The Dear Diane Letters and the Bintel Brief

This paper employs assimilation theory to examine the experiences of Chinese and Jewish immigrant women at similar stages of their encounters with America. By focusing on the letters in Dear Diane: Letters from Our Daughters (1983), and Dear Diane: Questions and Answers for Asian American Women (1983), and earlier in the century, the letters translated and printed in A Bintel Brief: Sixty Years of Letters from the Lower East Side to the Jewish Daily Forward (1971), this paper compares and contrasts the experiences of Chinese and Jewish women in America. It concludes that, though they have their own unique characteristics, both Chinese and Jewish women shared many common experiences, such as mother-daughter conflict and identity crisis, and both of them faced a difficult challenge in assimilating into American life

Assimilation (phonology · Chinese americans · Daughter · Genealogy · Haskalah · Immigration · Jewish American literature · Jewish identity · Jewish studies · Judaism · Political science · Sociology · Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies · Jewish Identity and Society · Race, History, and American Society · Gender Studies · History · Law · Philosophy