Book excerpt: This study shows the possibilities for bringing together Asian American and U.S. women's history, treating race and gender as equally meaningful categories of historical analysis. I have continued to draw upon the tools offered by both fields in documenting and interpreting the lives of subaltern groups, while simultaneously interrogating the socially-constructed categories of race and gender. Uniting these two subfields in this study, is the study of spatial relations developed by urban geographers in understanding the production of social relations in urban spaces. Past urban studies have often privileged class, race, or gender in studying the rise of the modern city. This study shows the degree to which these unstable, social categories are not as separate as they may appear, but often mutually reinforcing, and critical for understanding urban spatial formation.