Book Review

"[My father and mother live in San Francisco], in a store. [My father's name is] Tin Yung. [He has been here] about five years. When I lived with my grandfather [in China], my father sent letter to me and called me to go back to California; that he was in a store," testified fourteen-year-old Loy How in a plea to remain in America with her father and mother (1). George Anthony Peffer in If They Don't Bring Their Women Here uses Loy How's statement to dramatically open his book on Chinese American women in the decade before the infamous 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, an act that virtually ended Chinese immigration to the United States until the middle of the twentieth century. After perusing newspapers, legal proceedings, and government documents, Peffer underlines the importance of legal enforcement rather than enactment, creates an alternative periodization of Chinese America before exclusion, and clarifies some of the "obscurity" of Chinese women's lives in the male dominated, pre-exclusion studies (xi). More specifically, he focuses around the 1875 Page Law, legislation that banned the migration of prostitutes to the United States. He argues that despite its language specifying the exclusion of prostitutes, the Page Law in fact, effectively inhibited all Chinese women from immigrating, regardless of whether they exchanged money for sexual favors or not. Additionally, Peffer demarcates a seven-year window of female exclusion, a period previously labeled as a time of unrestricted family migration.	1
Peffer begins his argument by noting that the years before 1882 contained sufficient incentives for a number of families to have tolerated female emigration despite Chinese cultural barriers. He suggests that family restraints and sojourner mentality alone fall short of explaining thirty years of profound gender imbalance and contends that U.S. governmental interference exacerbated the already existing results of Chinese cultural restrictions by creating an effective legal barrier against female immigration. He compares American settlement patterns to Chinese migration to places such as Penang, Hawaii, and Malacca to argue that, at the very least, Chinese female emigration to the United States should have been greater than its actual numbers.	2
Thus he underlines the significance of the Page Law as a unique American occurrence that not only restricted the flow of Chinese women, but also marked an important step in transforming Chinese exclusion from a western issue to a national issue. Newspapers and inaccurate census data propagated misconceptions of Chinese morality among professionals such as immigration officials both within and outside of the United States. Hong Kong consuls posed obstacles by imposing extra processing fees, multiple interviews, and other legal obstacles for a passport. Habeas corpus trials held in San Francisco demonstrated the further hardship that Chinese women immigrants endured due to their suspected morality. Peffer argues that the multiple barriers emerging around the Page Law undoubtedly discouraged many Chinese women from immigrating to the United States. As much as Peffer carefully traces the legal and political history of the Page Law and rethinks its previous notions of its social implications, he also leaves unquestioned some of the most fundamental assumptions around prostitution and Chinese women immigrants--those of power and sexuality. For Peffer power lies in the hands of the institution. He calls the San Francisco court system "reluctant liberators" (57), deeming officials responsible for the Chinese women's freedom; and, in his conclusion, he nods in agreeance with Judy Yung that Chinese American women were "doubly bound" (113). Yet, in the construction of his argument, Peffer hints not only at the ability of the Chinese American community to demand their legal rights but also at the complex layers of power even within the institution. It is, after all, the leaders in Chinatown who raised the money to fund the expensive legal counsel, and it is the Chinese women themselves who accurately identified their husbands when put to the test by immigration officials. Peffer also revealed internal hierarchy and contestation when he noted Hong Kong Consul John Mosby writing, "it is a useless and superfluous task for me to undertake to investigate the character of female emigrants and to grant them passports which are treated as nullities in San Francisco, on the mere presumption that every Chinese woman is a prostitute." It seems that Mosby also to some extent defied newspaper articles that universally "destroyed the reputation of Chinese women" (86).	3
In terms of sexuality, Peffer assumes a pathological Chinese American community "suffering" from "sexual frustration" in a "socially incomplete" community, as do many Chinese American historians (31, 86). As numerically imbalanced as the sex ratio may have been, Chinese American men built a vibrant community of both happiness and hardship, without sole reliance on heterosexual intercourse for fulfillment. As for Chinese women's sexuality, Peffer briefly addresses the construction of the monolithic prostitute in the print media without deconstructing its more nuanced implications for Chinese women's sexual identity.	4
Without denying the struggles of any immigrant group in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, how would the structure of Peffer's study evolve after questioning long-held assumptions of power and sexuality? Particularly for legal-historical studies that address the regulation of sexuality in addition to immigration, complicating dynamics of power and sexual identities in the midst of an institutional history might be useful in postmodern times.	5
Yet, Peffer ultimately creates an engaging and convincing reorientation in understanding Chinese American women and thereby Chinese American history before Exclusion. He thoroughly contextualizes his research by citing the main "canons" of Chinese American women's history in addition to other commonly read works on Asian American history. He admits to shortcomings of his work in the nature of his sources, yet meticulously attempts to pull out a narrative of Chinese American women from institutional sources. His habeas corpus trials prove most interesting as he successfully lifts individual lives off of the court records. Peffer additionally places his migrants' lives in an international framework by creating comparisons from worldwide Chinese migration patterns as well as delving into documents of consulate officials in Hong Kong. Also, he raises multiple insights in his rereading of sources during the period before exclusion. His psychoanalysis of various government workers sheds light on the problematic nature of such sources as census data. He unravels the work of census taker William Martin pointing to his unfamiliarity with the Chinese community and his questionable work ethic. Peffer speculates that in Martin's conclusion that 99 percent of the fourth ward's Chinese female residents had the last name Ah, the census taker may have confused the diminutive suffix "Ah" as a surname. Misrepresentations abounded due to demands of efficiency compounded by a language barrier.	6
Through the rereading of institutional sources and the incorporation of the habeas corpus trials, Peffer infuses new identities into Chinese American women before 1882 beyond that of the prostitute. For the women previously buried under piles of immigration hearings and various legal proceedings, he not only uncovers their life trials, but also ties them undeniably to the significance of larger legal history.	7
Amy Sueyoshi University of California, Los Angeles

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