Amanda Fields and Holly Rizzuto Palker chat with Andrea Louie, author of Chinese American Mothering: Toy Len Goon’s Legacy and the Myth of the Model Minority, about her grandmother’s 1952 U.S. Mother of the Year Award.

Her most recent book is Chinese American Mothering: Toy Len Goon’s Legacy and the Myth of the Model Minority. In 1952, Toy Len Goon, a Chinese immigrant widow who raised eight children while running their family laundry, was selected as U.S. Mother of the Year by the American Mother’s Committee of the Golden Rule Foundation. In Chinese American Mothering, Andrea Louie—the granddaughter of Toy Len Goon—argues that her grandmother’s selection for this honor can only be understood within the context of shifting representations of Chinese Americans during the Cold War era, and the accompanying assumptions about the strategic role that positive representations of Chinese Americans could have in extending U.S. influence to Asia.

Andrea Louie is a professor of anthropology at Michigan State University, where she is also affiliated with the Asian Pacific American Studies Program. She is the author of Chineseness Across Borders: Renegotiating Chinese Identities in China and the United States and How Chinese Are You?: Adopted Chinese Youth and their Families Negotiate Identity and Culture.

Links:

Chinese American Mothering: Toy Len Goon’s Legacy and the Myth of the Model Minority