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Mahjong : a Chinese game and the making of modern American culture / Annelise Heinz.

by Heinz, Annelise, author.

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New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2021]

Mah jong -- Social aspects -- United States.

United States -- Civilization -- Chinese influences.

9780190081799 (hardcover) :

0190081791 (hardcover)

xi, 340 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm

Introduction: What's in a game? -- The Mahjong phenomenon -- Cosmopolitan roots in Shanghai -- Making a transpacific game -- Moderns and Mandarins -- White women and a Chinese game -- Inside and outside Chinese America -- Asian exclusion and enforced leisure -- The Americanization of Mahjong -- Suburban migrations and summer bungalows -- The paradoxes of postwar domesticity -- Epilogue: Reading the titles.

"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. Mahjong 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 travelled 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 pastime. This book also reveals the ways in which women leveraged a game for a variety of economic and cultural purposes, including entrepreneurship, self-expression, philanthropy, and ethnic community building. One result was the forging of friendships within mahjong groups that lasted decades. This study unfolds in two parts: the first half is focused on mahjong's history as related to consumerism, with a close examination of its economic and cultural origins. The second half of the book explores how mahjong interwove with the experiences of racial inclusion and exclusion in the evolving definition of what it means to be American. Mahjong players, promoters, entrepreneurs, and critics tell a broad story of American modernity. The apparent contradictions of the game - as both American and foreign, modern and supposedly ancient, domestic and disruptive of domesticity - reveal the tensions that lie at the heart of modern American culture"--

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