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Love Letters
from Janey

This book describes how Janey achieves a fulfilling career with the help of mentors and Richard. She is a laboratory assistant for a Nobel Prize winner at Stanford, is a California-state certified microbiologist, conducts independent research in immunology at the University of Oregon medical school, earns her Ed.D., and receives the highest technical award at Bell Laboratories while raising three sons, participating in multiple community volunteer programs and is a skier, sailor and chef, and wife of an equally active husband.

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What's inside the book.

“Love Letters from Janey” is the life story of how Janey Young, an engaged Asian American senior at Stanford University in 1960, wants to have a career after they are married. Her fiancé, Richard Cheu, is a graduate student at the University of Oregon. She seeks to reconcile a vision of her future which conflicts with cultural, societal, and family pressures to accept the “natural role” of an educated married woman. Betty Frieden names the presumed natural role of “wife, mother, and housekeeper and nothing more” as the feminine mystique which is the title of her 1963 book that argues women can have a career in addition to the “nature role.”

Part One

This book is unconventional. It is written in parts rather than chapters. Part One is a synopsis of the 1960s, an era rebounding from the Great Depression and World War II and unique in American history. It is a time of powerful conflicting social forces; anti-Vietnam War protests, a countercultural movement, the Civil Rights movement, emergence of the Women’s Liberation movement, the baby boom, movement of whites from cities to segregated suburbs, and consumerism that increases the size and wealth of the middle class.

Part Two

Part Two is based on 167 handwritten letters, nearly 700 pages, Janey wrote to Richard during their fifteen month long-distance courtship in 1960-61. In those letters, she expresses everything that comes to her mind as she writes; her desire for a career - “I don’t want to be a lab tech for the rest of my life”, awareness of societal and parent expectations, concerns, a sense of inadequacy for the challenges ahead, dreams of married life, and emotions. Excerpts from the letters are presented chronologically in thirteen topics which describe how they dealt with issues and challenges confronting them, particularly racial and gender barriers. They had to reconcile their religious difference, she is Catholic and he is (nominally) Protestant, if there is to be a marriage.

Part Three

Part Three is an analysis of Janey’s complex personality. Richard describes her as “a jewel with many facets and she chose not to share some of them.” He uses a contemporary definition of the ancient Chinese philosophy of Yin and Yang to discuss some aspects of her personality to understand how she was able to accomplish so many things at the same time.

Part Four

Part Four is the “book end” of Janey’s life story. It is told by her in the oral history interview Richard conducted shortly after their 50th wedding anniversary. She describes her life in the intervening five decades since she wrote her courtship letters.

Janey Cheu

A Brief Biography

Janey Young

Born in Los Angeles 1938, early childhood in Whittier, pre-teen years in San Francisco’s segregated Chinatown, teen years in the Richmond district of San Francisco. Attended Washington High School.

Married, July, 2001 to Richard Cheu, Old St. Mary’s Cathedral, San Francisco.

Janey’s Chinese name, 梅芳 [粵 Mui Fong] quite literally means “peach blossoms” and it’s a name that captures the essence of “love” in a very symbolic way especially in Chinese culture.

Stanford University

A.B., Medical Microbiology

University of Oregon Medical School

U.S. Public Health Fellowship in microbiology

AT&T Bell Laboratories

Distinguished Member Technical Staff

Certified Microbiologist

In California

Rutgers University

Associate Director, Institute for Science, Technology and Social Science Education
Ed.D. in psychology & education
M.E.

Featured on "Power Your Life" on Blog Talk Radio

Power of Life Dr. Jo Anne White Interview

"Author, historian, deacon, and hospice chaplain Richard Cheu has written “Living Well with Chronic Illness: A Practical and Spiritual Guide’’. His recent book “Love Letters From Janey: 50 Years of Breaking Barriers Together” features the 167 letters from his wife. This tribute honors their 50 year love story: A testament to their love and passionate support for each other to succeed despite the discrimination they battled.

His sixty-five oral histories that address the effects of America’s Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 on 20th century Chinese Americans are archived at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. Richard is an economist who created the economic plan transforming Taiwan into a modern economy, a neurophysiologist who received a U.S. Patent for inventing a method for improving vision. Richard is also an auxiliary chaplain of the New York fire department. A National Park Service volunteer history interpreter, he’s given 90 talks onboard Amtrak trains."

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Love From Our Readers

Read reviews from our worldwide readers

Beautiful!

“This is a beautiful way to chronicle challenges, evolutions, life and love. We should all be writing letters like these. This old fashioned way of communicating love is a beautiful practice for modern relationships.”

Dr. Brenda Wade TV Expert, Author, Founder of Modern Love and Relationship Trainings

A Pleasure!

“A pleasure to read, this book is a love letter to the long lost creative skill of letter writing. Taking readers on a decades-long journey into the heart and soul of two extremely talented people via the handwritten letters from Janey to Richard, it reveals their love and commitment to each other and their insights into the challenges faced by Chinese-Americans.”

William Belford Former chancellor of the Archdiocese of New York

Love Letters From Janey

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