Chinese American Identity in Literature

Introduction

The Chinese began to immigrate to the United States in 1820, but their numbers remained small until the late 1840s, after China was defeated in 1848 by Britain in the First Opium War. The California gold rush (1849) started shortly after the United States acquired California as a result of the Mexican-American War (1848). These events coincided to produce a wave of Chinese immigration. When the Chinese Exclusion Act (1882) put a halt to Chinese immigration, more than 100,000 Chinese people had settled in the United States. As a result of the exclusion, and because men far outnumbered women, the American Chinese population remained stable until the 1950s. Chinese Americans participated in a broad range of economic activities, including railroad building, mining, farming, fishing, industry, and family businesses. The influx of Americans into the West and the fierce economic competition that it brought about, compounded by the decline of China’s international standing, led to pervasive anti-Chinese sentiments and violence. Legislation such as the Chinese Exclusion Act, Alien Land Laws, the Cable Act, and the National Origins Act aggravated rather than alleviated discrimination against the Chinese.

Chinese American Experience, 1850-1942

The first phase (roughly 1850-1942) of the Chinese American experience is recorded primarily in three types of literature. The first type is the largely negative, or at least stereotypical, representation of the Chinese in European American writings. In popular literature, caricatures, stereotypes, and racist portrayals of Chinese people abounded. Examples include Sax Rohmer’s Fu Manchu and Earl Derr Biggers’ Charlie Chan. A variety of objectionable Chinese characters also populate Jack London’s stories. Mark Twain, Bret Harte, and Ambrose Bierce, despite their sympathies for the Chinese, largely failed to recognize and assert their humanity.

The second type provides counterpoints to the stereotypes. This type of literature is the work of Chinese diplomats, travelers, and immigrants. Such writing is crucial to the formation of the identity of Chinese Americans. A notable example is Island: Poetry and History of Chinese Immigrants on Angel Island, 1910-1940 (1980), which contains a collection of Chinese poems found inscribed on the barrack walls of the Angel Island Detention Center. The common fate of a displaced people in distress looms large in the collective voice of these poems. Another collection, Songs of Gold Mountain: Cantonese Rhymes from San Francisco Chinatown (1987), also provides glimpses into the psyches of Chinese immigrants in the early 1900’s. Sui Sin Far’s (pseudonym of Edith Eaton) representation of the Chinese and the Chinese American experience in Mrs. Spring Fragrance (1912) is informed by an intimate knowledge of her subjects and enhanced by her mastery of literary idioms. Far, who was the child of a Chinese mother and an English father, chose allegiance to her Chinese heritage at a time when it was demeaned. Such courage in the struggle to establish an ethnic identity has been required of many Asian Americans.

The third type of literature dealing with the first phase of the Chinese American experience involves the more-or-less-historical re-creation, by later writers, of the lives of their forebears. One example is Kingston’s China Men (1980), in which the narrator attempts to reconstruct the tribulations and struggles of her male forebears who labored in the Hawaiian plantations, built the transcontinental railroad, and survived as Americans. Another example is Ruthanne Lum McGunn’s Thousand Pieces of Gold (1981), which chronicles the immigration, destitution, survival, and independence of a Chinese woman pioneer in the late nineteenth century. McGunn’s second historical novel, Wooden Fish Songs (1995), covers the period from 1842 to 1915 and the life story of Lue Gim Gong, whose contribution to citrus-growing technology was instrumental to the industry. In this type of literature, historical research and creative imagination are employed to open a window on the past, describe the beginnings of Chinese American identity, and affirm the connectedness between the past and the present. A significant instance of the historical imagination is Tan’s The Hundred Secret Senses (1995), in which the author traces the protagonist’s ancestry to the Hakkas, the ethnic Chinese group that started the Taiping Rebellion (1850-64), one of the most cataclysmic events in Chinese history.

Chinese American Experience, 1942-1965

The image of Chinese Americans improved during the second phase of the Chinese American experience. This period consists of the years 1942, the first full year of U.S. war against Japan, to 1965, the year of the Immigration and Nationality Act. This improvement was in part the result of China’s being an important ally of the United States in World War II. A public awareness of the difference between Chinese Americans and Japanese Americans began to develop, at the expense of the latter. Accordingly, the literature of this period is dominated by two sentiments. The first is what may be called the diplomatic sentiment, which seeks to explain the values and virtues of the Chinese heritage to the general (that is, white) reader. Implicit in such literature is an attempt to cement the sense of alliance between the Chinese and the American. The tone may range from apology to celebration. A good example is Jade Snow Wong’s Fifth Chinese Daughter (1945). Lin Yutang’s extensive writings about China and Chinese culture, which have been well received by Western readers but often criticized by Chinese readers, also may be placed in this diplomatic context. The second sentiment is of belonging, of claiming America as home. This sentiment emerged as a dominant theme. A good example of this sentiment is Louis Chu’s Eat a Bowl of Tea (1961), a novel about the precarious attempts of a Chinese American veteran and his Chinese wife to start a family in New York’s Chinatown. The novel marks the transition from the bachelor society of the older generation to the next generation of Chinese Americans, who were in the United States not only to stay but also to multiply. The sentiment of belonging entails dealing with the issue of assimilation and Americanization. This issue is crucial to Chinese American literature. Some critics argue that certain writers (such as Pardee Lowe, Father and Glorious Descendant, 1943; C. Y. Lee, Flower Drum Song, 1957; Virginia Lee, The House That Tai Ming Built, 1963) deny, repress, or trivialize their Chinese heritage in order to gain acceptance. The theme of claiming America does lend itself to the construction of a distinct sense of Chinese American identity.

Another generation of Chinese American writers, those who came of age during the second phase of Chinese American experience, continue to be informed by the diplomatic sentiment, in some cases decrying it, in others, accepting it. Shawn Wong’s lyrical novel Homebase (1979) locates the home in the United States and not in China. Ironically, the distinctive American identity of many Chinese has been challenged (and thereby strengthened, one may argue) by the continuing arrival of Chinese immigrants from Taiwan, Hong Kong, Southeast Asia, and mainland China.

Chinese American Experience, Since 1965

During the third phase (after 1965) of the Chinese American experience, the Chinese population of the United States rose from 250,000 in 1966 to 1.6 million in 1990. An important debate arises from continuing immigration: What, if any, distinction should be drawn between the native-born and the foreign-born? Frank Chin and the other editors of Aiiieeeee! An Anthology of Asian-American Writers (1974) and The Big Aiiieeeee! An Anthology of Chinese American and Japanese American Literature (1991) attempt to differentiate between the native-born and the foreign-born, implying that Chinese American identity should be determined on the basis of an American, rather than Chinese, mindset. Newcomers (sometimes derided as “fresh off the boat,” source of the title of Hwang’s FOB, 1979) and more recent arrivals have brought with them significant resources and skills. These conditions render moot the American-centered definition of Chinese American identity. The increased diversity of the Chinese American community has made the issue of identity complex. A case in point is the background of Chinese Indonesian American writer Li-Young Lee, the author of two acclaimed volumes of poetry (Rose, 1986; The City in Which I Love You, 1990) and The Winged Seed: A Remembrance (1995). A further complexity arises when writers (for example, feminist poet Nellie Wong and polemicist Chin) disagree regarding what, how, and for whom to write about their experience. To complicate things further, interracial families, marriages, and relationships (as in Lisa See’s On Gold Mountain, 1995, and Shawn Wong’s American Knees, 1995) can so entangle ethnic identity that it can amount to a Gordian knot. In sharp contrast to entanglement is the position of avant-garde poets such as John Yau, who appears to eschew considerations of ethnicity. Somewhere between is the case of Chinese Hawaiian authors such as Eric Chock and Wing-Tek Lum. The complex issues of ethnic identity will continue to unfold, but three discernible patterns in twentieth century Chinese American literature can be emphasized.

One pattern is the continuation of the positive literary trends started in the first two historical phases of Chinese American identity. Three such trends may be described. The first trend is the reclaiming of the past by reconstructing history. Examples of works of literature that attempt this reclamation or re-creation are Kingston’s The Woman Warrior (1976) and China Men, McGunn’s Wooden Fish Songs, Denise Chong’s The Concubine’s Children (1994) and Chin’s Donald Duk (1991). The second trend is challenging stereotypes by asserting the Americanness of Chinese American identity. Chin’s The Chickencoop Chinaman (1972) and The Year of the Dragon (1981) are examples. Another way to assert the Americanness of Chinese American identity is to place the home in America, as in Wong’s Homebase. The third trend is to celebrate the Americanization of the Chinese. Gus Lee’s China Boy (1991) and Honor and Duty (1994) and Ben Fong-Torres’ The Rice Room: Growing Up Chinese-American from Number Two Son to Rock ’n’ Roll (1994) are examples.

The second pattern in Chinese American literature is the exploration of specifically Chinese aspects of Chinese American culture. Chinatowns, the home of many Chinese American families, acquire vital reinterpretations in much Chinese American literature, for example in Chin’s Donald Duk and his plays, Fae Myenne Ng’s Bone (1993), Aimee E. Liu’s Face (1994), and Fong-Torres’ The Rice Room. China receives extensive treatment, especially in the autobiographical writings of immigrants such as Nien Cheng (Life and Death in Shanghai, 1986), Anchee Min (Red Azalea, 1994), and human rights activist Harry Wu (Bitter Winds: A Memoir of My Years in China’s Gulag, 1994). There is also a body of literature inspired by the search for ancestral roots in China or the reconstruction of family histories. Examples include Frank Ching’s Ancestors: Nine Hundred Years in the Life of a Chinese Family (1988), Leslie Li’s Bittersweet (1992), and Belle Yang’s Baba: A Return to China upon My Father’s Shoulders (1994). The reclaiming of China as a cultural fountainhead holds true in the writings of the native-born, for example Tan’s The Joy Luck Club (1989), The Kitchen God’s Wife (1991), and The Hundred Secret Senses. Japanese-Chinese American author Gail Tsukiyama’s Women of the Silk (1991) portrays China as a cultural and historical framework for the creative impulse. This body of literature often contains explicit or implicit critiques of the communist ideology of China or the inadequacies of the patriarchal Chinese tradition. Presenting North America as the new, better home country and presenting China as the symbolic or “other” homeland, some Chinese American literature tends to tilt the definition of identity toward the American side of the balance.

The third and most important pattern in twentieth century Chinese American literature is the critical representation of social issues. Cultural conflicts, generation gaps, and gender troubles are common to the experiences of many Chinese Americans from diverse backgrounds. Written in the context of the Civil Rights movement, feminism, multiculturalism, and deconstruction, this literature (Kingston’s The Woman Warrior and Tripmaster Monkey: His Fake Book, 1989, are examples) is essential to Chinese American identity, and tends to problematize rather than resolve its dualities. This exploration of social issues has given rise to critiques of the American Dream (for example, Gish Jen’s Typical American, 1991), of Western ideology regarding Asia (Hwang’s M. Butterfly, 1988), and of the intricate complicities between American and Chinese ideologies, which work together to warp the minds of the modern Chinese in such works as Edna Wu’s Clouds and Rain: A China-to-America Memoir (1994). These thoughtful works epitomize the complex maturity of the Chinese American identity.

The successive waves of Chinese immigration have led Chinese American literature to be dominated by stories of the immigrant experience on the one hand and the conflict between American-born children and their immigrant parents on the other. Such novels have continued to be published in the twenty-first century; for example, Weike Wang's award-winning Chemistry (2017), a coming-of-age story whose protagonist comes to realize that the life that will make her Chinese parents happy (including marriage and a PhD in chemistry) is not the life she wants. However, these themes do not constitute the entire breadth of the Chinese American experience, and in the twenty-first century the variety of stories told has widened somewhat. For example, Celeste Ng's Everything I Never Told You (2014) examines the tensions within a family with an American-born Chinese father and a white American mother, while her 2017 novel Little Fires Everywhere deals with the adoption of Chinese children by white parents. There has also been some emphasis on the need for light genre fiction featuring Asian American protagonists, a trend most notably exemplified by Kevin Kwan's Crazy Rich trilogy. The trilogy follows the various dramas of a large and wealthy Chinese family whose members are scattered across East Asia and the United States. The first book, Crazy Rich Asians (2013), which focuses on a middle-class Chinese American woman who marries into this family, was adapted into a romantic comedy film by the same title in 2018. Other significant twenty-first-century Chinese American authors include poet Ching-In Chen; poet, essayist, and short-story writer Jenny Zhang; novelist and essayist Esmé Weijun Wang; and poet Sally Wen Mao.

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