Summary of SEAA Reads, session eleven, October 12
Monica Liu 2023 Seeking Western Men : Email-order Brides Under China’s Global Rise https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=35148 Our book club discussion was hosted by Ellen Oxfeld and began with readers briefly introducing themselves and giving a few observations or responses to the book. Unlike some sessions that included time with the author, this evening the entire 90 minutes was open for wide-ranging discussion of the several points raised by readers at the start. To begin, everyone enjoyed learned from the book! It is easy for we academics to start picking things apart and finding the lapses not explored. But it needs to be stressed that all learned a tremendous amount from reading this work and it was impressive long-term research. Readers brought up several observations. These included comparisons to (pre-email) Romance on a Global Stage: Pen Pals, Virtual Ethnography, and “Mail Order” Marriages written about one generation earlier by Nicole Constable and another rea...