Summary of SEAA READS, session six, 7/2023
Lynne Nakano 2022 Making Our Own Destiny : Single Women, Opportunity, and Family in Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Tokyo . University of Hawai’i Press.. In his preamble to the book and the evening’s conversation, host Bill Kelly, described ethnography as an enterprise in both senses: a project of many parts (committee, fieldwork and rapport, drafting and revising, engagement with readers), but also fitting in the author’s own professional arc, a part of that lifetime enterprise, too. One’s writing may differ at the stages of dissertation, first book, mid-career, later career, and as a free agent in retirement. One of the creative, productive tensions in such writing is between trying to “fit in” and also to “stand out.” It is important to connect with related work, but also to assert one’s own interpretations and points of reference and comparison, too. With so many recent ethnographies to select for SEAA Reads this time, choosing one was a challenge. Nakano’s book pushes the boundaries...