Fifth Chinese Daughter by Jade Snow Wong
"Fifth Chinese Daughter" is an autobiographical work by Jade Snow Wong that explores the challenges and achievements of an American-born Chinese girl navigating cultural expectations and personal identity. Written in the third person to reflect a sense of humility, the autobiography reveals Wong's struggles to assert her individuality amidst the traditional values imposed by her Chinese immigrant family. From a young age, she faced pressure to conform to familial obligations, with expectations to adhere to the roles of obedience and compliance, particularly as a girl.
Despite her efforts to excel academically, Wong encountered a lack of encouragement from her parents, who prioritized the education of her brothers over her own. This lack of support motivated her to work throughout her teenage years to fund her college education, where exposure to different familial dynamics led her to question her upbringing. Wong's narrative highlights her gradual journey towards gaining her parents' respect while simultaneously battling societal prejudice. Ultimately, she found success and independence by opening a pottery shop in Chinatown, which allowed her to carve out her unique space and identity, bridging her heritage with her aspirations. The book serves as a poignant reflection on cultural identity, gender roles, and personal resilience.
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Fifth Chinese Daughter by Jade Snow Wong
First published: 1950; illustrated
The Work
Fifth Chinese Daughter, Jade Snow Wong’s autobiography, directly and honestly relates the struggles and accomplishments of an American-born Chinese girl. Although it is an autobiography, it is written in the third person, which reflects the Chinese custom of humility. This use of the third person also reminds the reader of how difficult it is for the author to express her individual identity.
The book explains Wong’s desire to prove to her parents that she was “a person, besides being a female.” Even as a toddler, she was taught to obey her parents and her older brother and sisters without question. She was not allowed to express her opinions; rather, she was forced to comply with the demands of the rest of her family.
When she began school, her parents expected her to earn good grades, yet they refused to praise or even encourage her when she was recognized for her school achievements. In fact, they refused to fund her college education, although they paid her brothers’ expenses, because it was not considered wise to educate a girl, who would leave the family when she married. As a result, Wong was forced to work full time throughout her teenage years in order to save the money to go to college. During this time, she was exposed to the “foreign” culture of the whites living in San Francisco, and she was surprised to learn that parents in many Anglo families listened to children and respected their opinions. Further, she learned in a college sociology class that in many families, children were afforded the right to discuss with their parents what they saw as unfair. Learning about the practices of other families caused Wong to question her parents’ practices for the first time.
As a result, Wong began a slow and painful struggle to earn her parents’ respect while developing her own identity. Unfortunately, her parents were not the only people who would discourage her. She also had to face prejudice and stereotyping in the white world. She refused to be discouraged by this and accepted the challenges that it brought.
Eventually, Jade Snow was able to win her parents’ respect. She established her own identity and her independence by beginning a business selling handmade pottery. Although her Chinatown shop was patronized only by white customers, her ability to attract many customers was recognized by her family and by members of Wong’s community. The pottery shop venture finally allowed her to find “that niche which would be hers alone.”
Bibliography
Chin, Frank. “Come All Ye Asian-American Masters of the Real and the Fake.” In The Big Aiiieeeee!: An Anthology of Chinese American and Japanese American Literature, edited by Jeffery Paul Chan et al. New York: Meridian, 1991. Chin argues that Wong breaks with a proper Chinese literature in two ways: She chooses Christian Chinese as models rather than Chinese who remain with their ancestral religion, and she portrays Chinese men as either lifeless or inconsequential.
Hong, Maria, ed. Growing Up Asian American: An Anthology. New York: William Morrow, 1993.
Kim, Elaine. Asian American Literature: An Introduction to the Writings and Their Social Context. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1982. Kim finds Wong’s very reticence about certain aspects of Chinese life admirable. Wong does not play up the Christianity or Americanization of her heroine. Kim does find the protagonists of Fifth Chinese Daughter manipulative, for by the end she is acting “Chinese” for Caucasians and “Caucasian” for Chinese.
Kingston, Maxine Hong. The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts. New York: Vintage Books, 1977. Kingston’s heroine follows a similar route to independence as Wong’s, by going back to Chinese tradition; however, Kingston does everything in a grander way. The Chinese woman’s traditional subservience is denounced more militantly, and the cultural values embraced by the heroine are more playfully distorted than in Wong’s book.
Ling, Amy. “Chinese American Women Writers: The Tradition Behind Maxine Hong Kingston.” In Redefining American Literary History. New York: Modern Language Association of America, 1990.
Lowe, Pardee. Father and Glorious Descendant. Boston: Little, Brown, 1943. This was the first full-length second-generation Chinese memoir published in the United States, preceding Wong’s by seven years. The book is considered more Americanized than Wong’s, exhibiting Asians as quaint exotics and more blatantly extolling American values.
Tan, Amy. The Kitchen God’s Wife. New York: Putnam, 1991. Tan’s book is not so much about a daughter combining Chinese and American tradition—the daughter is too Americanized for that—but about her coming to appreciate her mother’s experience. In appreciating it, she comes to value some of the same things in Chinese culture that Wong does.