Books

This book examines how Taiwanese Americans' immigration background, gender, and relations in the family and workplace affect their mental health. Gu argues that Taiwanese Americans' experience of distress is not only gendered but also transnational. Men's and women's experiences differ, and transnational culture influences how they interpret their worlds. While work situations frustrate men, family life bothers women. Their identities are multiple and fluid, and they struggle with their American-ness and Chinese-ness in everyday life. 

Reviews:

“With her rich insights, the author provides sociologists of health, mental health, and illness with a framework for exploring the complex dimensionality of identity, distress, and health, and encourages further descriptive and interpretive approaches for understanding and contextualizing lived experience.... the insightful findings and socio-cultural sensitivity made it worthwhile to read every word.” -- Contemporary Sociology

“it [the book] succeeds as a solid, empirical examination of Taiwanese American experience, including structural and personal motivations for migration and sources of stress in family and work life.”--Medical Anthropology Quarterly 

"This is a theoretically innovative book. The author writes about Taiwanese Americans' emotional experiences beautifully with great sensitivity and a deep concern of humanity." -- Taiwanese Journal of Sociology

The Resilient Selfexamines how international migration re-shapes women’s senses of themselves. Chien-Juh Gu uses life-history interviews and ethnographic observations to illustrate how immigration creates gendered work and family contexts for middle-class Taiwanese American women, who, in turn, negotiate and resist the social and psychological effects of the processes of immigration and settlement. 

Most of the women immigrated as dependents when their U.S.-educated husbands found professional jobs upon graduation. Constrained by their dependent visas, these women could not work outside of the home during the initial phase of their settlement. The significant contrast of their lives before and after immigration—changing from successful professionals to foreign housewives—generated feelings of boredom, loneliness, and depression. Mourning their lost careers and lacking fulfillment in homemaking, these highly educated immigrant women were forced to redefine the meaning of work and housework, which in time shaped their perceptions of themselves and others in the family, at work, and in the larger community.  

Reveiws:

"The Resilient Self examines how immigration creates gendered work and family contexts for middle-class Taiwanese American women. Gu's fresh perspective positions these women as social agents and producers of knowledge, not simply as recipients of social forces." --Eliza Noh, California State University, Fullerton

"An interesting, clearly written book that articulates how sociocultural factors shape women's individual voices, self-development, and lived experiences. It adds novel information and hidden knowledge about this particular group of migrants from Taiwan." --Esther Ngan-ling Chow, editor of Transforming Gender and Development in East Asia

"The Resilient Self contains many fascinating vignettes about the experiences of Taiwanese immigrant women in the United States. It also highlights the effect immigration can have on the mental health of women...Its theoretical framing... holds promise for future work in migration studies."--Gender & Society

"an excellent example for junior scholars and graduate students."--Contemporary Sociology