The Women

The story is narrated from the collective perspective of Japanese immigrant women living in California. They arrived in California with their husbands, and they began to have children. The women and their families migrate to different farmlands in California in order to have consistent work in the fields. In addition to helping with farm work, the women are expected to take care of all of the household chores and childcare. The women are sexually objectified by their husbands and are often persecuted if they are unable to have children.

The women and their families eventually move to more urban environments with their families. As the children grow up, they become more assimilated to American language and culture, while the women seem to preserve the cultural and religious ideas that they brought with them from Japan. Because of this dynamic, the women find that their relationships to their...