Gender & History· 2026Q2
Trafficked and Rescued: Travails of the Chinese “Slave Girl” in Progressive Era California
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- 2026year
Short summary
Progressive Era discourse racialized Chinese "slave girls" as objects of rescue, distinct from non-Chinese sex workers, enabling missionaries to wield state power for reform.
AI-generated from the title and abstract; the full text is not read.
Key points
- Slavery discourse in the Progressive Era created a distinct category for Chinese "slave girls."
- Chinese "slave girls" were racialized as objects of rescue, unlike other sex workers.
- Missionaries used state power in the name of reform to "rescue" Chinese women and girls.
- The article deconstructs "rescue" narratives using a reparative approach.
AI-generated from the title and abstract; the full text is not read.
Abstract
ABSTRACT This article examines the cultural and intellectual history of the Chinese “slave girl” in Progressive Era California. Joining a rich literature on how the movement of women across Europe and the Americas stoked cultural anxieties around sex work, gender norms, and “trafficking,” this article uses missionary documents and newspaper accounts to explore how slavery discourse collapsed variations in Chinese women and girls' experiences of freedom and unfreedom in America. I show how, in contrast to her non‐Chinese counterparts, the Chinese “slave girl” was positioned as a racialized object of rescue within the borders of the American nation‐state, where missionaries could wield violent state power in the name of religious and reformist zeal. This article concludes by re‐reading and deconstructing “rescue” narratives through a reparative lens.
The authors' abstract, as published at the source. Gender & History, 2026 · DOI ↗
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Field: Cultural Studies
Cultural StudiesSocial Sciences