Homemaking in White America: The Jue Joe Ranch, 1919–1958

Abstract

abstract: Housing is an important architectural construct in the process of immigrant resettlement in receiving countries. This study situates the Jue Joe Ranch in the San Fernando Valley within the social and political contexts of spatial exclusion in agriculture and suburbia, as well as the identity formation processes of the family from 1919 to 1958. I argue that the homemaking practices of the Jue family constituted a spatial, architectural resistance to White dominance based on the family's changing Chinese American identities. Homemaking operated not only as a social response, but also as a temporal and spatial process articulated through various scales. While the first-generation immigrant Jue Joe used the land and buildings primarily as spaces of food production, the second- and third-generation children employed the built environment mainly for cultural production. They strategically and tactfully expressed their longing for the material aspects of Chinese traditions through the interior spaces and intangible everyday practices. These embodied experiences, which communicate important voices of resistance to spatial assimilation, continue to define the meanings of home for immigrant communities in America today.