with war brides, or Japanese women who married American military servicemen after World War II. By combining the analysis of these two categories, Gomez centralizes the overlapping and conflicting logics to either racially exclude Japanese or facilitate their inclusion via immigration leg...