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Asian and Asian American workers resist oppression and shape their own lives
Organizing Asian American Labor
The Pacific Coast Canned-Salmon Industry, 1870-1942
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Chris Friday
Outstanding Book in History Award, Association for Asian American Studies, 1995
"Very thoroughly researched in traditional and non-traditional sources, well-organized, and gracefully written, the volume will be of particular value of readers interested in immigration, ethnicity, labor, and the American West."
—Choice
Between 1870 and 1942, successive generations of Asians and Asian Americans—predominantly Chinese, Japanese, and Filipino—formed the predominant body of workers in the Pacific Coast canned-salmon industry.
This study traces the shifts in the ethnic and gender composition of the cannery labor market from its origins through it decline and examines the workers' creation of work cultures and social communities. Resisting the label of cheap laborer, these Asian American workers established formal and informal codes of workplace behavior, negotiated with contractors and recruiters, and formed alliances to organize the workforce.
Whether he is discussing Japanese women workers' sharing of child-care responsibilities or the role of Filipino workers in establishing the Cannery and Field Workers Union, Chris Friday portrays Asian and Asian American workers as people who, while enduring oppressive restrictions, continually attempted to shape their own lives.
Reviews
"An important book, addressing a major topic in ethnic, industrial, labor, and Western history with extraordinary rich coverage of the Chinese and Japanese and Filipinos in the Pacific Coast canned-salmon industry. The research can only be described as awesome, quite extraordinary....This is a book which carries historical riches of value not only within but beyond the boundaries of this specific topic."
—Robert Kelley, University of California, Santa Barbara
Contents
Maps and Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. The Spawning Grounds
2. "Satisfaction in Every Case": Cannery Work and the Contract System
3. Cannery Communities, Cannery Lives
4. Competitors for the Chinese
5. "Fecund Possibilities" for Issei and Nisei
6. From Factionalism to "One Filipino Race"
7. Indispensable Allies
8. A Fragile Alliance
Conclusion
Appendix
Notes
Index
About the Author(s)
Chris Friday is Assistant Professor of History at Western Washington University.
Subject Categories
Asian American Studies
American Studies
In the series
Asian American History and Culture, edited by Sucheng Chan, David Palumbo-Liu, Michael Omi, K. Scott Wong, and Linda Trinh Vő.
The "standard" written histories of Asian immigrants to the United States have been imbued with Western cultural biases. As a critique and corrective to earlier work, Asian American History and Culture, edited by Sucheng Chan, David Palumbo-Liu, Michael Omi, K. Scott Wong, and Linda Trinh Vő, aims to develop a history of Asian Americans that is compatible with their own experience, that treats Asian Americans as agents of historical change and as creators of a new culture. In addition, this series intends to focus on the groups that are flourishing in the contemporary U.S.—Filipinos, Koreans, Vietnamese—about whom little has been written as well as to add to the substantial work done on the Chinese and Japanese in this country.