Pure Beauty

Examines the question, Who is Japanese American? The author tackles this question by studying a cultural institution: Japanese American community beauty pageants in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, and Honolulu. King-O’Riain employs rich ethnographic fieldwork to discover how these pageants seek to maintain racial and ethnic purity amid shifting notions of cultural identity. She uses revealing in-depth interviews with candidates, queens, and community members, her experiences as a pageant committee member, and archival research-including Japanese and English newspapers, museum collections, private photo albums, and mementos-to establish both the importance and impossibility of racial purity.