This collection brings together diverse analyses of women in Japan--including department store elevator girls, tour bus guides, airline stewardesses, soldiers, soccer players, beauty queens, and educators--who have been intimately involved in the practices and professions of modernity.

Black Girls demonstrates the relevance of colonial legacies in the stories of the Afro-Surinamese and the Eritrean women who, in the 1960s and 70s, migrated to the Netherlands and Italy, respectively, and became domestic workers there.