Heathen Intimacy: Chinese Migrants and Criminal Sexualities in Turn of the Century California

Abstract

Heathen Intimacy examines the gender and sexual norms of Chinese migrants in California between the 1860s and 1920s. Drawing on underutilized California court records, I explore how some of the earliest Chinese residents formed intimate relations with one another and across racial lines, as well as the ways in which state and private forces attempted to regulate such liaisons. Through in-depth stories of love and loss, intimacy and tragedy, Heathen Intimacy aims to offer complex portraits of the social lives of the Chinese in America, complicating scholarly conceptions of an oft-misunderstood immigrant community. By showcasing the multiplicity of ways the Chinese in America interacted with their non-Chinese neighbors in spite or in defiance of what was prescribed by cultural discourse and law, Heathen Intimacy seeks to provide a gender and sexual account of how early Chinese migrants were woven into the racial fabric of California. I examine race through sex and vice versa, showing how, in the words of Nayan Shah, “racialized sexual meanings, identities, and practices travel and stratify.” While this dissertation spans histories from the end of the Civil War to the beginning of the Great Depression, Heathen Intimacy is especially interested in stories from the Progressive Era (c. 1890-1920s), a period when most of the Chinese in California had settled down permanently and became integral parts of local communities. Although court cases involving the Chinese from this era are filled with violence – physical, sexual, racial, and economic – the stories told in court also evidence years of toleration, mutual dependence, and even friendship and intimacy.