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Chargement... Mahjong: A Chinese Game and the Making of Modern American Culturepar Annelise Heinz
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"Mahjong: A Chinese Game and the Making of Modern American Culture illustrates how the spaces between tiles and the moments between games have fostered distinct social cultures in the United States. This mass-produced game crossed the Pacific, creating waves of popularity over the twentieth century. Mahjong narrates the history of this game to show how it has created a variety of meanings, among them American modernity, Chinese American heritage, and Jewish American women's culture. As it travelled from China to the United States and caught on with Hollywood starlets, high society, middle-class housewives, and immigrants alike, mahjong became a quintessentially American pastime. This book also reveals the ways in which women leveraged a game for a variety of economic and cultural purposes, including entrepreneurship, self-expression, philanthropy, and ethnic community building. One result was the forging of friendships within mahjong groups that lasted decades. This study unfolds in two parts: the first half is focused on mahjong's history as related to consumerism, with a close examination of its economic and cultural origins. The second half of the book explores how mahjong interwove with the experiences of racial inclusion and exclusion in the evolving definition of what it means to be American. Mahjong players, promoters, entrepreneurs, and critics tell a broad story of American modernity. The apparent contradictions of the game - as both American and foreign, modern and supposedly ancient, domestic and disruptive of domesticity - reveal the tensions that lie at the heart of modern American culture"-- Aucune description trouvée dans une bibliothèque |
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Google Books — Chargement... GenresClassification décimale de Melvil (CDD)795.34The arts Recreational and performing arts Games of chance Drawing numbers, counters or tiles MahjongClassification de la Bibliothèque du CongrèsÉvaluationMoyenne:
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Heinz gives even the most incidental details: the right time of the year to cut the bamboo to make the pieces, the conditions in the mahjong workshops of the 1920s, the different chemistry of the plastic pieces that gradually emerged to take their place, and the social mores of players in Jewish summer camps in the Catskills of the 1950s.
As with much else in Chinese history – exaggerated claims for the longevity of Chinese culture, the visibility of the Great Wall from space, a language too difficult for foreigners – claims that mahjong was the “game of the Mandarins”, played 2,500 years ago by Confucius, were the ideas of marketing men from the West.