a biography of the day-rose hum lee (sociologist, 1st woman, 1st chinese to head soc. dept at
roosevelt university, chicago)
The following is excerpted from Dr. Yu's book, Thinking Orientals: A History of Knowledge Created About and By Asian Americans (New York: Oxford: 2000):
Rose Hum Lee, author and lecturer, brings to her audiences outstanding charm and the thought-provoking impressions of her dual perspective, a product of two civilizations--the ancient tradition-steeped culture of China and the new, virile and uninhibited culture of America. Reared by Chinese parents in the classics and traditions of China, the surroundings of her early childhood were the rugged mountains of America's Northwest.
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Lecture topics included Chinese art and symbolism, Chinese customs old and new, America as seen through Chinese eyes, America's role in the Far East, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek, the Chinese Nationalist Party (Guomindang) and of course, the Chinese in America. Typically, Rose Hum Lee would give her lectures in "perfectly fluent, flawless English," and afterwards, dressed in the 'traditional' cheong sam (a long silk dress) of Chinese women, would sell assorted chinoiseries and bric-a-brac as souvenirs. And so Lee put herself through college, and made a lucrative living on the side while teaching.
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In 1939, Rose Hum Lee (she kept her married name) returned to the United States with an adopted Chinese daughter, determined to pursue a career as a writer, teacher, and social worker. Supporting herself through odd jobs and the lecture circuit, Lee put herself through college and in 1942 graduated with a B.S. in social work from the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh. She then began graduate study at the University of Chicago's School of Social Work and Administration, but soon switched to the sociology department.
In 1947, Rose Hum Lee finished her doctorate on "The Growth and Decline of Rocky Mountain Chinatowns." By 1956 she had achieved the height of a prolific career at Roosevelt University in Chicago by becoming the first woman, and first Chinese American, to head a sociology department at an American university. Lee was also a respected theorist in the field of urban sociology and her 1955 work The City: Urbanism and Urbanization in Major World Regions was the epitome of Chicago school urban theory; the Chinese in America, however, were the central focus of her life's work.
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http://www.maiwah.org/rhlee.shtml
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Academic Career
In 1945 Lee joined the faculty of the sociology department at Roosevelt University, a new college in Chicago that promoted ethnic diversity among faculty and students. Upon completing her dissertation Lee wrote an article published in Social Forces in 1948 called "Social Institutions of a Rocky Mountain Chinatown" about life in Butte, Montana. She described how Chinese Americans sought to preserve certain social institutions from their homeland. Her next publication in 1949 on "The Decline of Chinatowns in the United States" is considered her most famous article. In this work she continued to pursue the natural history of Chinese American enclaves, particularly their growth and decline. In 1949 Lee also received a grant from the Social Science Research Council to continue her dissertation research on Chinese Americans. She expanded her previous work to include immigrant families in San Francisco. She was especially interested in comparing the established Chinese American families of the Rocky Mountain region to the newer immigrant families just arriving in California. Lee published an article based on this research in 1956 in the Journal of Marriage and Family Living.
Her extended research on Chinese Americans eventually led to her most famous book, The Chinese in the United States of America, published in 1960. In the introduction to the book Lee wrote, "This volume attempts to portray the social, economic, occupational, institutional, and associational life of the Chinese in the United States of America. The members of that community have often been discussed but seldom understood." This was a comprehensive look at Chinese American immigrants in terms of family life, social organization, religion, politics, health, and social problems. Lee also addressed how Chinese immigrants were treated by Americans and how they viewed themselves as a group.
In this book Lee examined how three different groups of Chinese Americans assimilated to American culture as immigrants. The first group was called "sojourners," those who emigrated to the United States for economic reasons but who planned to return to China. The second group was the "intellectuals" who left their homeland for academic or political reasons and who were affluent enough to live outside of Chinatowns. The last group was the "American-Chinese" who were either born in the United States to Chinese immigrants or who were legal U.S. residents. The third group most readily embraced the American lifestyle because they planned to make their home in America.
Throughout this book and all of her work Lee was a strong supporter of racial and ethnic assimilation, another characteristic of the Chicago school. In the preface to the book, Lee clearly explained of Chinese immigrants: "Many of them have become so integrated in the societies where they themselves or their ancestors settled that they are indistinguishable from the local population: that is the ultimate ideal to which all Overseas Chinese should aspire." Lee believed that assimilation would be beneficial to Chinese Americans because it would lead to less discrimination. While she appreciated the cultural conflict between generations, Lee nonetheless believed that preserving traditional ways would be detrimental to the Chinese American community. In The Chinese in the United States of America, Lee wrote that "The American-born, especially, must resist the pressure of the older Chinese who try to impose Chinese norms, values, and attitudes on them or woo their loyalty by exhortations to 'save the face of the Chinese.' Face-saving covers a multitude of sins."
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Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/lee-rose#ixzz2cWaj8IC5
Rose Hum Lee (Lee was her married name) was born Hum Kim Mei on August 20, 1904 in Butte, Montana. She was the second eldest in a family of four girls and three boys. Her father, Hum Wah Long, emigrated from Guangdong, China in the 1870s. From California to Montana, he worked as a manual laborer and he eventually became a successful merchant and landowner in Butte. Lee's mother, Chiu Lin Fong, arrived in the United States in 1900 and met her husband for the first time when she stepped onto the port of Portland, Oregon.
After graduating from high school and briefly attending a local college, Rose Hum Lee married Ku Young Lee, a China-born engineering student at the University of Pennsylvania. Under a 1907 US statute (later reinforced by the Cable Act of 1922), Lee lost her US citizenship when she married Ku Young Lee because he was an alien ineligible for US citizenship. Lee applied for and received the reinstatement of her US citizenship in 1939.
The couple left for Canton, China in 1929. In Canton, Lee worked in different governmental agencies and American corporations, and when the Japanese started bombing Canton in 1938, Lee worked as a radio receptor and interpreter of Mikado's English-language broadcast. She also assisted with various war and refugee relief agencies and founded the Women's International Club of China. Lee was especially concerned with the welfare of children and became involved in Madame Chiang Kai-shek's "warphan" project to aid children orphaned by the war.
In late December of 1938, Lee returned to the United States with her adopted daughter, Elaine Lee. Her husband stayed in China and they filed for divorce in 1943. Lee continued her earlier studies, and in 1942 received her BS in social work from the Carnegie Institute of Technology. She subsequently received her MA in 1943 and Ph.D. in sociology in 1947 from the University of Chicago. During this period, Lee supported herself by writing stories and articles for various periodicals and journals, and she lectured, throughout the United States, about China and the Chinese in America.
Lee focused most of her research activities on the Chinese in America and urban sociology, and she had a strong interest in promoting inter-group race relations within her discipline. Conducting extensive research and documentation on China towns in America, especially in Tucson, Arizona, she became one of the leading cultural and sociological interpreters on the Chinese in America. In 1956, Chicago's Roosevelt University appointed Lee to become Chair of its Sociology Department, thus making her the first woman and the first Chinese American to head an academic department of an American university.
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http://socialarchive.iath.virginia.edu/xtf/view?docId=lee-rose-hum-cr.xml