Mahjong: A Chinese Game and the Making of Modern American Culture

Abstract

When I was a child, mahjong was a game played by some of my mother's friends—ladies who did not have full time jobs and met at each other's houses for afternoon tea. I had never thought about how it came to be a game known and played by suburban white women. Annelise Heinz's use of mahjong as a material cultural lens for American history is ingenious. The game enjoyed a fad in the 1920s and was then revived in the postwar period. How this import that could have fallen away entirely (like so many other 1920s crazes) developed a particular meaning and longevity for different Americans is a fascinating narrative that Heinz explores deftly. The early twentieth century saw the popularization of commercial board games—branded products and games for which one needs a special set. This reflected improvements in manufacturing, greater leisure time, and marketing (and, in some cases, examples of copyright infringement), all of which would come into play when mahjong began to be commercially imported to the United States. As Heinz demonstrates here, the fact that this was a distinctively Chinese game brings a particular layer of Orientalism, as attitudes toward the game changed with the evolving identity of Asian communities within the United States.