Awards

• Winner of Shortlisted, Shapiro Book Prize, The Huntington Library Winner, Pacific Coast Branch Book Award, Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association Finalist, Frances Fuller Victor Award for General Nonfiction, Oregon Book Awards.
• Winner of Winner, Pacific Coast Branch Book Award, Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association Finalist, Frances Fuller Victor Award for General Nonfiction, Oregon Book Awards.

Overview

How has a game brought together Americans and defined separate ethnic communities? This book tells the first history of mahjong and its meaning in American culture.Click-click-click. The sound of mahjong tiles connects American expatriates in Shanghai, Jazz Age white Americans, urban Chinese Americans in the 1930s, incarcerated Japanese Americans in wartime, Jewish American suburban mothers, and Air Force officers' wives in the postwar era.Mahjong: A Chinese Game and the Making of Modern American Culture illustrates how the spaces between tiles and the moments between games have fostered distinct social cultures in the United States. This mass-produced game crossed the Pacific, creating waves of popularity over the twentieth century. Annelise Heinz narrates the history of this game to show how it has created a variety of meanings, among them American modernity, Chinese American heritage, and Jewish American women's culture. As it traveled from China to the United States and caught on with Hollywood starlets, high society, middle-class housewives, and immigrants alike, mahjong became a quintessentially American game. Heinz also reveals the ways in which women leveraged a game to gain access to respectable leisure. The result was the forging of friendships that lasted decades and the creation of organizations that raised funds for the war effort and philanthropy. No other game has signified both belonging and standing apart in American culture. Drawing on photographs, advertising, popular media, and dozens of oral histories, Heinz's rich and colorful account offers the first history of the wildly popular game of mahjong.

Full Product Details

9780190081799

Table of Contents

Reviews

What could have been presented as fun and therefore trivial, the game of mahjong, in the capable hands of Annelise Heinz, instead emerges as a serious matter in cross-cultural history, linking China and the United States. This book makes women's history, American Jewish history, and the history of class and leisure subjects that inform each other. Through deep research and clear writing, Heinz drives home the point that it is not just a game. -- Hasia Diner, New York University In a work of dazzling richness and scope, Annelise Heinz reveals how multiracial makers, players, and marketers of mahjong negotiated and shaped social change in everyday life for a century. Comparing the rounds played by Chinese men detained at Angel Island with the tournaments held by Japanese Americans in World War II incarceration camps underscores the meanings of recreation in confinement. Evoking the delights of the game, this fascinating study also shows how Jewish women adapted mahjong, cultivating ties of female friendship and ethnic community, while also claiming Americanness and modernity. -- Valerie Matsumoto, University of California, Los Angeles Annelise Heinz's Mahjong is a beautifully written, deeply researched history of mahjong. She examines the transnational history of this game and how it has moved across national, racial, cultural, and gendered boundaries while at the same reformulating and reinforcing some of these same borders. This is a history that combines the study of leisure with labor, consumption with performance, as well as race and ethnicity with class and gender. It offers fresh interpretations of modern America by focusing on the unlikely journey of a game. -- Judy Tzu-Chun Wu, author of Radicals on the Road In this lively history, Annelise Heinz shows us that mahjong is more than a game. In her deft hands, it illuminates modern consumerism, Orientalist fantasy, ethnic identity, and women's self-fashioning across the twentieth century. A richly researched, happily readable book. -- Joanne Meyerowitz, author of How Sex Changed

"""What could have been presented as fun and therefore trivial, the game of mahjong, in the capable hands of Annelise Heinz, instead emerges as a serious matter in cross-cultural history, linking China and the United States. This book makes women's history, American Jewish history, and the history of class and leisure subjects that inform each other. Through deep research and clear writing, Heinz drives home the point that it is not just a game."" -- Hasia Diner, New York University ""In a work of dazzling richness and scope, Annelise Heinz reveals how multiracial makers, players, and marketers of mahjong negotiated and shaped social change in everyday life for a century. Comparing the rounds played by Chinese men detained at Angel Island with the tournaments held by Japanese Americans in World War II incarceration camps underscores the meanings of recreation in confinement. Evoking the delights of the game, this fascinating study also shows how Jewish women adapted mahjong, cultivating ties of female friendship and ethnic community, while also claiming Americanness and modernity."" -- Valerie Matsumoto, University of California, Los Angeles ""Annelise Heinz's Mahjong is a beautifully written, deeply researched history of mahjong. She examines the transnational history of this game and how it has moved across national, racial, cultural, and gendered boundaries while at the same reformulating and reinforcing some of these same borders. This is a history that combines the study of leisure with labor, consumption with performance, as well as race and ethnicity with class and gender. It offers fresh interpretations of modern America by focusing on the unlikely journey of a game."" -- Judy Tzu-Chun Wu, author of Radicals on the Road ""In this lively history, Annelise Heinz shows us that mahjong is more than a game. In her deft hands, it illuminates modern consumerism, Orientalist fantasy, ethnic identity, and women's self-fashioning across the twentieth century. A richly researched, happily readable book."" -- Joanne Meyerowitz, author of How Sex Changed ""An enjoyable and informative work that's highly recommended for any reader interested in the history of mahjong specifically or 20th-century U.S. cultural history generally.""--Library Journal"

What could have been presented as fun and therefore trivial, the game of mahjong, in the capable hands of Annelise Heinz, instead emerges as a serious matter in cross-cultural history, linking China and the United States. This book makes women's history, American Jewish history, and the history of class and leisure subjects that inform each other. Through deep research and clear writing, Heinz drives home the point that it is not just a game. -- Hasia Diner, New York University In a work of dazzling richness and scope, Annelise Heinz reveals how multiracial makers, players, and marketers of mahjong negotiated and shaped social change in everyday life for a century. Comparing the rounds played by Chinese men detained at Angel Island with the tournaments held by Japanese Americans in World War II incarceration camps underscores the meanings of recreation in confinement. Evoking the delights of the game, this fascinating study also shows how Jewish women adapted mahjong, cultivating ties of female friendship and ethnic community, while also claiming Americanness and modernity. -- Valerie Matsumoto, University of California, Los Angeles Annelise Heinz's Mahjong is a beautifully written, deeply researched history of mahjong. She examines the transnational history of this game and how it has moved across national, racial, cultural, and gendered boundaries while at the same reformulating and reinforcing some of these same borders. This is a history that combines the study of leisure with labor, consumption with performance, as well as race and ethnicity with class and gender. It offers fresh interpretations of modern America by focusing on the unlikely journey of a game. -- Judy Tzu-Chun Wu, author of Radicals on the Road In this lively history, Annelise Heinz shows us that mahjong is more than a game. In her deft hands, it illuminates modern consumerism, Orientalist fantasy, ethnic identity, and women's self-fashioning across the twentieth century. A richly researched, happily readable book. -- Joanne Meyerowitz, author of How Sex Changed An enjoyable and informative work that's highly recommended for any reader interested in the history of mahjong specifically or 20th-century U.S. cultural history generally. --Library Journal

Author Information

Annelise Heinz is an assistant professor of history at the University of Oregon. Her work has been featured on National Public Radio and international Chinese television. She has lived and played mahjong in the United States and Southwestern China.

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