I finished American Workers, Colonial Power this morning, and i find a lot to like about it. Fujita-Rony does a stellar job of narrating transnational migrations and connections, locating labor struggles within larger structures oand circuits of imperial exclusions and migrations, and problematizing gender and sexuality. Her critique of liberal multiculturalism and her insistence on documenting the ways in which Filipina/o workers transformed the economy, culture, and politics of the (trans)pacific (north)west in the 1920s and 1930s, as opposed to a less theoretically complex model which posits the workers as objects defined by but having no real effect upon the metropolitan urbs to whihc they have migrated is compelling. Fujita-Rony's history of the male migratory workers' union, whihc is initally started by business interests but ultimately splits with the AFL and merges with UCAPAWA but has a far more complex and problematic relationship to women - both working women and the wives and widows of union members - than that union had among Mexican, Mexican-American, and Jewish workers in the canneries organized by women like Dorothy Healey (yes, Ben's grandmother) and Luisa Moreno in Southern California, is fascinating.



Where i have trouble with the book is where Fujita-Rony employs concepts like "mainstream" American culture without contextualization or parenthetical qualification. And i also wish the book was about twice as long as it winds up being. There are some brilliant ideas here that i think could have used further exposition.