Читать книгу The Industrial Condition of Women and Girls in Honolulu: A Social Study онлайн

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In this crossroads community of Honolulu—a community where defying Kipling, not only the East and West, but also the North and South meet (and like one another) there are almost as many races and admixtures represented as a man has fingers and toes.

A girl born of a mother whose blood is half-Hawaiian and half-Chinese, and of a Norwegian father, works side by side on the one hand with a Korean maiden and on the other with a young woman who is negro-American through one parent and German-Hawaiian through another. The daughter of a Portuguese-Japanese mother and an American father schoolmates with the child of a Basuto woman and an Englishman; while side by side Portuguese, Porto Rican, Japanese, Hawaiian, Filipino and Negro, with all these and other inter-racial variations, eat their lunches side by side in the pineapple canneries and laundries. Schools, athletic teams and other activities show the same racial composition.

And quite as assorted as the blood is apt to be the mode of life, dress and thought of this polyglot population. One sees a Chinese woman in her charming native costume of brocaded silk, her hair carefully pomaded and profusely ornamented, while her feet (not by any means the “golden-lilies” so rapidly passing into oblivion) of the small-footed Chinese are encased in silk hose and patent leather pumps. Furthermore, she leads by the hand a small daughter in full American panoply, not omitting the butterfly bow of ribbon in her hair. If followed to her home she will be found eating her bowl of rice or stewed mushrooms with a spoon, instead of the historic chop-sticks, her children doing the same or more likely making their fingers do duty.