A Companion to Asian American Studies

A Companion to

Asian American Studies Edited by

Kent A. Ono

A Companion to

Asian American Studies

BLACKWELL

COMPANIONS IN CULTURAL STUDIES

Advisory editor: David Theo Goldberg, University of California, Irvine This series aims to provide theoretically ambitious but accessible volumes devoted to the major fields and subfields within cultural studies, whether as single disciplines (film studies) inspired and reconfigured by interventionist cultural studies approaches, or from broad interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary perspectives (gender studies, race and ethnic studies, postcolonial studies). Each volume sets out to ground and orientate the student through a broad range of specially commissioned articles and also to provide the more experienced scholar and teacher with a convenient and comprehensive overview of the latest trends and critical directions. An overarching Companion to Cultural Studies will map the territory as a whole. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

A Companion to Film Theory Edited by Toby Miller and Robert Stam A Companion to Postcolonial Studies Edited by Henry Schwarz and Sangeeta Ray A Companion to Cultural Studies Edited by Toby Miller A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies Edited by David Theo Goldberg and John Solomos A Companion to Art Theory Edited by Paul Smith and Carolyn Wilde A Companion to Media Studies Edited by Angharad Valdivia A Companion to Literature and Film Edited by Robert Stam and Alessandra Raengo A Companion to Gender Studies Edited by Philomena Essed, David Theo Goldberg, and Audrey Kobayashi A Companion to Asian American Studies Edited by Kent A. Ono A Companion to African American Studies Edited by Jane Anna Gordon and Lewis R. Gordon

A Companion to

Asian American Studies Edited by

Kent A. Ono

ß 2005 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd blackwell publishing 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148-5020, USA 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK 550 Swanston Street, Carlton, Victoria 3053, Australia The right of Kent A. Ono to be identified as the Author of the Editorial Material in this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, except as permitted by the UK Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988, without the prior permission of the publisher. First published 2005 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A companion to Asian American studies/edited by Kent A. Ono. P.cm.—(Blackwell companions in cultural studies) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 1-4051-1594-7 (hardback: alk. paper)—ISBN 1-4051-1599-5 (pbk.: alk. paper) 1. Asian Americans—Study and teaching. 2. Asian Americans—Social conditions. 3. Asian Americans— Intellectural life. I. Ono, Kent A., 1964– II. Title. III. Series. E184.A75C66 2005 305.895’073 2004016926 ISBN 1-4051-1594-7 (hardback); ISBN 1-4051-1595-5 (paperback) A catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library. Set in 11/13 Ehrhardt by Kolam Information Services, Pvt. Ltd, Pondicherry, India Printed and bound in the United Kingdom by MPG Books Ltd, Bodmin, Cornwall The publisher’s policy is to use permanent paper from mills that operate a sustainable forestry policy, and which has been manufactured from pulp processed using acid-free and elementary chlorine-free practices. Furthermore, the publisher ensures that the text paper and cover board used have met acceptable environmental accreditation standards. For further information on Blackwell Publishing, visit our website: www.blackwellpublishing.com

Contents

Preface

viii

Acknowledgments

x

Retracing an Intellectual Course in Asian American Studies Kent A. Ono

1

Part I Defining Conversations in Asian American Studies Psychology 1 Chinese-American Personality and Mental Health Stanley Sue and Derald W. Sue

17

2 The Ghetto of the Mind: Notes on the Historical Psychology of Chinese America Ben R. Tong

35

3 Chinese-American Personality and Mental Health: A Reply to Tong’s Criticisms Stanley Sue and Derald W. Sue

73

History 4 A Critique of Strangers from a Different Shore L. Ling-chi Wang

83

5 Strangers from a Different Shore as History and Historiography Sucheng Chan

91

6 A Critique of Strangers from a Different Shore Elaine H. Kim

108

Contents

7

A Response to Ling-chi Wang, Elaine Kim, and Sucheng Chan Ronald Takaki

117

Literature and Feminism 8

Come All Ye Asian American Writers of the Real and the Fake (excerpt) Frank Chin

9

The Woman Warrior versus The Chinaman Pacific: Must a Chinese American Critic Choose between Feminism and Heroism? King-Kok Cheung

Part II

133

157

Influential Essays in Asian American Studies

10 Split Household, Small Producer and Dual Wage Earner: An Analysis of Chinese-American Family Strategies Evelyn Nakano Glenn 11 Defining Asian American Realities through Literature Elaine H. Kim

177 196

12 Asian Americans as the Model Minority: An Analysis of the Popular Press Image in the 1960s and 1980s Keith Osajima

215

13 Mestiza Girlhood: Interracial Families in Chicago’s Filipino American Community since 1925 Barbara M. Posadas

226

14 Looking for My Penis: The Eroticized Asian in Gay Video Porn Richard Fung

235

15 Heterogeneity, Hybridity, Multiplicity: Marking Asian American Differences Lisa Lowe

254

16 Beyond Identity Politics: The Predicament of the Asian American Writer in Late Capitalism E. San Juan, Jr.

276

17 Filipinos in the United States and Their Literature of Exile Oscar V. Campomanes 18 Los Angeles, Asians, and Perverse Ventriloquisms: On the Functions of Asian America in the Recent American Imaginary David Palumbo-Liu

vi

296

319

Contents

19 Colonial Oppression, Labour Importation, and Group Formation: Filipinos in the United States Yen Le Espiritu

332

20 Out Here and Over There: Queerness and Diaspora in Asian American Studies David L. Eng

350

Index

370

vii

Preface

My sincerest thanks go out to the many people who helped make this volume possible. David Theo Goldberg had the initial idea for such a volume, in his capacity as series editor of Blackwell Companions in Cultural Studies. Jayne Fargnoli then contacted me about the possibility of such a volume. After I submitted a proposal for a book much larger in scope, she helped transform the project into two manageable volumes: this one and Asian American Studies After Critical Mass, which is to be released simultaneously. Jayne’s tremendous support and wherewithal have made the process enjoyable. It was Jayne who recognized the potential for two volumes out of the original single volume I proposed, and it was she who shepherded the concept of two volumes through the requisite approval process at Blackwell. Also at Blackwell is Ken Provencher, who took the original draft of this volume and brought it to the publication stage. Thanks to Margaret Aherne and Nick Brock for their astute copy-editing, and to Leanda Shrimpton for the cover art. While, initially, I had much grander visions of having a set of key consultants, in the end only L. Ling-Chi Wang at UC Berkeley became a consultant on the volume. After reading through an early draft of the table of contents for the volume, he and I met in Berkeley, and he offered me excellent advice about the volume. I thank him, heartily, for his time and attention and for his modeling so well for all of us the role of scholar, activist, and community worker. Thanks also go out to Sucheng Chan, for while I was not able to follow up on the possibility of her being a second consultant on the volume, she nevertheless welcomed my request for assistance. As a result of my having completed the volume more quickly than I anticipated, the volume did not benefit from what would no doubt have been tremendous input by many others. A tremendous round of thanks go out to Sayako Suzuki for her research assistance on this volume. Sayako helped me in the early stages of the project at UC Davis. She put together a bibliography of key teaching texts in Asian

Preface

American Studies, located and copied essays to go into the companion volume, did miscellaneous copying, and compiled a literature review of available Asian American Studies anthologies. Her own dedication to the project reinforced my commitment to it along the way. Thanks also to Shoshana Magnet, who came in at the very end of the project and helped me get the material off to Blackwell. I also wish to thank Rachel Dubrofsky and Joan Chan for their excellent work on the index. Of course, I thank the many authors anthologized here, for without their scholarly leadership and labor, this volume would not have been possible. My friends and colleagues at UC Davis – Wendy Ho, Karen Shimakawa, Darrell Hamamoto, Bill Ong Hing, Kevin Johnson, Caroline de la Pen˜a, Angie Chabram-Dernersesian, Christine Acham, Sergio de la Mora, Jay Mechling, Carole Blair, Ruth Frankeberg, Laura Grindstaff, Roger Rouse, Judy Newton, Susan Kaiser, Suad Joseph, Cathy Kudlick, Beatriz Pesquera, Michael L. Smith, and Sophie Volpp – all helped to create the kind of intellectual environment necessary to envision projects like this one and provided me much support for the completion of the volume along the way. I rely heavily on several mentors, who are always there to help me when I need scholarly advice: Tom Nakayama, Herman Gray, Rosa Linda Fregoso, Keith Osajima, Sara Schoonmaker, John Sloop, Elyce Helford, Peter Feng, and Leah Vande Berg. My new colleagues, friends, staff, and students at UIUC have been a constant group of supporters. James Hay, Pedro Caba´n, Sundiata Cha-Jua, Kal Alston, C. L. Cole, Siobhan Sommerville, Stephen Hartnett, Christian Sandvig, Cara Finnegan, and the faculty in Asian American Studies, the Institute of Communications Research, and in ethnic studies more broadly have given me much support. Particular thanks go out to Sharon Lee, the Assistant Director of Asian American Studies, for all of the hard work she and I do. Thanks also to Mary Ellerbe, Yunchul Yoo, Kapila Sankaran, Annie Wang, and Fleming Au. Finally, I want to thank my friend, colleague, and partner, Sarah Projansky and my daughter Yasmin. Both have helped to create the cocoon necessary for the emergence of this and many other of my projects. Kent A. Ono

ix

Acknowledgments

The editor and publisher gratefully acknowledge the permission granted to reproduce the copyright material in this book: 1. Stanley Sue and Derald W. Sue. ‘‘Chinese-American Personality and Mental Health.’’ Amerasia Journal 1 (1971): 36–49. Reprinted by permission of Asian American Studies Center Press. 2. Ben R. Tong. ‘‘The Ghetto of the Mind: Notes on the Historical Psychology of Chinese America.’’ Amerasia Journal 1 (1971): 1–30. Reprinted by permission of Asian American Studies Center Press. 3. Stanley Sue and Derald W. Sue. ‘‘Chinese-American Personality and Mental Health: A Reply to Tong’s Criticisms.’’ Amerasia Journal 1(4) (February 1972): 60–7. Reprinted by permission of Asian American Studies Center Press. 4. L. Ling-Chi Wang. ‘‘A Critique of Strangers from a Different Shore.’’ Amerasia Journal 16(2) (1990): 71–80. Reprinted by permission of Asian American Studies Center Press. 5. Sucheng Chan. ‘‘Strangers from a Different Shore as History and Historiography.’’ Amerasia Journal 16(2) (1990): 81–100. Reprinted by permission of Asian American Studies Center Press. 6. Elaine H. Kim. ‘‘A Critique of Strangers from a Different Shore.’’ Amerasia Journal 16(2) (1990): 101–11. Reprinted by permission of Asian American Studies Center Press.

Acknowledgments

7.

Ronald Takaki. ‘‘A Response to Ling-Chi Wang, Elaine Kim, and Sucheng Chan.’’ Amerasia Journal 16(2) (1990): 113–31. Reprinted by permission of Asian American Studies Center Press.

8.

Frank Chin. ‘‘Come All Ye Asian American Writers of the Real and the Fake’’ (excerpt). In Jeffery Paul Chan et al. (eds.), The Big Aiiieeeee!: An Anthology of Chinese American and Japanese American Literature (New York: Meridian, 1991), 1–28.

9.

King-Kok Cheung. ‘‘The Woman Warrior versus The Chinaman Pacific: Must a Chinese American Critic Choose between Feminism and Heroism?’’ In Marianne Hirsch and Evelyn Fox-Keller (eds.), Conflicts in Feminism (New York: Routledge, 1990), 234–51. Reproduced by permission of Routledge/Taylor & Francis Books, Inc.

10. Evelyn Nakano Glenn. ‘‘Split Household, Small Producer and Dual Wage Earner: An Analysis of Chinese-American Family Strategies,’’ Journal of Marriage and the Family 45(1) (February 1983): 35–46. Reprinted by permission of Journal of Marriage and the Family. 11. Elaine H. Kim. ‘‘Defining Asian American Realities through Literature.’’ Cultural Critique 6 (1987): 87–111. Reprinted by permission of University of Minnesota Press and the author. The version printed here has been reworded in places by the author especially for this publication. 12. Keith Osajima. ‘‘Asian Americans as the Model Minority: An Analysis of the Popular Press Image in the 1960s and 1980s.’’ In Gary Okihiro et al. (eds.), Reflections on Shattered Windows: Promises and Prospects for Asian American Studies (Pullman: Washington State University Press, 1988), 165–74. Reprinted by permission of Gary Y. Okihiro. 13. Barbara M. Posadas. ‘‘Mestiza Girlhood: Interracial Families in Chicago’s Filipino American Community since 1925.’’ In Asian Women United of California, Making Waves: An Anthology of Writings by and about Asian American Women (Boston: Beacon Press, 1989), 273–82. ß 1989 by Asian Women United of California. Reprinted by permission of Beacon Press, Boston. 14. Richard Fung. ‘‘Looking for My Penis: The Eroticized Asian in Gay Video Porn.’’ In Bad Object-Choices (ed.), How Do I Look? Queer Film and Video (Seattle: Bay Press, 1991), 145–68. 15. Lisa Lowe. ‘‘Heterogeneity, Hybridity, Multiplicity: Marking Asian American Differences.’’ Diaspora 1 (Spring 1991): 24–44. xi

Acknowledgments

16. E. San Juan, Jr. ‘‘Beyond Identity Politics: The Predicament of the Asian American Writer in Late Capitalism.’’ American Literary History 3 (1991): 542–65. Reprinted by permission of Oxford University Press. 17. Oscar V. Campomanes. ‘‘Filipinos in the United States and Their Literature of Exile.’’ In Shirley Geok-lin Lim and Amy Ling (eds.), Reading the Literatures of Asian America (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992), 49–78. Reprinted by permission of Temple University Press. ß 1992 by Temple University. All rights reserved. 18. David Palumbo-Liu. ‘‘Los Angeles, Asians, and Perverse Ventriloquisms: On the Functions of Asian America in the Recent American Imaginary.’’ Public Culture 6 (1994): 365–6; 368–81. ß 1994 by University of Chicago. All rights reserved. Used by permission of the publisher, Duke University Press. 19. Yen Le Espiritu. ‘‘Colonial Oppression, Labour Importation, and Group Formation: Filipinos in the United States,’’ Ethnic and Racial Studies 19(1) (January 1996): 29–48. Reprinted by permission of Taylor & Francis Ltd http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals 20. David L. Eng. ‘‘Out Here and Over There: Queerness and Diaspora in Asian American Studies.’’ Social Text 52/53, 15 (3 and 4) (Fall/Winter 1997): 31–52. ß 1997 by Duke University Press. All rights reserved. Used by permission of the publisher. Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders and to obtain their permission for the use of copyright material. The publisher apologizes for any errors or omissions in the above list and would be grateful if notified of any corrections that should be incorporated in future reprints or editions of this book.

xii

Retracing an Intellectual Course in Asian American Studies Kent A. Ono A Companion to Asian American Studies attempts to chart an intellectual trajectory of Asian American studies. I say ‘‘attempt,’’ because this is not the only existing collection of Asian American studies scholarship,1 nor do I believe that this collection should be seen to tell ‘‘the’’ history of the intellectual path of the field’s scholars. Nevertheless, the essays gathered together in this volume have played an important historical role in the conceptualization of Asian American studies as a field. They exemplify, in many ways, the historical demography of a particular generation of Asian American scholarship in the academy – one which spans 26 years from 1971 to 1997. One might argue that during this period of time, the field was engaged principally in a nationalist project of self-definition and activism but that toward the end of this period, largely in the 1990s, a move toward what I call a ‘‘second phase’’2 of Asian American studies began to emerge. While phase 1 of Asian American studies was concerned with the development of the field, its identity, its mission, and responses to critical social concerns of the day, phase 2 of Asian American studies has been concerned with expanding the contours of the early nationalist period. In particular, phase 2 has challenged fundamental assumptions relating largely to the politics of the field, as well as extended its social mission to consider, include, and ultimately reconstitute the study of groups marginalized from the earlier period. Missing from this volume are many important essays published in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Indeed, since the original conception of this volume included the essays that now make up its companion volume, Asian American Studies After Critical Mass, this volume in certain ways contains essays that precede an Asian American scholarly critical mass. Asian American Studies After Critical Mass contains contemporary essays by scholars, many of whom published key essays during the late 1990s and early 2000s. Thus, the absence here of essays from that relatively brief period is neither an oversight nor some slight of the scholarship produced during that time period, but a conscious effort to make the Companion a

Kent A. Ono

tracing of the trajectory of thinking within a particular period of Asian American scholarship, the period prior to, or just on the cusp of, its second phase. In order to trace an intellectual trajectory of the field, I have chosen articles for this volume that are self-reflective in some way of what Asian American studies and/or Asian American is and can be. These articles are not so much case studies of particular events, actions, or situations; rather, they are both intellectually transformative in orientation and grounded in existential dimensions of Asian American experiences. This is one collection of essays, one version of the development of Asian American studies, one way in which one could imagine gaining entry into conversations about the field. Clearly, the essays collected in this volume should be seen as illustrative of my own approach to conceptualizing the field. The collection, therefore, weighs in heavily on the critical and cultural side of Asian American studies, perhaps with what some might see as an overemphasis on literary theory and Marxist scholarship. Together, along with a commitment to interdisciplinary scholarship, this collection might fall under the broader field of what many refer to as cultural studies.3 Part of my overt purpose here is to address what has historically been conceived as the margins of Asian American studies in order to redefine this as an important historical trajectory within the field. Bell hooks’s early book Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center serves as a model, to a large degree, for my efforts here.4 My hope is to challenge historically narrow views of Asian American identity and epistemology as fixed, complete, or objectively measurable, while simultaneously maintaining a commitment to ‘‘strategic essentialism’’ when politically necessary.5 Part of my goal in editing this collection is to encourage expanded questions both in and across fields. However, I want to make clear that I do not see my project, as Seyla Benhabib has said about postmodern feminist politics, as committing to the plural over the material, to social constructionism with no end or purpose, or to postmodernist approaches over ‘‘standpoint’’ approaches. Indeed, conceptually, I subscribe to her vision of a ‘‘social feminism’’ that ‘‘accepts that the furthering of one’s capacity for autonomous agency is only possible within the confines of a solidaristic community which sustains one’s identity through mutual recognition.’’ Thus, in this volume (and particularly in its second part) I have overtly chosen essays that embrace Asian American studies even as they seek to transform the discipline – sometimes radically. I have included scholarship that traces and retraces intellectual trajectories in the field, essays that, when addressing older work, provide fresh, new readings of that work, not scholarship that regards such scholarship as no longer important. The ambivalence over whether there is enough there worth saving truly to transform the field or whether simply to dissolve it in favor of more politically useful alternatives, I think, is a healthy, critical tension (Ono 1995), one that was, in fact, definitively put into play before, during, and after the 1998 Association for Asian American Studies’ annual conference, held in Honolulu, Hawai‘i.6 2

Retracing an Intellectual Course

While Asian American studies was created in reaction and response to domination, the continuing existence of domination and control – that is, the enduring flow and effects of power – within our own fields and organizations must be a continuing part of our dialogue and a focus of any socially invested project. In order not to fall into the liberal nationalist trappings of ‘‘inclusion’’ without true ‘‘transformation’’ of the field, the essays I have selected in the second half of the book model and theorize sensitively the transformative politics for which they call. I am reminded of Lynet Uttal’s early essay in Making Face, Making Soul/Haciendo Caras about the ‘‘inclusion’’ of women of color without the true transformation of feminism. She suggests that we need to get beyond merely reacting to exclusion and instead work so that the ‘‘inclusion of our perspectives revolutionizes social analyses’’ (1990: 42). Practices of inclusion typically lead to a crass tokenization of experiences; whereas transformation responsibly adjusts and revolutionizes feminism. The practice, methodology, language, approach, and attitude of Asian American studies must be fundamentally challenged, reformed, and then reinstitutionalized as novel scholarly work about sexuality, transnationalism, diaspora, feminism, and other fields and modes of inquiry continues to be published, practiced, and performed. In putting together this book, I have taken seriously Viet Nguyen’s challenge to the field of Asian American studies in his book Race and Resistance. Nguyen suggests that there is a tendency within post-1968 Asian American literary criticism to reject literature that does not pass a particular and peculiar litmus test of challenging racial oppression. In a sense, Nguyen is questioning the politics of political consensus, of requiring the formality of an often-unstated expectation of political obeisance, and of, in ancient Greek terms, the role of the consensus (homonoia) as it relates to the demos in the polis. It is important to call attention to the sedimented methods and critical evaluative measures and procedures we employ to limit and, at times, undermine collaboration and the broader interests of our social alliances and associations. Thus, on the one hand, I have paired earlier historical materials (in the first section) with newer scholarship (in the second section) that challenges the historical mission of the field. On the other hand, the historical work in Part I, structured in the form of conversations among several scholars about key issues, raises significant questions that continue to be critical to thinking about Asian American studies as a field and about the concept of ‘‘Asian American.’’ The second half of this volume, then, contains essays that, in my view, attempt to transform the way we look at, yes, but more importantly do Asian American studies. Including innovative approaches to the examination of Asian American studies works against a predisposition toward rejecting earlier scholarship or seeing that material as somehow archaic, inadequate, or depoliticized if it does not live up to standards based on a specific political criterion. Nguyen’s challenge leads me to argue here that rather than assign past scholarship to the ‘‘no longer useful to my political project’’ bin, we provide fresh new critical readings 3

Kent A. Ono

of such scholarship as part of what I am arguing is a continuous retracing of the intellectual course of the field. The book contains both the historical aspects of the field that continue to be quite important into the present and more contemporary attempts to broaden earlier questions and to pose challenges to earlier assumptions about heterosexuality, the definition of Asian American, the relationship between Asian studies and Asian American studies, and the roles of class and gender in Asian American studies. Hopefully, these essays will help readers to begin and/or to continue a process of rethinking and reimagining the borders, boundaries, and possibilities of the field. Such a reconceptualization, which is well underway,7 is a healthy exercise. One of the goals of this collection is to encourage a productive dialogue about the tensions that exist for those not always conceived of or who do not consider themselves part of that identity within Asian American studies. This collection emerges at a point of maturation of the field in which a serious body of work exists that has been produced by scholars who are now, in many respects, mentors, even icons, in their home fields. Part of the impetus for publishing such a volume is to stop for a moment in the present and take inventory of the accomplishments of the last three generations of scholarship. It is key to collect together in print, at this point in time, essays that provide conceptual grounds for scholars and students who are just embarking on what may become a lifelong project within Asian American studies or who are interested in the existence and evolution of Asian American studies as a field. The articles in Part I, ‘‘Defining Conversations in Asian American Studies,’’ cover historically important and defining debates that have shaped the Asian American studies field at various stages. They include the key areas of psychology and mental health, history, and literature and feminism – all of which are important subareas within Asian American studies. I chose these debates for their interdisciplinary nature and for their historical significance. There are, no doubt, important conversations and debates during the period covered by this book that are not included in this volume. Specifically, I have chosen to include debates that I know have led to intense discussion and that function as an interdisciplinary set of conversations that cut across fields. The fact that there is a gap during the 1980s does not mean there were no debates at that time; it simply means that I am unaware of them and their significance. Furthermore, additional significant discussions that have taken place more recently, e.g., about Lois-Ann Yamanaka’s Blu’s Hanging and the discussion about the proposed name change of the Association for Asian American Studies to include Pacific Islanders, are not taken up here. This is because research about these two events was either published well after this volume was conceived or has not yet been published. Indeed, both of these debates are covered in the companion to this volume, Asian American Studies After Critical Mass. Part II, ‘‘Influential Essays in Asian American Studies,’’ includes reprints of well-known and influential essays in the field of Asian American studies, but also that cross various subdisciplines, including sociology, history, education, and 4

Retracing an Intellectual Course

literature. Each essay has not only appeared on syllabi in Asian American studies but has also had a tremendous impact on the conceptualization of the field. Some essays have already been reprinted, in some cases many times. Others have served as exemplars and inspirations for whole areas of scholarship. As I was limited in terms of space, I was unable to include reprints of many essays I consider to be highly significant and important to the history and future of Asian American studies, ethnic studies, and, arguably, the academy at large. In particular, in order to meet the page length requirement, in the second part of this volume, I cut all essays published in Amerasia Journal, because this journal is readily available and well known among Asian American studies scholars. Essays published outside of the field might be more difficult to access by scholars and students; thus, I have included as many essays published outside of the field as possible.8 This cut meant the loss of seven articles that I had originally planned to reprint: Gary Okihiro (1973), Evelyn Hu-DeHart (1989), Dana Takagi (1994), Ling-Chi Wang (1995), Kent A. Ono (1995), Arif Dirlik (1996), and Nazli Kibria (1996). It is important to note, as well, that because this is an anthology, the larger work of the author for each essay cannot be included here. Nevertheless, each author of each essay has written additional important articles and books, and my hope is that the essays collected here will stimulate readers to then go out and read more of a given author. Clearly, there have been other additional significant essays published elsewhere that I would have liked to have been able to anthologize here.9 And, I worked hard to determine, given the limitations of academic publishing, and given the number of lists of Asian American studies articles I collected, which had the most to contribute to this particular collection. The first section of the book takes up three key debates within the history of Asian American studies: (1) a debate about psychological assessment, the theorization of Asian American mental health, and the historical roots of Asian American psychology; (2) a debate about Asian American history, evidentiary requirements and historiographic methodology, and the role of primary and secondary research within historical work; and (3) a debate about Asian American ‘‘fakery’’ versus authentic, ‘‘real’’ Asian American studies, aggressive Asian American masculinity, autobiography, and relationships between Asian American women and men. The book begins with an early debate about the psychology of Asian Americans, specifically focusing on Chinese Americans. It is interesting that one of the early debates in the field focuses on psychology; reflecting on the role of this conversation within the field suggests the continuing importance of psychology to thinking about Asian American studies and Asian American identity. In an article in which they provide three types of Chinese American psychological subjects – the traditionalist (faithful to Chinese traditional culture and identity), the marginal man (idealizes Western culture and rejects Chinese culture and tradition), and the Asian-American (recognizes racism, feels guilty about not being faithful to tradition, and seeks larger social change) – Sue and Sue suggest 5

Kent A. Ono

that all three have the potential for greater health. Each is caught in a confused relationship between ‘‘self’’ and ‘‘pride.’’ What they suggest is most important, however, is the need to address the widespread psychological distress associated with cultural adaptation among Chinese Americans. Ben Tong’s response to Sue and Sue suggests that Chinese American passivity and meekness evolved out of historical, cultural, and political conditions from past generations. For him, historical precursors, such as Chinese heritage, historical trauma, and a racially violent history in the United States, explain contemporary Chinese American psychology. Key to Tong’s argument is his critique that Sue and Sue see AsianAmerican activism as part of a maladaptive personality. Furthermore, Tong suggests that Sue and Sue see Asian Americans as maladaptive for being militant and for being overly concerned with racism. Sue and Sue respond to Tong in a detailed rejoinder challenging Tong’s argument at each level, and Tong provides a brief reply. Following the publication of Ronald Takaki’s foundational book, Strangers from a Different Shore (1989), which continues to be used as a basic text within introduction to Asian American studies courses and is still cited as an authoritative transhistorical work about Asian Americans, key figures in Asian American studies responded in print. That Takaki’s book existed and that there were established Asian American courses by the time of the book’s publication suggests quite a different context for this debate from that of the Sue and Sue/Tong era. Initially presented as papers at the Association for Asian American Studies conference in Santa Barbara on May 19, 1990, the response essays were later published in Amerasia Journal. Ling-chi Wang’s essay suggests Takaki’s book was reviewed primarily by people outside of the field, that it relies primarily on secondary research materials compiled by Asian Americanists over the previous 21 years, that it is not a comprehensive history but more of a history of Asian America prior to World War II, and that more attentiveness to footnoting the original sources would have made the volume more useful for students. Sucheng Chan provides a detailed footnoting of Takaki’s book, noting who should be thanked and from where materials in the book derived. She provides a specific critique of Takaki’s use of single secondary sources to prove points. To support her critique, she provides a detailed analysis of the reasons for Japanese women’s migration out of Japan. Her critique of Strangers is both scrupulous and thorough and signifies a tribute of sorts to the work of the people upon which Takaki’s text relies. Elaine Kim focuses primarily on the use of literary sources in Strangers and on the limited perspective on women and gender in the book. She suggests that in the book fictional work is taken for autobiographical and ethnographic work. Additionally, she challenges the Asian American male-specific focus of the volume, which she suggests treats women’s experiences superficially and, moreover, gives short shrift to Asian American women’s views of history. Takaki’s response defends the scholarly research decisions he made in writing the book. In countering the major arguments of Wang, Chan, and Kim, Takaki 6

Retracing an Intellectual Course

provides more detail about his methodology. While he laments not having published a bibliographic essay detailing his use of research materials, he also suggests that such a practice was not common in book-length manuscripts. He defends his inclusion of stories of women and defends his use of omnibus-style footnoting. Moreover, he cites the various positive comments given by reviewers of his book, in part to suggest that there was widespread review of his work by experts in Asian American studies. While it has been challenged many times in print, and quite recently, for its gender politics, the Frank Chin essay I include here articulates aspects of a nationalist Asian American studies perspective that positions the field in opposition to an orientalist, ‘‘fake’’ tradition. This essay in particular, as well as the early version of Aiiieeeee!: An Anthology of Asian American Writers (1974) and The Big Aiiieeeee!: An Anthology of Chinese-American and Japanese-American Literature (1991), in which Chin’s essay was published, are often referred to as exemplars of a particular nationalist political strain within Asian Americanist scholarly publications. While the text, in its entirety, is highly significant, I have chosen to excerpt it because of space considerations. In this excerpt, the essay challenges racist oppression, critiques assimilationist politics, and embodies an Asian Americanist standpoint from which to understand literature, history, and culture. The essay conducts a critique of Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior, David Henry Hwang’s M. Butterfly, and Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club. It challenges the racial desire within the United States in which these texts emerge. Additionally, it contests what Chin sees as the misuse of Asian literature in these three texts. Chin provides an historical overview of early Asian American literature, of the effects of Christian missionary efforts on Asian American thinking, and historicizes the creation of the fake orientalist tradition. King-Kok Cheung challenges Chin’s work in The Big Aiiieeeee! (which was in press during the time when she was writing her article) and his earlier work for accepting aspects of patriarchal masculinity. In addition to Chin’s rejection of homosexuality as an important subject position for Chinese Americans, and his conceit of effeminacy as in opposition to an idealized militant masculinity, Cheung challenges Chin’s call for an heroic tradition that, she suggests, mimics white masculine combative forms. Her brief analysis of The Woman Warrior defends autobiography as a genre used historically by women, even while pointing out the fictionality of the text, and suggests the text is more a critique of elements of both white and Chinese society that diminish Chinese women’s self-esteem than a rant against Chinese men. Her study of China Men counters Chin’s assertions that it expresses ‘‘feminist anger’’ by showing that, in fact, the novel empathizes with the racist oppressive experiences of Chinese men while challenging sexism within the Chinese American community and thus asking men to empathize with the plight of Chinese American women. Part II of the book contains key essays that have had a tremendous and transformative effect on the field, conceptualize Asian American studies in a self-conscious way, and further efforts toward social equality. Evelyn Nakano 7

Kent A. Ono

Glenn offers a sociohistorical analysis of the split household within Chinese American families, in which a member or members of a family work in a geographically separate place from the rest of the family but often send back remittances that form the basis of the family’s economy. Glenn challenges culturalist explanations of Chinese American history and family and turns instead to structuralist explanations that address the way capitalism affects family formation over time. Indeed, Chinese American history was strongly affected by often-gendered laws about immigration, labor, trade, and citizenship. Such laws impacted education, language acquisition, cultural knowledge, and relational norms, among other factors. Glenn’s essay has been transformative in research on work and family, not only within Asian American studies, but also within sociology and women’s studies. Elaine Kim provides a relatively early survey of key Asian American literary texts to argue that Asian Americans should work to discuss Asian Americans’ claim on America and to emphasize the unique culture and identity that Asian Americans create. Kim calls attention to the way in which historical literary works resisted a politics of assimilation and complicate an understanding of nation and identity. Historical literary works sought to create Asian American identities outside of hegemonic white literary conventions. Kim argues that coming to terms with a syncretic Asian American identity means coming to terms with racism, generational relationships, and gendered divisions. Keith Osajima’s widely read essay generates a critique of the ‘‘model minority’’ myth through a detailed analysis of articles, beginning in the mid-1960s, that construct Asian Americans as superachievers who come from good moral families that emphasize education as a means to success, have the right workingclass value of hard work, and maintain an overall respect for parents and authority. Importantly, Osajima historicizes his analysis when he argues that such a myth emerged just at a point at which Blacks and Latinas/os were in the process of protesting society’s and government’s inequitable distribution of wealth. Thus, media characterized Asian Americans as a ‘‘model minority’’ as if to say to minorities who protested unfair and racist politics that they should follow the example of Asian Americans and then they could be successful, too. Osajima challenges this representation of Asian Americans and suggests that while it appears to be a compliment, in fact it implies that Asian Americans can never be on equal footing with whites, even as it simultaneously creates a ‘‘divide and conquer’’ strategy to win over Asian Americans and pit Asian Americans against Blacks and Latinas/os. Moreover, such a construct tends to draw attention away from tensions existing within Asian American communities, while simultaneously depicting Asian Americans as not in coalition with members of other minority groups. Osajima offers ethnic studies as an approach to the study of Asian Americans that recognizes the effects of media constructions on the politics of people of color generally in the United States; his is an early sophisticated critique of such media representations. 8

Retracing an Intellectual Course

Barbara Posadas brings into focus the issue of interracial relations within the history of Asian Americans, the existential effects of immigration restriction on community formation, and the transformation of education and socialization following interracial marriages. Posadas studied interracial Filipinas in Chicago, daughters of the ‘‘old-timer’’ Filipinos who migrated to the United States between 1925 and 1934. Posadas specifically focuses on how ethnic heritage was passed down to the daughters, the level of interracial awareness, and the community involvement of the girls in Filipino American organizations. She suggests that both Filipino fathers and white mothers encouraged their daughters to ‘‘assimilate’’ into the dominant society and in many ways to reject their Filipino identities. Posadas discusses the effect of ethnic appearance dissimilarities between mother and daughter and similarities between father and daughter and the effect of such differences and similarities on identity development. She also explores differences in roles in educating the girls, and she traces educational experiences over the women’s lives. She also discusses the stronger role that mothers played in being understanding about dating practices. Posadas concludes by suggesting that this pre-1960s cohort lacked group identity and Filipino communities ties. Her essay is often included on syllabi about Filipino Americans and mixed race Asian Americans and, thus, has been influential within Asian American studies. Innovative in Asian American studies, film studies, and queer studies, Richard Fung considers Asian American male sexuality, both its dominant construction and its construction within erotic films. While colonialist discourse and dominant narratives have figured Asians as desexualized, even in erotic gay films that include Asian actors (which is a rarity, according to Fung) the Asian actor appears as the ‘‘bottom,’’ and the narrative is focused on the pleasure of his white male sexual partner, not of himself. Moreover, given that the genre of gay male pornography itself tends to emphasize phallic versus anal pleasure, the Asian male in such films, figured as the figurative anus, is represented as the object, not the subject of such films. Fung suggests that such representations, as well as the experience of being treated stereotypically as a ‘‘foreigner,’’ creates for Asian American men a sense of alienation within gay communities. Such images and experiences, he suggests, have a powerful connection to intimate relationships with others. Fung offers one of the more subtle looks at filmic representation and in ways inaugurates what is becoming a subfield or subarea within Asian American studies focusing on the intersection of sexuality, masculinity, and Asian American identity. Identity is clearly a common topic for much Asian American studies scholarship, and Lisa Lowe provides a broad historical, theoretical, and literary analysisof the subject in her highly influential essay. Specifically, Lowe calls for a more dynamic understanding of Asian American identity. Working against fixed and essentializing conceptions of Asian Americans and Asian American families, Lowe theorizes cultural politics in terms of the incommensurable dimensions of cultural difference, such as race, gender, class, and nation. 9

Kent A. Ono

Drawing on poststructural theory, Lowe theorizes the concepts of heterogeneity, hybridity, and multiplicity, arguing that Asian Americans should be understood, not in terms of distinct generational norms, but by a multiplicity of factors. Lowe emphasizes that identity is in flux and, thus, while essentialism around identity is, at times, necessary, also needed is a recognition of profound levels at which identity is not, and cannot be, fixed. She sees Asian American as a location where challenges to essential identities can be staged; her goal (and, given the salience of her essay, significant success) is to encourage a reconceptualization of Asian American identity that is anti-hegemonic and nonfoundational, yet strategically activated as needed. E. San Juan, Jr. discusses the recent move to poststructural theory as it relates to Asian Americans. Beginning with a critique of Ronald Takaki’s book, San Juan argues against scholarly identity politics, suggesting that such a position is directly in line with a Horatio Alger-style free market stance. Focusing on the role of class within Asian American studies, San Juan demonstrates both the draw of contemporary poststructural scholarship and its associated problems. San Juan uses Carlos Bulosan as an example of a writer/activist who addressed the effects of capitalism and colonialism while avoiding the trappings of liberal notions of market politics. Eschewing a kind of fashionable, aesthetic politics that tends toward narcissism, San Juan calls for a critique of the history of colonialism, world capitalist systems, and the implicature of Asian Americans within that context. Tracing the literary tradition of Filipino ‘‘exilic’’ and ‘‘emergent’’ writing, Oscar V. Campomanes addresses the lack of research on literature by Filipinos in the United States and the difficulties of talking about the invisibility of the Philippines in US history. Focusing diasporically, Campomanes considers both Filipino literature and its counterpart, Filipino American literature. He is interested in early expatriate writers’ depiction of self-alienation, their search for community, and their use of Philippine history and culture. Particular to the exilic experience of Filipino expatriates in the United States is a sense of class and cultural difference from other Filipinos. In experiencing the effects of colonialism, the characters in this writing struggle to retain ties to historical compatriates, while simultaneously experiencing links between the dominant language of English and their newfound cultural identities in the United States. The engagement with the colonial language is intimately tied to a simultaneous sense of alienation from one’s homeland. Bridging the historical and contemporary realities, these writings embody the banishment of the characters and effect an identity of dislocationality. David Palumbo-Liu interrogates the densely connotative image of the vigilante Korean American produced in dominant media discourse surrounding the Los Angeles rebellion of the early 1990s. Palumbo-Liu seeks to explain the meaning of a picture that appeared on May 11, 1992 in Newsweek depicting a young Korean American man holding a rifle and wearing a Malcolm X tee-shirt which reads, ‘‘By any means necessary . . . ’’ Palumbo-Liu suggests that this 10

Retracing an Intellectual Course

image of vigilantism positions Korean Americans as upholders of the rights to property and firearms and, more broadly, of society’s commitment to capitalism. Such an image relies on the ‘‘model minority’’ myth of Asian Americans as hardworking, bootstrapping, successful minorities in order to pit Asian Americans against Blacks and Latinos. Ostensibly, the young man is defending his property and his rights to free enterprise against Blacks and Latinos. Thus, the image rationalizes self-defense by drawing on Malcolm X to justify such violence, thus naturalizing the right to take matters into one’s own hands when it comes to combating perceived minority criminality. Yen Le Espiritu examines the relationship between US colonialism in the Philippines and the migration of Filipinas/os to the United States. Specifically addressing US labor recruitment practices and labor conditions, as well as their effects on the potential development of Filipina/o community organizing, Espiritu calls attention to the many ways colonialism played a role in the political context of Filipino communities in the United States. Through colonial control, she argues, the United States helped create the economic and political conditions in the Philippines that then produced a need for capital for Filipina/o laborers. As a US colony with a history of ‘‘special’’ access to Filipina/o laborers, the Philippines experienced a uniquely enmeshed relationship with the United States that affected the specific kind of Filipino migration to the US and Filipinas/os’ perceptions of US culture. The policy of benevolent assimilation, along with images of US wealth and opportunity, helped to cultivate a sensed hierarchy and status among Filipina/o migrants that US culture was superior to Filipina/o culture. Nevertheless, differences in region of origin, class, and occupational status among two distinct groups of post-1965 Filipina/o migrants produced dissimilar, and at times discordant, migrant communities in the United States. David Eng sees an important correlation between a conceptualization of Asian American studies in terms of diaspora and in terms of queerness. Beginning with a critique of early Asian American nationalism, which definitively associated the domestic with the heterosexual, Eng calls for a broad understanding of queer beyond sexual practices and identities. First, Eng challenges the ‘‘banishment’’ of the hyphen, and suggests that eliminating the hyphen fit the need of an earlier nationalist model within Asian American studies. Eng suggests that a new, denationalized, diasporic model might require a reconsideration of the role of the hyphen, since the hyphen calls into question the transnationality of the field. Eng then moves to a conceptualization of diaspora as a function of queerness and suggests that what early migrants experienced in terms of discrimination could be characterized in queer terms. Thus, he encourages us to see race, gender, and sexuality – rather than being discrete spheres unto themselves – as interrelational. He sees such a conceptualization as a methodology, one that places emphasis on style and form. He concludes with a critique of the film The Wedding Banquet that talks about gender, race, and sexuality in the same breath, noting how particular effects of gender correlate with particular effects of sexuality. 11

Kent A. Ono

As this volume moves forward from 1971 to the recent past, it moves through and toward theory; multiplicity; attention to gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and class; and the transnational and diasporic. While some of these issues, for example ethnic diversity and sexuality, really did not fully emerge in the literature until the early 1990s, some were already at play, even if many times implicitly, at the very beginning of Asian American studies. By telling the particular and purposeful history I do here through the essays I have chosen to anthologize, I hope to draw attention to the importance and centrality of these issues in both the present and the past. Thus, while I would argue that there was a first and is now a second phase of Asian American studies scholarship, collectively the essays in this volume show the deep interconnections of these two phases. Alternatively, I might argue that the bulk of the essays in this anthology illustrate the process of moving from the first to the second phase of Asian American studies. While I chose to organize the essays in Part II of the book chronologically, I could just as easily have organized them around themes: identity, media representation, activism, nonbinary conceptions of race and ethnicity, or family, for example. Reading the second half of the volume thematically might lead readers to see the second half also as conversations, although conversations of a less explicit nature. For example, Evelyn Nakano Glenn, Lisa Lowe, and Barbara Posadas speak to each other about family; Evelyn Nakano Glenn, Barbara Posadas, Oscar V. Campomanes, Yen Le Espiritu, and David Eng speak to each other about migration and diaspora; Evelyn Nakano Glenn, Barbara Posadas, E. San Juan, Jr., and Yen Le Espiritu speak to each other about history; Elaine Kim and Oscar V. Camponanes speak to each other about literary representation; Keith Osajima, Richard Fung, David Palumbo-Liu, and David Eng speak to each other about media representation; Keith Osajima and David Palumbo-Liu speak to each other about the ‘‘model minority’’ myth; Barbara Posadas, Richard Fung, David Palumbo-Liu, and David Eng speak to each other about interracial relations; Barbara Posadas, Richard Fung, and David Eng speak to each other about sexualities; Barbara Posadas, Lisa Lowe, Oscar V. Campomanes, and David Palumbo-Liu speak to each other about identity; and Lisa Lowe, E. San Juan, Jr., and David Eng speak to each other about poststructuralist theory. In re-tracing an intellectual path of Asian American studies, key to my emphasis has been an attempt to read the historical as part of the contemporary, next to the contemporary, within the contemporary, and by the contemporary. For instance, the many references to Frank Chin’s work suggests not only that Asian American studies is engaged in conversations about a postnational stage, but that Frank Chin speaks to scholars theorizing postnationalism. Ronald Takaki’s historical work, whether one would adopt his scholarly methodology or not, raises the potential for a reconsideration of the role of vernacular Asian American scholarship, in contrast to the strict academic procedures of the historical scholarly disciplines. Stanley and Derald Sue and Ben Tong’s work 12

Retracing an Intellectual Course

speak to the continuing evolution of scholarship on the Asian American psyche, and, I think, are important in relation to psychoanalytic scholarship, such as that produced by scholars like David Eng, Anne Cheng, and Monica Chiu. David Eng’s ability to bring Frank Chin into conversation with Richard Fung’s work is precisely the kind of transhistorical dialogue I hope we can imagine as we retrace intellectual Asian American paths. In the end, my goal for this anthology has been to mark previous, and to encourage future, transformations of Asian American studies as a field and a site of belonging/non-belonging. I also stress the importance of the essays in this anthology, and Asian American studies as a field, as continuing to engage in the work of social transformation. While Asian American studies must remain in flux in order to survive and continue to be useful, vibrant, and relevant as social conditions continue to change, my hope is that this anthology illustrates why, despite important transformations of and debates about the meaning of Asian American and Asian American studies, both are categories that are politically useful, personally and intellectually necessary, and mutually nurturing. Notes 1 See, for instance, Min Zhou and James Gatewood, eds, Contemporary Asian America: A Multidisciplinary Reader (New York: New York University Press, 2000); Jean Yu-Wen, Shen Wu, and Min Song, eds, Asian American Studies: A Reader (Piscataway, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2000); Amy Tachiki, Eddie Wong, and Franklin Odo, eds, Roots: An Asian American Reader (Los Angeles: UCLA Asian American Studies Center, 1971). 2 See my introduction in the companion volume to this anthology, Asian American Studies After Critical Mass. 3 It is interesting to consider the two early volumes developing out of conferences held at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Both Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture (Nelson and Grossberg) and Cultural Studies (Grossberg, Nelson, and Treichler) weigh in heavily on the side of Marxist and literary theory scholarship. While some noted that the first volume was more Marxist and the second volume less so, by thinking of them as part of the same project, rather than as examples of two definitive projects, one begins to see that Marxism and literary theory were basic to both. 4 A significant amount of scholarship since hooks published that volume has critically interrogated such terms as ‘‘margin,’’ ‘‘center,’’ ‘‘periphery,’’ ‘‘metropole,’’ ‘‘colony,’’ and the like. It is, in fact, in the spirit of the critical scholarship that I seek not simply to displace the center but to redefine it in terms of that which is discursively and materially decentered, not included, and often debased. My goal, which is toward transformation, not dichotomization, requires the language of dichotomy to describe its purposes opposing dichotomy. 5 See my response to Gayatri Spivak and Lisa Lowe on this point in ‘‘Re/signing Asian American’’ (1995). 6 The controversy erupted after Lois Ann Yamanaka’s novel, Blu’s Hanging, which casts Filipino American characters in a derogatory light, was given the Association’s best fiction book award. 7 See my introduction for Asian American Studies After Critical Mass. 8 I kept the Amerasia Journal essays in the first section, even though the journal is, I think, accessible to many readers here, because of the significance of the debates about psychology and history. I just felt that these debates were so central that, even if accessible, they were required for this volume.

13

Kent A. Ono 9 Several essays are, in my opinion, central to the development of the field (and there are many more that I do not mention here). I encourage readers to read these essays, even as I was unable to include them here. While I very much wanted to publish the following essays, I decided not to anthologize Hamamoto (1998), because I already had so many essays focusing on sexuality in the volume. Wang’s (1976) important essay on bilingual education was more of a case study than either a self-conscious analysis or theorization of the field. Both Radhakrishnan (1987) and Rafael (1993) are key theoretical texts for the field, but both focus less specifically on Asian American studies as a field than the essays I have included here.

References Benhabib, Seyla ‘‘From Identity Politics to Social Feminism: A Plea for the Nineties.’’ Philosophy of Education (1995): 22–36. Dirlik, Arif ‘‘Asians on the Rim: Transnational Capital and Local Community in the Making of Contemporary Asian America.’’ Amerasia Journal 22 (1996): 1–24. Hamamoto, Darrell ‘‘The Joy Fuck Club: Prolegomenon to an Asian American Porno Practice.’’ New Political Science 20 (1998): 323–45. Hu-DeHart, Evelyn ‘‘Coolies, Shopkeepers, Pioneers: The Chinese of Mexico and Peru (1849–1930).’’ Amerasia Journal 15 (1989): 91–116. Kibria, Nazli ‘‘Not Asian, Black or White?: Reflections on South Asian American Racial Identity.’’ Amerasia Journal 22 (1996): 77–86. Okihiro, Gary Y. ‘‘Japanese Resistance in America’s Concentration Camps: A Re-evaluation.’’ Amerasia Journal 2 (1973): 20–34. Ono, Kent A. ‘‘Re/signing ‘Asian American’: Rhetorical Problematics of Nation.’’ Amerasia Journal 21 (1995): 67–78. Radhakrishnan, R. ‘‘Ethnic Identity and Post-Structuralist Difference.’’ Cultural Critique 6 (1987): 199–220. Rafael, Vicente L. ‘‘White Love: Surveillance and Nationalist Resistance in the U. S. Colonization of the Philippines.’’ In Amy Kaplan and Donald E. Pease, eds, Cultures of United States Imperialism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1993), 185–218. Takagi, Dana Y. ‘‘Maiden Voyage: Excursion into Sexuality and Identity Politics in Asian America.’’ Amerasia Journal 20 (1994): 1–17. Uttal, Lynet ‘‘Inclusion Without Influence: the Continuing Tokenism of Women of Color.’’ In Gloria Anzaldu`a, ed., Making Face, Making Soul (Haciendo Caras): Creative and Critical Perspectives by Women of Color (San Francisco: Aunt Lute Foundaton Book, 1990), 42–5. Wang, L. Ling-chi ‘‘Lau v. Nichols: History of a Struggle for Equal and Quality Education.’’ In Emma Gee, ed., Counterpoint: Perspectives of Asian America (Los Angeles: UCLA Asian American Studies Center, 1976), 240–63. Wang, L. Ling-chi ‘‘The Structure of Dual Domination: Toward a Paradigm for the Study of the Chinese Diaspora in the United States.’’ Amerasia Journal 21 (1995): 149–69.

14

PART ONE

Defining Conversations in Asian American Studies

CHAPTER

ONE

Chinese-American Personality and Mental Health* Stanley Sue and Derald W. Sue

In writing this article, we have tried to integrate personal observations, clinical impressions, and available research findings. Where clinical cases have been described of individuals in therapy, care has been taken to insure anonymity. Since there is a lack of research on Chinese-American personality and mental health, much of our discussion should be regarded as tentative rather than as the ‘‘final’’ word. Hopefully, this article will stimulate further thinking and raise issues.

The Development of Personality Sometimes it seems as though a Chinese-American must possess great ego strength in order to survive the conflicts surrounding him. He must develop within the interplay of forces such as parental upbringing, the clash between Chinese and Western values, and racism. As a basis for developing a conceptual scheme of personality, let us briefly examine them. The traditional Chinese family Although generalizations of the ‘‘traditional’’ Chinese family do injustice to differences among families, we have decided to define the traditional family as having certain values and behavioral characteristics. A more extensive analysis can be found in studies by DeVos and Abbott1 and Cattell2. In the traditional family, ancestors and elders are viewed with great reverence. The primary family unit is strong and typically exerts great control over its members. Emphasis is placed on obtaining a good education, on being *Stanley Sue and Derald W. Sue ‘‘Chinese-American Personality and Mental Health.’’ Amerasia Journal 1 (1971): 36–49. Reprinted by permission of Asian American Studies Center Press.

Stanley Sue and Derald W. Sue

obedient to parents, and in giving the family a good name. ‘‘Bad’’ behavior on the part of a member (exhibiting antisocial or criminal behavior, disobedience, low achievement, or even psychopathology), brings shame on the entire family. In order to control members, parents use guilt-arousing techniques such as threatening to disown the person, verbally censuring the individual, or having the individual engage in activities that accentuate his feelings of guilt and shame. Many times disappointed Chinese parents may say, ‘‘How could you do this to us,’’ or ‘‘after all we have sacrificed for you, you are still like this.’’ An interesting example of the accentuation of shame is provided by Lowell Chun-Hoon3 in his analysis of Jade Snow Wong. After Jade Snow Wong had stoken a piece of cloth from a visiting peddler, her father made her sit outside the house for a day with the item she stole. Thus, her wrongdoing was publicly displayed. In addition, the Chinese learns strong patterns of self control which have an effect on his personality. Fenz and Arkoff state that investigators have . . . stressed the strong family ties of Chinese families, as well as the traditional adherence of Chinese youths to parental mores. Chinese children are said to be taught by their parents to live up to a role of detachment and self control. This is said to be responsible for a lack in spontancity and self-expression and for a strong control over affective impulses which is said to have become characteristic of the Chinese personality.4

In their study utilizing the Edwards Personal Preference Schedule, Fenz and Arkoff found that Chinese were generally more deferent and less autonomous, exhibitionistic, and heterosexual in interest than Caucasians. In a preliminary study of the Chinese community of San Francisco, DeVos and Abbott5 attempted to conceptualize family life through interviews, a questionnaire, and a problem situation test. These investigators found that (a) educational achievement was consistently valued above other types of achievement, (b) Chinese-Americans usually react passively to authority, (c) respect for elders was equated with respect for authority, (d) there is a strong sense of responsibility for relatives, (e) when a younger person failed to live up to the elders’ expectations, self-blame was the result, and (f) proper methods of socializing the child was seen to exclude physical violence and punishment. Western influences Against this family background, the Chinese-American also develops within the host culture. Peer group influences may begin to erode parental authority. He is constantly bombarded with Western values in the schools and in the mass media. These values reflect the attitudes, norms, emotional expressions, and other behaviors characteristic of the dominant society. It is inevitable that some changes will occur. For example, Fong6 studied 336 Chinese college students 18

Chinese-American Personality and Mental Health

by using three different instruments. He administered a personal data form to obtain background factors such as generational level, area of residence, citizenship status, etc. An assimilation–orientation inventory assessing social, cultural, and political attitudes was also employed. Finally, a stick figures test was administered to demonstrate an individual’s ability to perceive culturally-determined modes of expression. Results indicated that as the Chinese-American becomes increasingly exposed to the values and standards of the larger host culture, there is progressive inculcation of those norms. In fact, Chinese-Americans whose families had been in the United States for two or more generations were largely assimilated. Racism Finally, the Chinese-American also experiences direct and subtle forms of discrimination in his exposure to the host society. While it is beyond the scope of this paper to analyze racism, we note that racism can be individual and institutional. Individual racism involves a person’s attitudes and behaviors toward the Chinese. He may believe that Chinese are ‘‘sneaky’’ or may try to prevent them from moving into his neighborhood. Interestingly, prejudice can also work in favor of the Chinese-American in specific situations. Teachers may believe that Chinese are intelligent and hard working and thus give them better grades. In the long run, side effects often develop. The individual may strive to maintain his hardworking image by being obedient and conforming. A Chinese who rebels against this stereotype faces the wrath of his teachers for violating their notions of a ‘‘good’’ Chinese. Institutional racism refers to systematic discrimination in various institutions. For example, in the past, laws in some states prevented Chinese from marrying Caucasians; and current business practices may keep Chinese from attaining high executive positions in large corporations. Blacks have often been systematically denied admission to institutions of higher education because of failure to attain certain admission requirements. Although these requirements may be applied equally, they are insensitive to the factors behind the Blacks’ inability to meet the standards. These forms of racism leave their mark on the personality of many ethnic minorities.

Personality: A Conceptual Scheme Personality development can proceed in many ways. At this time, we are not prepared to present the possible factors determining which direction the individual ultimately takes. In order to examine some of the underlying dynamics and conflicts which many Chinese-Americans have, we will concentrate on only three typological characters. Figure 1.1 illustrates a conceptualization of the Traditionalist, the Marginal Man, and the Asian-American. 19

Stanley Sue and Derald W. Sue adopt Chinese values (Traditionalist) conform to parental values individual

adopt Western values (Marginal Man) rebel against parental values

develop Asian-American values (Asian-American)

Figure 1.1

Traditionalist The Traditionalist has strongly internalized Chinese values. There is an attempt to be a ‘‘good’’ son or daughter. Primary allegiance is to the family into which he was born. In fact, eventual obligations as father and husband may be secondary to his duty to parents. Self worth and esteem are defined by his ability to succeed in terms of high educational achievement, occupational status, etc. With success he feels respectable in American society; he has brought honor to the family name and has accomplished this all as a minority member. Gordon Allport, a social psychologist, notes that People admire the cripple who has persevered and overcome his handicap . . . Accordingly, some members of minority groups view their handicap as an obstacle to be surmounted by an extra spurt of effort.7

Thus feelings of pride are felt because he has achieved despite adverse conditions. Allport also states that . . . they may evoke abuse for being too industrious or clever.8 This statement points to the limitations on achievement by the host society. The Chinese must work hard to achieve; but if he works too hard and is too manipulating, he runs the risk of being stereotyped a ‘‘Chinese Jew’’.

We believe that the personal conflicts that the Traditionalist suffers come primarily from two sources. The first involves his attempts to be a good son. He must give his parents unquestioning obedience and must achieve well in order to maintain a good family name and to feel self worth. However, if he feels that his parents are wrong or demanding too much from him, what will he do? In these situations his personal feelings are in conflict with parental expectations. His acquiescence to them means he must suppress or repress his indignation; his defiance of them brings on intense feelings of guilt and shame. Guilt feelings often emerge because his identity is defined within the family. The Traditionalist feels responsible for his failure to obey parents or to achieve well. Since he has internalized values of respect for parents, he finds it difficult to blame them. On the other hand, he cannot blame the host society, 20

Chinese-American Personality and Mental Health

since he has been taught by his parents that success is possible with hard work. He alone bears the responsibility for failure. The following is a description of a Chinese student seen by one of the authors for therapy. The Case of John C. John C. is a 20 year-old junior student, majoring in electrical engineering. He is the oldest of 5 children, born and raised in San Francisco. The father is 58 years old and has been a grocer for the past 20 years; and the mother is a housewife. The parents have always had high expectations for their eldest son and constantly transmitted these feelings to him. Ever since he could remember, John’s parents had decided that he would go to college and become an engineer – a job they held in high esteem. Throughout his early school years, John was an outstanding student and was constantly praised by his teachers. He was hard-working, obedient and never gave his teachers any trouble. However, his parents seemed to take John’s school successes for granted. In fact, they would always make statements such as ‘‘you can do better still’’. John first came to the counseling center during the latter part of his junior year because of severe headaches and a vague assortment of bodily complaints. A medical check-up failed to reveal any organic malfunctioning, which lead the psychologist to suspect a psychophysiological reaction. John exhibited a great deal of anxiety throughout the interviews. He seemed suspicious of the psychologist and found it difficult to talk about himself in a personal way. As the sessions progressed, it became evident that John felt a great deal of shame about having come to a therapist. John was concerned that his family not be told since they would be disgraced. Throughout the interviews, John appeared excessively concerned with failing his parents’ expectations. Further exploration revealed significant sources of conflict. First, his grades were beginning to decline and he felt that he was letting his parents down. Second, he had always harbored wishes about becoming an architect, but felt this to be an unacceptable profession to his parents. Third, increasing familial demands were being placed on him to quickly graduate and obtain a job in order to help the family’s financial situation. The parents frequently made statements such as ‘‘Once you are out of school and making good money, it would be nice if you could help your brothers and sisters through college’’. John’s resentment to these imposed responsibilities was originally denied and repressed. When he was able to see clearly his anger and hostility towards his parents, much of his physical complaints vanished. However, with the recognition of his true feelings, he became extremely depressed and guilty. John could not see why he should be angry at his parents after all they had done for him.

The second source of conflict occurs because the Traditionalist must interact with the dominant society. Despite his attempt to confine his social life to the Chinese subculture, he is unable to fully isolate himself from members of the host society. Learned patterns of obedience and conformity are transferred to the interactions with them. Since role expectations in the Chinese 21

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family are well defined and structured, he may find it difficult to interact with Caucasians who are often behaving under different expectations. Frequently, these expectations are diametrically opposed to one another. For example, Caucasian patterns of relating tend to stress assertive and spontaneous behaviors. The Chinese patterns of deference and reserve are at odds with these values. This causes the Traditionalist great discomfort in his interpersonal relations with Caucasians who may view his behaviors negatively. In addition, individual forms of racism increase his level of anxiety and discomfort. He has not been taught how to aggressively respond to racism. He seeks to make the best of the circumstances without challenging the host society. Allport notes that the individual . . . escapes being conspicuous, has no cause for fear, and quietly leads his life in two compartments: one (more active) among his own kind, one (more passive) in the outer world.9

As for institutional racism, the Traditionalist is often less aware or concerned since he believes he can overcome obstacles if he works hard enough. Marginal Man Both the Marginal Man and the Asian-American cannot give unquestioning obedience to traditional parental values. The Marginal Man attempts to assimilate and acculturate into the majority society. Existing between the margin of two cultures, he suffers from an identity crisis. In attempts to resolve this conflict, the person may reject traditional Chinese ways by becoming overWesternized. We believe that the Marginal Man finds his self worth defined in terms of acceptance by Caucasians. For the Chinese male, the number of Caucasian friends he has and such things as his ability to speak without an accent are sources of pride. He may feel contemptuous of Chinese girls who are ‘‘short legged’’ and ‘‘flat chested’’ when compared to Caucasian girls. Likewise, an anthropological field study conducted in a Chinese-American community by Weiss revealed that many Chinese-American females view their male counterparts as inhibited, passive, and lacking in sexual attractiveness. Data were obtained through attendance at social functions and by the administration of questionnaires. The investigator states that Perhaps the most damaging indictment of Chinese-American male ‘‘dating ineptness’’ comes from the dating age Chinese-American female. Girls who regularly date Caucasians can be quite vehement in their denunciation and disapproval of Chinese-American males as dating partners. But even the foreign born Chinese girls – who do not usually inter-date – also support a demeaning courtship image of the Chinese-American male. Moreover, ‘‘Chinese inadequacies’’, and ‘‘failures’’ are contrasted with Caucasian ‘‘confidence’’ and ‘‘success’’ in similar situations.10 22

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Weiss feels that Chinese-American females are better accepted by American society than the Chinese-American male. Stereotyping of the ChineseAmerican male has been generally unfavourable as compared to the female. As a result, the highly Westernized female begins to expect her boyfriends to behave boldly and aggressively. Because the Chinese male is perceived to lack these ‘‘desirable traits’’, many of the Chinese females begin to date outside their own race. The Marginal Man is not without a great deal of conflict. Hostility and denial of his minority culture may cause him to turn his hostility inward and to develop a form of ‘‘racial self hatred’’. An extreme form of self hatred is demonstrated in the observations of Bruno Bettelheim as described by Gordon Allport: Studies of Nazi concentration camps show that identification with one’s oppressors was a form of adjustment . . . At first prisoners tried to keep their self-respect intact, to feel inward contempt for their persecutors, to try by stealth and cunning to preserve their lives and their health. But after two or three years of extreme suffering many of them found that their efforts to please their guards led to a mental surrender. They imitated the guards, wore bits of their clothing (symbolic power), turned against new prisoners, became antiSemites, and in general took over the dark mentality of the opressor.11

Self hatred can result in violence as well as in derogatory attitudes towards one’s own group. It is our belief, however, that the Marginal Man has not resorted to widespread physical violence toward his own group because of subcultural values emphasizing restraint of disruptive feelings and because of underlying guilt feelings regarding violence to one’s own group. The Marginal Man’s over-Westernized behavior is frequently in opposition to parental values and to Chinese culture, and may arouse intense feelings of guilt. Again, Allport describes a similar process in the Jew: . . . the member who denies his allegiance suffers considerable conflict. He may feel like a traitor to his kind. A Jewish student confessed with remorse that in order not to be known as Jewish he would sometimes ‘‘insert in my conversation delicate witticisms pertaining to Jewishness which, while not actually vicious, conveyed a total impression of gentile malice.’’12

Although the Marginal Man cannot disguise his appearance, he too may experience conflict and anxiety for telling jokes about Chinese or for contemptuously stating that other Chinese are old fashioned. Since he cannot escape his own group, he thus in a real sense hates himself . . . To make matters worse he may hate himself for feeling this way. He is badly torn. His divided mind may make for furtive and self-conscious behavior, for ‘‘nervousness’’ and a lasting sense of insecurity.13 23

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Allport’s observations point to the double conflict involved in self hatred. First, the Marginal Man may hate himself for possessing ‘‘Chinese’’ characteristics. For example, he is frequently disgusted by his own physical characteristics such as shortness of height, round-flat nose, narrow eyes, and lack of a ‘‘manly’’ physique. Second, he may hate himself for hating himself! In the course of our work, we have observed many of these conflicts in ChineseAmericans. The following is the case of a student exhibiting problems typical of a Marginal Man. The Case of Janet T. Janet T. is a 21 year-old senior, majoring in sociology. She was born and raised in Portland, Oregon, where she had limited contact with members of her own race. Her father, a second generation Chinese-American, is a 53 year-old doctor. Her mother, age 44, is a housewife. Janet is the second oldest of three children and has an older brother (currently in medical school) and a younger brother, age 17. Janet came for therapy suffering from a severe depressive reaction manifested by feelings of worthlessness, by suicidal ideation, and by an inability to concentrate. She was unable to recognize the cause of her depression throughout the initial interviews. However, much light was shed on the problem when the therapist noticed an inordinate amount of hostility directed towards him. When inquiries were made about the hostility, it became apparent that Janet greatly resented being seen by a Chinese psychologist. Janet suspected that she had been assigned a Chinese therapist because of her own race. When confronted with this fact, Janet openly expressed scorn for ‘‘anything which reminds me of Chinese’’. Apparently, she felt very hostile towards Chinese customs and especially the Chinese male, whom she described as introverted, passive, and sexually unattractive. Further exploration revealed a long-standing history of attempts to deny her Chinese ancestry by associating only with Caucasians. When in high school, Janet would frequently bring home white boyfriends which greatly upset her parents. It was as though she blamed her parents for being born a Chinese, and she used this method to hurt them. During her college career, Janet became involved in two love affairs with Caucasians, both ending unsatisfactorily and abruptly. The last break-up occurred 4 months ago when the boy’s parents threatened to cut off financial support for their son unless he ended the relationship. Apparently, objections arose because of Janet’s race. Although not completely conscious, Janet was having increasing difficulty with denying her racial heritage. The break-up of her last torrid love affair made her realize that she was Chinese and not fully accepted by all segments of society. At first she vehemently and bitterly denounced the Chinese for her present dilemma. Later, much of her hostility was turned inward against herself. Feeling alienated from her own subculture and not fully accepted by American society, she experienced an identity crisis. This resulted in feelings of worthlessness and depression. It was at this point that Janet came for therapy. 24

Chinese-American Personality and Mental Health

Finally, the Marginal Man must somehow handle instances of individual and institutional racism. For example, if he dates a Caucasian girl and is rejected by her parents, he faces conflict. He is not being accepted by individuals of the very group into which he aspires. In an attempt to resolve the conflict, the Marginal Man may overcompensate. He believes that rejection by the girl’s parents is an isolated situation rather than a reflection of pervasive individual racism. Although he feels that it can happen again, the situation does not change his desire to assimilate. He may even double his efforts to date Caucasians since they are now more symbolic of acceptance by the host society, i.e., the Caucasian girls are ‘‘forbidden fruits’’. The Marginal Man finds it difficult to admit widespread racism since to do so would be to say that he aspires to join a racist society. As in individual racism, the Marginal Man also minimizes or denies the impact of institutional racism. For example, he may believe that if Chinese do not attain high executive positions, it is because they are too unassertive and reserved. His inability to be fully accepted by the host society is not so much a matter of personal failure or pervasive racial discrimination. He attributes blame to his own group for perpetuating Chinese values, which are maladaptive and which make the Chinese appear even more foreign and unacceptable to the host society. Asian-American Since he is in the process of self definition, the Asian-American is much harder to define. Thus we would like to pose some general impressions. Unlike the Traditionalist and the Marginal Man who have found existing models, the Asian-American tries to formulate a new identity by integrating his past experiences with his present conditions. Unquestioning obedience to parents is too painful; racism is too pervasive to ignore; and pride in self is too underdeveloped. He also shares common patterns with the other two. For example, he associates with other Chinese without embarrassment as does the Traditionalist. And like the Marginal Man, he experiences some guilt for his unwillingness to fully accept the dictates of his parents. However, the Asian-American’s defiance is less a rejection of Chinese ways than an attempt to preserve certain Chinese values in the formation of a new identity. He feels that complete obedience to traditional values limits his self growth. Self pride cannot be attained if his behaviors are completely determined by his parents or by society. Parental emphasis on high achievement is too materialistic for the Asian-American who is trying to find meaning and self identity. In addition, his political and social awareness is more fully developed. He is more sensitive to the forces in society which have shaped his identity and have too often been left unchallenged. Problems such as poverty, unemployment, individual and institutional racism, and juvenile delinquency are of primary concern to him. More than anything, society is to blame for his present dilemma and must be changed. Emphasis is 25

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placed on raising group esteem and pride, for it is only through collective action that society’s perception of the Asian-American can be efficiently altered. The Asian-American’s orientation also includes other Asian groups as a basis for identity. Allport believes that group cohesiveness is often due to a commonenemy hypothesis. For example, he states that Threats drive them to seek protective unity within their common membership. The prevailing belief on the west coast during World War II that ‘‘a Jap is a Jap’’ created a strong tie among Issei (foriegn born) and Nisei (American born), although before the persecution set in, these groups were frequently at odds with each other.14

The unity of Chinese-Americans with other groups (Japanese, Korean, Filipino, etc.), however, seems to be more than just a common reaction to racism or stereotypes. There appears to be a positive effort by the Asian-American to develop and form an identity which will enable him to reconcile viable aspects of his heritage with his present situation. The notions of ‘‘viable aspects’’ and of ‘‘present situation’’ are hard to define. The former probably includes pride in one’s heritage, knowledge of one’s culture, and unity with his group. The latter is the consideration of Chinese-Americans as a minority group and as Americans. The Asian-American must be assertive, questioning, and active in order to develop in his present environment. The Asian-American also faces conflicts. Since he is attempting to find an identity with other Asian-Americans, the group is extremely important to him. Anyone who is perceived to threaten the Asian-American group is, in a real sense, threatening his identity. Thus he may feel quite intolerant of the Traditionalist and particularly of the Marginal Man who wants to assimilate. Since he feels that much of the problems of minority groups are due to the host society, he must somehow reconcile this belief with the observations that there are ‘‘uncle toms’’ in his own racial group. That is, while he is contemptuous of the Marginal Man, he also believes that the Marginal Man is a product of the society. In addition, the Asian-American may become extremely militant in his reaction to racism. While militancy may have valuable contributions in gaining civil rights, feelings of self pride, and power, it may also make the Asian-American obsessively concerned with racism. He may become extremely sensitive and suspicious. Allport notes that this is not uncommon among Jews: One day in the late 30’s a recently arrived refugee couple went shopping in a village grocery store in New England. The husband ordered some oranges. ‘‘For juice?’’ inquired the clerk. ‘‘Did you hear that,’’ the woman whispered to her husband, ‘‘for Jews? You see, it’s beginning here, too.’’15

Finally, the Asian-American may experience a great deal of guilt and frustration in his relationship with his parents. His parents tend to view his disobedience, 26

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assertiveness, tendency towards long hair, and deemphasis on academic achievement as signs that he is disrepectful to them and to traditional values. He finds it difficult to communicate that he is attempting to gain self respect; that his parents have not failed in raising him; that he is, indeed, growing and achieving in his own way. Thus the Asian-American may feel a real sense of loss. He is trying to help his people, many of whom do not understand his efforts. The following is a description of an Asian-American student seen for therapy. The Case of Gale K. Gale K. is a 22 year-old, first year graduate student in biochemistry. His father, once employed in an engineering firm, died recently from cancer. His 52 year old mother is currently employed at the San Francisco airport as a receptionist. Gale was born and raised in Oakland, California. He has three sisters, all of whom are married. Much of Gale’s early life was filled with conflict and antagonism between him and his parents. Like Janet T., Gale did not confine his social life exclusively to other Chinese-Americans. Being the only son, his parents were fearful that they would lose their son should he marry a Caucasian. Five years earlier, their eldest daughter had married a Caucasian which caused great turmoil in the family and the subsequent disowning of the daughter. Throughout much of his life, Gale attempted to deny his racial identity because he felt shameful about being Chinese. However, within the last four years, a phenomenal change occurred in Gale. He actively participated in the Third World Strike at the University and became involved in a number of community change committees. Gale recalls with great fondness the ‘‘esprit de corps’’ and contagion he experienced with other concerned Asians. His parents had been delighted about his reorientation towards certain Chinese values. They were especially happy to see him dating other Asian girls and volunteering his time to help tutor educationally deprived children in Chinatown. However, they did not understand his activist thinking and outspoken behavior towards authority figures. Gale came for therapy because he had not fully resolved guilt feelings concerning the recent death of his father. Several weeks prior to his father’s death, Gale had a violent argument with him over his recent participation in a demonstration. When his father passed away, Gale felt a great deal of remorse. He had often wished that his father would have understood the Asian-American movement. Throughout our sessions, Gale exhibited an understanding and awareness of economic, political, and social forces beyond that of the average student. He attributed the plight of Asian-Americans to the shortcomings of society. He was opening suspicious of therapy and confronted the therapist on two different issues. The first objection dealt with the use of tests in therapy. Gale felt them to be culturally biased and somewhat inapplicable to ethnic minorities. The second issue concerned the relationship of therapy to the status quo. Since therapy has traditionally been concerned with the adjustment of individuals to society, Gale questioned the validity of this concept. ‘‘Do you adjust people to a sick 27

Stanley Sue and Derald W. Sue society?’’ Only after dealing with these issues, was it possible for Gale and the therapist to focus on his feelings regarding the death of his father.

A final word should be said before we move on with our discussion. It has been our feeling that the Marginal Man comes in for therapy at a much higher rate than either the Traditionalist or the Asian-American. Our clinical impressions seem to indicate that since psychotherapy is a white middle-class activity, the three types are affected differentially. The Traditionalist does not understand therapy and feels great shame about admitting psychological problems; the Asian-American equates psychotherapy with the status quo and is openly suspicious of this type of activity; and the Marginal Man, in his attempts to assimilate, may view therapy more favorably than the other two. As a result, the Marginal Man would be more prone to utilize mental health facilities when he encounters problems.

Limitations and Implications At this point, we would like to note some limitations of our analysis. First, this conceptual scheme does not deal with important factors such as foreign versus American-born Chinese, residence in- versus outside of Chinatown, and length of residence in the US. In doing so, problems involving juvenile delinquency, poverty, educational and language difficulties, and peer group factors have been largely ignored. Second, individual differences and variations are submerged in this kind of analysis. For example, we know Traditionalists who are quite aware of the social and political forces surrounding them; we know of Marginal Men who function without much internal conflict and without ‘‘racial self hatred’’; and we have seen parents of Asian-Americans who are as ‘‘Third World’’ as their sons and daughters. Third, sex differences within and between each character type have not been adequately handled. Finally, we have used many examples from Allport’s analysis of Jews. Our purpose in presenting these examples is to illustrate some of the underlying processes and conflicts rather than to argue for the personality similarity between Chinese and Jews. These typological characters have been carried to their logical extremes in an attempt to gain insight into some of the underlying dynamics and conflicts. Any typological analysis tends to limit the number of relevant variables it can handle. A tabular summary of the three types is given in Figure 1.2. It is our impression that these polar types have been used in reality. Note the following terms: ‘‘F.O.B.’’ or ‘‘typical Chinese’’ for the Traditionalist; ‘‘Banana’’ or ‘‘Uncle Tom’’ for the Marginal Man; and ‘‘radical’’ or ‘‘militant’’ for the Asian-American. These terms are often derogatory and demonstrate within-group divisions. Our position is that all three types can attain self pride. This possibility has not been recognized since each type has defined pride and self esteem from different reference points. The Traditionalist’s 28

Chinese-American Personality and Mental Health

Traditionalist

Marginal Man

Asian-American

Self worth defined by . . .

Obedience to parents . . . Behaviors which bring honor to family . . .

Ability to acculturate into White society . . .

Ability to attain self pride through defining a new identity . . .

Behavior which arouses guilt

Failure to live up to parental values . . .

Defiance of parental values . . .

Defiance of parental values . . .

Attribution of blame for one’s lack of success

Self . . . White Society . . .

Chinese values . . . Minimal blame on White Society . . .

White Society . . .

Handling of prejudice and discrimination

Deferring and minimizing effects.

Denying and minimizing effects . . .

Anger and militancy . . .

Figure 1.2

failure to see how one can attain self respect by not obeying parents is a result of defining pride and esteem within the family unit. The evaluation from his family is the critical factor. Evaluations from the host society, while being important, are secondary. The Marginal Man’s self pride is determined by his relationship to the host society. He cannot see how one can attain pride by not assimilating. He views the traditionalist as perpetuating outdated values. On the other hand, the AsianAmerican is seen to be ‘‘rocking the boat’’ by his militancy. The Marginal Man feels that both groups have difficulty in maintaining ‘‘real’’ pride since the host society fails to accept them as well as it has accepted him. Finally, the Asian-American’s pride is in the reconciliation of past and present values. He may believe that the Traditionalist cannot have ‘‘real’’ pride since the Traditionalist ignores racism and is unassertive. Between the Traditionalist and the Marginal Man, however, more of his wrath is directed to the Marginal Man who is perceived to be completely denying his cultural heritage. We feel that in all cases, there is a confusion between ‘‘self’’ and ‘‘pride’’. Self pride, by definition, must involve the individual’s own conception of pride. Although self pride is often determined by one’s environment, we do not feel that any of the typological characters have the ‘‘exclusive’’ definition of self pride. It must be defined by the individual in his circumstance. The real issue is the attainment of pride at what cost to one another. In this regard, the Traditionalist is the least threatening. With each succeeding generation, Chinese in America are becoming less ‘‘traditional’’. The possibility that immigrants can maintain traditional values is highly unlikely since their number 29

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is relatively small. According to our conceptual scheme, the only viable alternatives for Chinese (Asians) in the US are between the Marginal Man and the Asian-American. To the extent that the Marginal Man feels ‘‘racial self hatred’’ and contempt for Chinese, then he demonstrates his willingness to gain self pride at the expense of other Chinese. On the other hand, the Asian-American seeks pride by raising group esteem. As long as he rejects dogma and intolerance in his approach, he can do much to raise the esteem of Chinese-Americans and to give himself some choice in preserving aspects of his subculture. In terms of pride, each type can reconcile some of their differences, although social and political differences may always exist. We do not believe that assimilation necessarily involves hatred for self. The Marginal Man can try to assimilate without derogating the Chinese once he feels secure in saying that he is a Chinese American. Like the Marginal Man, the Asian-American is assimilating in many ways. Once the Asian-American’s identity is firmly rooted, the ‘‘Banana’’ will be less threatening and less an object of scorn. Again, the issue is not assimilation versus separatism; it involves the striving for personal respect at the expense of disrespect for others.

Mental Health Problems Thus far, our discussion has focused on the problems and conflicts of ChineseAmericans. Aspects of culture-conflict and racism place Chinese-Americans under greater emotional distress than members of the host society. When these sources of stress become too great, mental health problems are frequently the result. Although no direct statistics exist concerning the rate of mental illness, Tom16 suggests that the rate is quite high in San Francisco Chinatown. He notes that there is an extremely low utilization rate of mental health facilities among the Chinese. Tom believes that cultural factors such as (1) the manner of symptom formation (low acting out such as inhibiting expression of strong impulses), (2) the traditional handling of difficulties within the family, and (3) fear of social stigma contribute to the low visibility of mental illness. However, the suicide rate in San Francisco has historically been the highest in the nation. Chinatown has an even higher rate than the city. Since suicide indicates severe personal disorganization, Tom believes mental illness to be quite high among the Chinese. In a comprehensive investigation performed by Sue and Kirk17 at the University of California, Berkeley, the entire entering Freshman class was surveyed and given various tests. Approximately 90% of the students completed at least one of the tests which included the Omnibus Personality Inventory, the Strong Vocational Interest Blank, and the School and College Ability Test. ChineseAmerican students (128 males and 108 females) were then identified and compared to all other students. Results indicated that Chinese-American 30

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students appeared more inhibited, conventional, and socially withdrawn. While they had higher quantitative ability scores, they demonstrated less verbal facility on the College Ability Test. A bilingual background could partially account for the latter result. Furthermore, Chinese-Americans preferred concrete and practical approaches to life. This may reflect a dislike for uncertainty, ambiguity, and unpredictability. The Chinese males tended to avoid the social sciences, business contact occupations, and verbal-linguistic fields; they showed predominate interests in the physical and biological sciences. Chinese-American females were much more domestically oriented than other females. These results show intra-consistency. If Chinese are inhibited, socially withdrawn, and lower in verbal skills (but higher in quantitative abilities), then they understandably have interests in fields minimizing interpersonal interactions. Recently, we18 conducted a study on the students seen at the Student Health Psychiatric Clinic, University of California, Los Angeles. Preliminary results based on the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) and on clinical impressions indicate that Chinese (and Japanese) males exhibit more severe problems than non-Asians. Although test profiles for Asian and for nonAsian students were similarly patterned, the severity was clearly greater for Asian males. The combined test profiles for Chinese males also indicated problems involving blunted affect, dependency, inferiority feelings, ruminations, somatic complaints, and lack of social skills. The most common diagnosis for these problems is pseudoneurotic schizophrenic. Interestingly, Chinese females exhibited less disturbance than males, perhaps because 20% of the females applied for theraputic abortions rather than for ‘‘purely’’ psychological problems. Finally, Chinese males and females exhibited more somatic complaints and more familial discord on the MMPI. Somatic complaints are often the result of emotional conflicts. Perhaps the Chinese is reluctant to admit psychological problems since there is much shame associated with these problems. Physical conditions are better recognized and more acceptable. As for family discord, it is apparent that most Chinese-Americans face not only a generation gap but also a wide cultural gap from their parents. Obviously, these findings can be quite disquieting. Not only do they point to the ills of Chinese mental health, but they can easily be used to maintain negative stereotypes of the Chinese. Furthermore, the findings have social and political implications far beyond the scope of this paper. For example, if Chinese as a group exhibit maladaptive characteristics, then what will this mean in terms of their struggle to attain self identity and pride through Chinese culture? When viewed in its proper perspective, however, Chinese need not be ashamed nor embarrassed by seeing themselves as being reserved, emotionally inhibited, etc. These characteristics are highly valued and are a great part of traditional Chinese culture. Instead, concern should be addressed to the functional value of Chinese traits under the present circumstances. If the traits are no longer adaptive for attaining proclaimed goals, then they must be changed. 31

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Our conclusion is not that Chinese-Americans have an extremely high rate of mental illness as Tom suggests in his Chinatown sample. We do feel, however, that the mental health needs of Chinese are sufficient to warrant great concern, especially since few individuals have addressed themselves to these needs. Attempts to rationalize the results on the grounds that the research instruments are culturally biased are no longer adequate. They tend to deny the urgency of the problem and to undermine effective search for solutions.

The Inadequacy of Mental Health Care If one accepts the notion that the mental health needs of Chinese-Americans are of great concern, then the problem is especially urgent since mental health care seems to be inadequate. Klein states that . . . the individual facing any hazard is dependent on the resources that a particular community has to offer and is affected by the means of coping that the community either makes available to him or denies him.19

In this regard, the Chinese-Americans have not found appropriate facilities to handle their problems. They do not turn to professional mental-health facilities. Furthermore, the results of our study20 indicate that Chinese (and other Asian) students tend to underutilize the Psychiatric services at UCLA. While Asians represent 8.1% of the student body, they comprise only 3.9% of the clinic population. This underutilization is also evidenced in the mean number of therapy sessions. Chinese students are seen for an average of approximately three sessions while non-Asians attend an average of over five sessions. Thus, Chinese (and other Asians) are underrepresented; and those who apply to the clinic terminate therapy earlier. Of course, one might argue that Chinese do not seek the clinic services because they have a low rate of behavioral problems. Furthermore, early termination may be due to quick recovery from personal problems. Neither of these possibilities appear to have much support. First, Chinese and Japanese males seem to exhibit more severe problems than non-Asians. This finding points to the possibility that the most disturbed males come for therapy. Chinese experiencing milder problems merely avoid using clinic services. (An additional possibility – that Chinese have a low rate of mental illness but greater severity of problems among those affected – seems unlikely. We believe that mental health problems in groups follow a normal distribution.) Second, the early termination of sessions by Chinese seems to be due to a negative response to therapy rather than to a quick recovery. These ideas seem consistent with our belief that psychotherapy is essentially a white middle-class activity. Therapy is not well understood by Chinese, and they frequently enter into it with much apprehension and suspicion. In addition, 32

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their lower verbal facility, greater inhibition, and low tolerance for ambiguity may make Chinese extremely uncomfortable in therapy. Psychotherapy is often geared for individuals who have high verbal functioning, high emotional expressiveness, and great tolerance for ambiguity. Another barrier to the seeking of professional help is the Chinese-American’s value judgement of psychological problems. He frequently equates such problems with shameful and disgraceful behaviors. To enlist the aid of mental health professionals would be to publicize the disgrace of the individual and his family. It is unfortunate that unless a family member becomes overtly psychotic, he may not receive professional help. Furthermore, professional help itself may be unresponsive to the needs of certain groups of Chinese-Americans. There is a critical shortage of bilingual therapists. More importantly, few attempts have been made to modify traditional theraputic approaches to the cultural experiences of Chinese. Since Chinese may feel ashamed and suspicious in seeking help for emotional problems, the therapist may be able to establish more rapport by not making early demands for him to be open and expressive. Such demands can easily be interpreted by the Chinese as disrespect for his behavior. In addition, the Chinese may feel uncomfortable with a therapist who initially provides too little structure and too much ambiguity. The therapist may be more effective if he gives guidelines and takes an active part in the interaction. Perhaps the most fruitful direction is in the area of community mental health. This involves the use of community resources in programs of primary prevention and of community intervention. Although we are not prepared to present an analysis of the problems involved in community organization, we would like to offer a few suggestions for programs. First, mental health professionals who work with ethnic minorities must be more aware of the fears, concerns, and aspirations of the people they work with. They should have an understanding and appreciation of minority group experiences. Second, the mental health needs of Chinese must be assessed through research. Community leaders, special organizations (social agencies and schools), and the community members must be made aware of these needs. Third, proposals for special programs can be offered. Such programs may involve the use of community personnel briefly trained in counseling to offer their services to Chinese. Other projects can focus on early detection and prevention of emotional problems such as in school children. Finally, continuing assessment of the effectiveness of these programs is necessary.

Notes 1 DeVos and K. Abbott, The Chinese Family in San Francisco. MSW Dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 1966.

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Stanley Sue and Derald W. Sue 2 S. Cattell, Health, Welfare, and Social Organization in Chinatown, New York City. Report prepared for the Department of Public Affairs, 1962. 3 L. Chun-Hoon, ‘‘Jade Snow Wong and the Fate of Chinese-American Identity.’’ Amerasia Journal 1 (1971): 52–63. 4 W. Fenz, and A. Arkoff, ‘‘Comparative Need Patterns of Five Ancestry Groups in Hawaii’’. Journal of Social Psychology 58 (1962): 82. 5 DeVos and Abbott, The Chinese Family. 6 S.L.M. Fong, ‘‘Assimilation of Chinese in America: Changes in Orientation and Social Perception.’’ American Journal of Sociology 71 (1965): 265–73. 7 G. W. Allport, The Nature of Prejudice (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Co., 1958), 152. 8 Ibid., 153. 9 Ibid., 143. 10 M. S. Weiss, Inter-Racial Romance: The Chinese-Caucasian Dating Game. Paper presented at the Southwestern Anthropological Association. Las Vegas, Nevada, April, 1969, 3. 11 Allport, The Nature of Prejudice 147–8. 12 Ibid., 142. 13 Ibid., 147. 14 Ibid., 145. 15 Ibid., 141. 16 S. Tom, Mental Health in the Chinese Community of San Francisco. Paper found in AsianAmerican Studies Center, UCLA, 1968. 17 D. W. Sue, and B. A. Kirk, Psychological Characteristics of Chinese-American Students. Paper submitted for publication, 1971. 18 S. Sue, and D. W. Sue, The Reflection of Culture Conflict in the Psychological Problems of Chinese Americans. Parts of this paper presented at the First National Conference on AsianAmerican Studies, Los Angeles, California, April, 1971. 19 D. C. Klein, Community Dynamics and Mental Health (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1968), 13. 20 Sue and Sue, The Reflection of Culture Conflict.

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CHAPTER

TWO

The Ghetto of the Mind: Notes on the Historical Psychology of Chinese America* Ben R. Tong

Introduction: Yellow Niggerism and Psychotherapy In their recent essay on ‘‘Chinese-American Personality and Mental Health’’ (Amerasia Journal, July 1971), psychologists Derald and Stanley Sue condemn American psychotherapy as inadequate for Chinese-Americans. Essentially a ‘‘white middle-class activity,’’ it must be ‘‘modified’’ to fit the cultural experiences of Chinese America, whose indigents apparently lack the ‘‘high verbal functioning, high emotional expressiveness and greater tolerance for ambiguity’’ required as preconditions for successful white therapeutic treatment. Good and fine. Few sensitive people, including some white practitioners, would find cause to dispute their indictment. The charge is timely and valid, but the Sues go no further than the mere stating of it. Other than rendering the service of appealing for increased sensitivity on the part of ‘‘mental health professionals who work with ethnic minorities,’’ they show very little understanding for the cultural sensibilities of Chinese America, the personality problems which have accrued from our collective experiences and the ‘‘treatment’’ which might be required by the present moment. Limiting their focus, for the most part, to clinical experiences with college-age Chinese-Americans, they present a rather obvious1 and conceptually imprecise ‘‘typology’’ of personalities that fits squarely into the existing WASP-oriented psychotherapeutic frame of reference which stands in so much need of overhaul.

*Ben R. Tong ‘‘The Ghetto of the Mind: Notes on the Historical Psychology of Chinese America.’’ Amerasia Journal 1 (1971): 1–30. Reprinted by permission of Asian American Studies Center Press.

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The poor ‘‘Traditionalist’’ is the victim of unquestioning loyalty to the family, ‘‘Chinese patterns of deference and reserve,’’ and the delusional fantasy that ‘‘he can overcome obstacles if he works hard enough.’’ The second characterological type, the ‘‘Marginal Man,’’ seems strangely indistinguishable from the first. He too is inhibited, passive and not given to behaving ‘‘boldly and aggressively,’’ in addition to finding it difficult to admit to the fact of widespread racism. Alluding to Melford Weiss’ anthropological study of students at a junior college in the Sacramento Valley,2 the Sues contend that the ‘‘marginal’’ Chinese-American (why the sexist designation of Marginal Man?) may be contrasted with the Traditionalist in the fact of the former’s preference for white dating companions, a situation which creates predictable conflicts with parents. Fellows in this category ‘‘feel contemptuous of Chinese girls who are ‘short legged’ and ‘flat chested,’ ’’ and their female counterparts view them, in turn, as ‘‘inhibited’’ and ‘‘lacking in sexual attractiveness.’’ If the Sues had read the Weiss findings with a little more scrutiny, however, they would have noted that the males were not predisposed to pursuing white women in the first place and not as the ChineseAmerican girls, despite their mind-boggling social quandaries, seemed as loyal to their parents as the Traditionalist.3 The third type, the so-called ‘‘Asian-American,’’ is presumably more aware of the need to develop an identity that will update traditional values and eliminate the whitewashed shame of the Marginal Man syndrome. . . . his political and social awareness is more fully developed. He is more sensitive to the forces in society which have shaped his identity and have too often been left unchallenged. Problems such as poverty, unemployment, individual and institutional racism, and juvenile delinquency are of primary concern to him. More than anything, society is to blame for his present dilemma and must be changed.

According to the Sues, this last type not only experiences ‘‘a great deal of guilt and frustration in his relationship with his parents’’ (like the other two), he also suffers from the unhealthiness of ‘‘extremely militant reactions’’ to racism. While militancy may have valuable contributions in gaining civil rights, feelings of self pride, and power, it may also make the Asian-American obsessively concerned with racism. He may become extremely sensitive and suspicious.

The political overtone, of course, is unmistakable: left-wing ‘‘obsessions’’ are detrimental to psychological well-being. Citing the case of ‘‘Gale K.,’’ a political activist who was incessant in his tirades about the evils of the system, the Sues submit that the patient’s difficulty in coping with his guilt feelings over his father’s death represented the ‘‘real’’ problem, as well as the only legitimate concern of therapy. This is to imply that those who question the validity of existing institutional and power arrangements, including the psychotherapeutic enterprise, necessarily suffer from some sort of 36

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underlying intrapsychic conflict. (One is reminded of Ezra Pound’s incarceration in a mental institution for his extreme political views.) As they are fond of buttressing their remarks with authoritative references to Gordon Allport, the Sues might do well to ponder the warning of the eminent psychologist, that psychology urgently needs to make a distinction between lives in which the existential layer is, in effect, the whole of the personality, and other lives in which it is a mere mask for the rumblings of the unconscious.4

There is little of explanatory value in the pedestrian character of the Sues’ conception of Chinese-American personality – their distinctions between the first two types, while grounded correctly in the meek-and-mild mentality, are superficial if not invalid, and the political conservatism which defines the pathology of the third is not unacceptable. The case histories mentioned at great length in their article all point to parental hangups as the source of mental health difficulties. Those Chinese-Americans who experience severe emotional problems resulting either from agonizing adjustment to a totally new way of life (the immigrant Chinese entering the United States at the rate of thousands every year) or from mind-splitting alienation by their ‘‘own subculture and American society’’ apparently do not fall within the purview of therapeutic concerns. One wonders: Just how is psychotherapy to be made more relevant and effective for Chinese America? Upon presenting their modal personality types and the disorders allegedly inherent in each, the Sues propose the lunacy of finding ‘‘self pride’’ in them, with the stipulation that each type not build self-esteem and personal worth on a foundation of scorn for the others. Although self pride is often determined by one’s environment, we do not feel that any of the typological characters have the ‘‘exclusive’’ definition of self pride. It must be defined by the individual in his circumstance. The real issue is the attainment of pride at what cost to one another. In this regard, the Traditionalist is the least threatening. With each succeeding generation, Chinese in America are becoming less ‘‘traditional.’’ The possibility that immigrants can maintain traditional values is highly unlikely since their number is relative small. [Really?] According to our conceptual scheme, the only viable alternatives for Chinese (Asians) in the U. S. are between the Marginal Man and the Asian-American. (emphasis supplied)

It is rather laughable, of course, to suggest that fulfilling identity alternatives exist for Chinese-Americans in the form of timid and docile ‘‘Bananas’’ or, as a certain variety of demented liberalism would appear to dictate, psychologically debilitated political activists. The same proposition, however, coming from two professional psychologists – Chinese-American ones, at that – is not as absurd as it is extremely dangerous, for therapists are held in high regard as the sanctioned 37

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healers of the psyche in modern industrial society, having inherited the mantle of the shaman, the witch doctor, and the priest of yesteryear.5 The perspective advanced by the Sues’ thesis is that of the classical Banana world view: ‘‘Keep your place and be proud of it.’’ ‘‘Learn to accept your present circumstance.’’ By insisting that Chinese-Americans take pride in living with these personality options, our ethnic psychotherapists contribute to the maintenance of those very same stereotypes which they fear ‘‘studies’’ and ‘‘tests’’ are perpetuating. One wonders how the Sues can be so certain that their ‘‘Asian-American’’ activist, who may or may not be plagued with psychic disorders, in fact feels intolerance for the Marginal Banana for the reason that the latter presumably threatens the identity of his group. I would submit that if these types do exist at all, each is contemptuous of the other out of projected self-hatred. And not a one of them can ever hope to attain the self pride the Sues envision.6 The Marginal Man (I prefer the more descriptive term, ‘‘Banana’’) or the Traditionalist (one and the same), having swallowed white values of success and white standards for judging himself, knows he cannot make it in the white world and be accepted there as a full-fledged human being. As one of my students has expressed with colloquial eloquence, he cannot catch his own group’s chicks, be a big corporation executive or deal with pig harassment. He can’t stop wearing glasses, grow to be six feet tall or leap over buildings with a single bound. The dude will always be chinky Clark Kent. If he ever took off his shirt, that one hair on his unmanly chest will blow away.

The activist ‘‘Asian-American’’ (such a misleading term) is frozen with frustration for not being able to extricate himself out of the identity vacuum created by the voluntary rejection of the WASP mentality and what he regards to be the traditional ‘‘heritage.’’ There is little he can celebrate or affirm in the way of a lineage into which pride can be invested, and the new order he proposes is kept from materializing by the likes of the Banana. To their credit, the Sues seem at least aware of the question when they ask: ‘‘ . . . if Chinese as a group exhibit maladaptive characteristics, then what will this mean in terms of their struggle to attain self identity and pride through Chinese culture?’’ Unfortunately, rather than coming to direct and serious grips with the historical and institutional bases of Chinese-American self-contempt, they would have us suppress it and learn to live with the existing psychological constrictions. Their expertise, after all, is limited to the dispensation of ‘‘therapeutic’’ insight. The Sues hold up the stereotype, racism and the ‘‘heritage’’ for consideration as factors somehow inextricably linked to Chinese-American personality and mental disorder, but they do not quite know what is to be done with these hot potatoes. Acknowledged to be vitally related to the subject at hand, racism is dismissed without an explanation as to why it is justified to do so.7 We are warned about the stereotypic consequences of ‘‘test profiles’’ which portray the Chinese-American (especially the male) as a ‘‘pseudoneurotic schizophrenic’’ 38

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(what?) crippled by ‘‘blunted affect, dependency, inferiority feelings, ruminations, somatic complaints, and lack of social skills.’’ At the same time, the Chinese, with ‘‘proper perspective,’’ need not be ashamed nor embarrased by seeing themselves as being reserved, emotionally inhibited, etc. These characteristics are highly valued and are a great part of traditional Chinese culture.

Enough said. The balance of the present discussion will attempt to offer a theoretical perspective on the place of these factors in the shaping of ChineseAmerican social character and the etiology of psychological problems.

The ‘‘Heritage,’’ Racial Imagery, and Racism: the Determinants of Chinese-American Personality In a recent letter to the editor of San Francisco Chinatown’s bilingual East/West News Journal, a reader complained bitterly that an Asian-American Studies curriculum should not deal solely with ‘‘contemporary Asian American history,’’ since the prospect would mean dredging up the embarassment of ‘‘coolies,’’ ‘‘laundry men,’’ and ‘‘house boys.’’ The proper remedy, it seems, is to make ‘‘relevant’’ in some fashion ‘‘our cultural heritage of 5,000 years of civilization.’’ One can guess that she probably meant Shang bronzes, Taoism and the I-Ching. Many persons and organizations have regarded Chinese America’s heritage to be synonymous with Great Traditions of Cathay. Chinese-Americans, being perpetual aliens who have somehow managed to enjoy an unbroken connection with a centuries-old golden culture, are supposed to Betty Lee Sung’s exotic ‘‘interpreters of the Oriental mind.’’8 In his recent anthology of third world writing, Gerald Haslam of Sonoma State College claimed that The average Chinese-American at least knows that China has produced ‘‘great philosophies’’ and with that knowledge has come a greater sense of ethnic pride. Contrasted, for example with the abject cultural deprivation long foisted upon Afro-Americans, Asian-Americans have an inner resource: the knowledge that their ancestors had created a great and complex civilization when the inhabitants of the British Isles still painted their fannies blue.9 (Source: Forgotten Pages of American Literature.)

The truth of the matter is that the majority of Chinese-Americans descended from the peasant stratum of Kwangtung (a province in southeastern China), a class which certainly was not the repository of thousands of years of sophisticated civilization. Sinicized only ‘‘recently’’ in Chinese history (during the T’ang dynasty), the southern aborigines or the Yueh people, as they were called, were uneducated, for the most part, and humble people of the earth who knew 39

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very little about the finer aspects of classical Chinese culture. Their legacy is to be found in extraordinary accomplishments in the agricultural fields, mines and railroad projects of nineteenth century America, a story which involves a rich cultural sensibility – complete with folklore, language, art and social institutions – that has yet to be discovered and affirmed.10 The heritage of the Cantonese peasant-laborer mentality The ‘‘heritage’’ of the meek-and-mild syndrome, for which the Sues found such abundant substantiation in numerous personality tests, had its beginnings in the traditional political system of ancient China. Originally developed by the Han dynasty (206 bc–ad 220), the system divided up society into a three-layered social universe: monarchy (the emperor), administrative bureaucracy (the scholarofficials), and everyone else (the small landowners, merchants, craftsmen, and the majority peasantry), with power and privileges concentrated in the first two institutions. This unequal arrangement of men, power and resources was made possible, according to historians Franz Schurmann and Joseph Levenson, ‘‘by an ideology based on the moralistic, wordly ethic of Confucius.’’11 The persistent and fundamental vision of the Great Teacher had been that of the creation of a harmonious society run by morally perfected men. The perfect embodiment of Confucianism was the ‘‘well-ordered patriarchal family, . . . the microcosm of the order that should prevail in state and society.’’12 Values of harmony, stability and rectitude would be understood and exemplified by enlightened rulers, be they fathers, officials or the emperor himself. According to the Analects, the ideal leader of men serves as the irreproachable example of virtue for the governed when he lays tasks on the people without their repining; when he pursues what he desires without being covetous; when he maintains a dignified case without being proud; when he is majestic without being fierce.13

Because China was frequently plagued with a limitation – and in hard times, a scarcity – of resources, the Confucianists ‘‘felt the only way to solve the problem and to maintain social order was to make social positions distinct and definite [that is, unequal] and to distribute things according to status.’’14 Mencius, probably the greatest intellectual descendant of Confucius, added a political note to this division: mental work was associated with governing and physical labor, with being governed. Another Confucian scholar, Hsun-tzu, justified the arrangement by observing that only through such a social system would it be possible to ‘‘nourish men’s desires, to give opportunity for this seeking for satisfaction, in order that desire should not be extinguished by things, nor should things be used up by desire.’’15 Modeling society after the structure of the good family, the Confucianists fashioned a well-defined network of social relationships. Sons were to show filial 40

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piety; young brothers, respect; wives, obedience; younger men, deference; and subjects, loyalty. These deferential roles were to be matched with appropriate reciprocation from above: fathers will show kindness; elder brothers, nobility; elders, humaneness; and rulers, benevolence. Such were the requirements for attainment of general harmony and true human welfare.16 Hence, we can appre), for ciate the derivation of the notion of pao-tia, ‘‘taking care of one’s own’’ ( ‘‘by stabilizing one’s own (immediate) relationships, one does something toward the eventual reform and harmonization of society at large.’’17 One was indeed as socially responsible as one could expect himself to be. In later times, however, when Confucianists rose to official administrative power, the philosophy of Confucius was exploited as a rationale for political obedience and given supernatural sanctions. Originally intended as a check on an absolute monarchy and aristocracy (when the House of Han deposed the Chin), the doctrine eventually defended the literati’s possession of land and the powers of state,18 resulting in the ‘‘tradition’’ of mass distrust of government. . . . even in better times the government was known to the millions only as the agency that collected taxes, exacted tribute, imposed forced labor, and conscripted sons for soldiers. There was no redress to hand: ‘‘Heaven is high, the emperor is far,’’ the people learned to echo – at the same time that they learned to distrust the whole concept of superior authority, with an implacable, enduring distrust. The Chinese ideogram for an official looks like this: ( ) and the Chinese said that, you can see from the drawing, ‘‘an official talks with two mouths under the same roof.’’19

The kinship group or clan became the most immediate manifestation of an enormous amount of total institutional power that impinged upon the life of the peasant. The father of a family may not have been the primary authority, as sociologists C. Wright Mills and Hans Gerth have suggested, ‘‘but rather the replica of the power relationships of society, and . . . the unwitting transmitter of larger authorities to his spouse and children.’’20 Despite its perversions at the hands of the powerful, Confucianism had an extraordinary capacity for survival and self-renewal. Even when Buddhism was dominant for several centuries, the Chinese continued to guide their lives with the model of the patriarchal family and the idea of the family as the microcosm of the well-ordered state. With a vigorous revival (better known as Neo-Confucianism) in the T’ang dynasty, Confucian moral philosophy became exploited as a state ideology for (a) justifying centralized rule and (b) for the subjugation of aboriginal tribes, particularly those in south China. Events during the late years of the T’ang and the early Sung dynasties caused the content of one of the Confucian moral norms, ‘‘loyalty,’’ to be radically altered. ‘‘From its earlier meaning as an obligation tempered by moral judgment, it was redefined,’’ observed sinologist Arthur Wright, ‘‘as a blind and unquestioning allegiance to a superior.’’21 Thus filial piety became, to borrow a term from psychologist 41

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Donald Lim, unconditional obedience ( ), at that point in history when the southern Yueh aborigines, the ancestors of Chinese America, were colonized and ). converted by T’ang Chinese into ‘‘T’angjen’’ ( Family customs of the conquered southerners were sinicized and schools were established with a classical curriculum: ‘‘ . . . rewards of status and wealth were given to those of aborigine ancestry who did well. . . . (And) the solid advantages of . . . adopting Chinese ways were dramatically demonstrated.’’ Colonial officials feasted ‘‘the aged and the filial,’’ publicly chastised ‘‘moral deviants,’’ and awarded prizes to ‘‘diligent students of the Classics.’’22 The logical Chinese precursor of the meek, inscrutable and non-aggressive ‘‘Chinaman’’ was the model of the Confucian Gentleman or Mandarin, whose image was propagated in the popular culture in the interests of Confucian order and values. The presence in innumerable plays and stories of . . . the adviser type of hero – urbane, calculating, accomplishing by stratagem what force would never achieve – serves to reiterate the Confucian ideal of the supremacy of moral-intellectual power in the affairs of men. No play or story challenges the principle of gentry dominance of society, and none makes a case for the merchant – the despised object of upper-class abuse and repression. . . . Chinese officialdom was plainly powerless to prevent the growth of independent, sometimes rebellious, heroidentifications, but popular entertainments generally supplied a heavy dosage of Confucian morality. . . . Neither a play nor an incident in life itself ‘‘made sense’’ except in terms of the moral values that were the common property of educated elite and illiterate masses: For all the great gulf in their tastes and styles of life, the two classes shared a common moral perspective, and the Confucian persuasions by which they lived and judged their fellow-men were remarkably similar.23

By the time of the Ch’ing dynasty, monarchic and scholar-official politics had reshaped the concept of pao-tia, ‘‘taking care of one’s own,’’ into an insidious device for social control. It was ‘‘an officially imposed but unofficial arm of the state,’’ wrote John Fairbank and Edwin Reischauer, ‘‘maintained under landlord-‘gentry’ supervision. Through it the government and local ruling class used the family system for political purposes.’’24 This component in the roots of Chinese-American personality dates back to the very beginnings of Chinese history itself, and is intimately entwined with the whole of that history. Under the pao-tia or ‘‘local order through mutual responsibility’’ system, the family was the basic unit of political control and kept the individual in line with such psychological devices as fear of punishment and moral exhortation. A group of households was accountable all together for an individual within any household. ‘‘This allotment of responsibility by groups of neighboring farms was particularly suited to a static society rooted in the land.’’25 Mutual responsibility, as totalitarian systems have recently demonstrated, is a powerful device, especially when combined with a paternalistic morality sanctioned by a long cultural tradition.26 42

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This ‘‘heritage’’ of institutional oppression could well be the basis for what anthropologist Francis Hsu calls the Chinese’s tendency to be ‘‘situationoriented:’’ Sanctions of the group are presumably more important to the individual than personal feelings.27 (Hsu and other scholars, it might be noted, have frequently made it a point to romanticize the Confucian justifications for maintaining social appearances.28) In summary, then, when the Chinese-American refers to his heritage, he must reckon with the historical reality that his was a peasant or merchant lineage, a traditionally unsophisticated and oppressed segment of Chinese society. The scholar-official class did not emigrate to California and other parts of the world beyond the Middle Kingdom in search of a better livelihood, since they already had full access to all the resources of Chinese society, including the power to define culture, relationships and identity itself. Kept in place by the pao-tia system, the peasant adjusted to powerlessness by restricting his concerns to simply ‘‘taking care of his own,’’ for to meddle in affairs beyond his immediate village or clan community entailed enormous risks. To give others the impression that you are satisfied with your lot, even if it is meager, and that you wish only to mind your own business, meant those with power would leave you alone. Such was the cultural psychology of peasant survival. The same ideology that oppressed in time dignified the justification for social withdrawal: ‘‘We Chinese take care of our own, work hard, and are not concerned with anyone else’s affairs – this is our Confucian heritage,’’ et cetera. When natural disaster, political turmoil and overpopulation sent thousands of Cantonese (or Kwangtungese) peasants streaming to California as fortune hunting sojourners, they found themselves low men on the totem pole again, oppressed by a racist white community and by their own kinsmen, namely, a small but all-powerful group of merchants who had preceded them and around whom the new Chinese (-American) social order revolved. Bankers, managers, contractors, manufacturers, traders, proprietors, and agents rose to undisputed eminence as the equivalent of traditional China’s powerful scholar-official and gentry class. Previously near the bottom of the Confucian sociopolitical scale – a notch above the peasantry – they combined the prestige of mandarins, the wealth of gentry, the authority of family heads, the status of scholars, and the power of creditors in their unique position.29

‘‘Benevolently despotic’’ village leaders with status and wealth had ‘‘acted to transfer the loyalties and institutions of the village to the overseas community.’’ Accustomed to identification with local village kinship ties and to reliance upon elders as leaders, the individual peasant ‘‘submitted his fate to the overseas representatives of his clan or village.’’30 In turn, the merchant-elders acted as his representative to white America, created and maintained new settlements, provided ‘‘badly needed goods and services, protection against depredations, and punishment for wrongdoing.’’31 43

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It would be a mistake, however, to simply conclude that the first Chinese in America were little more than pathetic victims of oppressive circumstance, extremely intolerable though their lot was. Despite the insurmountable obstacles posed by a ‘‘heritage’’ of state coercion and near-absolute local village control and by a New World founded on the ethics of white superiority, they went all over the western United States and affirmed, in their phenomenal endeavors, the infinite resourcefulness of the human spirit. The Chinese had a decisive and crucial hand in the development of every imaginable agricultural industry in California. Before the anti-Chinese rampage of the later years of the nineteenth century, they were not clumped up in segregated Chinatowns, as some tourist guide stories might have it. They reclaimed the land in the Sacramento San Joaquin Delta, ran canneries, started truck farming, and were responsible for developing practically every phase of such enterprises as asparagus, potatoes, onion, celery, strawberries, salmon, abalone, crab, and seaweed harvesting. They left temples in Weaverville, Fiddletown and other places removed from Chinatowns most people know of. Miles of meticulously-laid solid rock walls were constructed by the Chinese for the fencing in of cattle. Huge underground tunnels were built for wineries in the north. In mining, they were not Mark Twain’s portrait of miserable idiots looking for ‘‘Chinaman’s Gold,’’ but specialists sought for their expertise with explosives and their skill in diverting the course of whole rivers. Entire companies, whether in agriculture or other businesses, were run by Chinese, under white brand names. Contrary to the fairy tale of Chinese willing to work for pittance wages, the meek and mild Chinaman very often struck for better working conditions, higher wages and better hours; they even leased land and purchased whole orchards. The audacity to enter into direct competition with former white employers and to ‘‘use the strike as a means of exacting . . . improved conditions of employment,’’ as documented by the work of labor historian Ira Cross,32 certainly would not bespeak of meek-and-mildness as an inherent facet of Chinese national character. It is difficult, if indeed not impossible, to account for the force behind these monumental adventures. What is the explanation? The key, I believe, lies in the factor of ‘‘consciousness’’ – there was a time when the Cantonese peasantlaborer did not believe he was as timid and accommodating and ignorant as he had wanted his oppressors to think. The meek-and-mild ‘‘mentality,’’ the proclivity to mind one’s own business and to limit interaction to immediate relationships, was originally a facade, a consciously manufactured appearance – a survival mechanism to be activated or shelved at will, in conjunction with the requirements of the historical moment. Assimilation of the southern Yueh peoples into the Chinese Empire had always been incomplete, largely because of geographic removal and the ‘‘tradition’’ of perpetual rebelliousness. The Manchus, for example, conquered north China in 1644 without a struggle but had to fight another 38 years to subdue the south. When the Ch’ing (Manchu) dynasty finally crumbled, it was southerners who initiated revolution. South 44

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China, in short, had always been the most difficult region for dynastic regimes to conquer and was reputedly the population to revolt with the greatest ferocity.33 The Tai-ping and Triad rebellions in the nineteenth century would serve as two of the more graphic illustrations of this apparently contradictory strand in the ‘‘heritage.’’ Direct resistance during the anti-Chinese persecutions of the late 1870s usually meant ultimate defeat at the hands of white brutality, but records show, nevertheless, that the Chinese did not take oppression without fighting back in some instances.34 If the Sues’ timid and docile Traditionalist-Marginal Man syndrome typifies the personality makeup of the average Chinese-American – and there is ample reason to believe the findings of their ‘‘test profiles’’ and studies – the etiological answer is to be found, I would argue, in the transformation of the survival mechanism into an actual identity. Somewhere along the way, the Chinese-American came to believe he really was the graciously passive, sometimes loveable but always non-threatening ‘‘Chink.’’ Now the establishment therapist, with his essentially a-historical frame of mind,35 suggests that the unexpressive and detached Chinaman is basically the product of a ‘‘traditional Chinese family.’’36 Kenneth Abbot has advanced the same causal logic by arguing that traditional philosophical values of Chinese society lie at the base of the Chinese-American’s lack of sociability and extroversion.37 (One wonders how he would account for mah jong parties, furious rounds of home visits during Chinese New Year’s, elaborate celebrations for all occasions, and community clubs of every variety!) In classic ethnocentric fashion, sociologist Rose Hum Lee singled out the heritage of a ‘‘feminized culture’’ to explain the lack of aggressive response to white racism. The tendency to transmit and acquire the more genteel cultural uniformities has resulted in the older Chinese persons exhibiting lack of candour, boldness and bravery – attributes associated with masculinity. . . . the behaviour pattern of the (early) settlers was largely unsuitable for a highly competitive, masculineoriented culture. For example, the Chinese withdrew from overt and active competition with organized labor, instead of organizing among themselves to mitigate the strength of labor unions. They retreated from one industry after another. Instead of directing their aggressions against members of the dominant group, they turned their hostilities inward toward members of the Chinese society in America.38

The bold, vigorous and extraordinary ventures of the early Chinese in America, however, would appear to negate the thesis of cultural determinism, i.e., that ‘‘traditional values’’ molded the social character of Chinese Americans. Some other explanatory perspective is required. We must focus on a transformative historical experience that drove the Stepin Fetchit Chinaman facade into the very nerve and sinew of individual personality. 45

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Total Repression: The Legacy of Historical Trauma According to conventional wisdom, enlightened Americans are not a product of the past – the ‘‘uptight’’ beliefs and institutions of other eras no longer shackle or move modern existentialist homo sapiens. The evidence, interestingly enough, points to quite the opposite. Guarantees in a document dated 1787 provide motive force for the quickening political impulses of impoverished third world Americans (while the white-dominated parliaments of Rhodesia and South Africa acknowledge no American-like burden of constitutional debt or guilt). Contemporary heirs, moreover, of the eighteenth century scientific-rationalistic world view are propelling Western society logically toward total decimation of the physical environment.39 And a little senile, virginal bachelor in the Vatican continues to suspend thousands of American women in moral agony over the question of religiously-appropriate birth control procedures. Similarly, Chinese America moves and expresses its being in terms of a psychology wrought from the crucible of an historical experience now barely discernible on the surface of the collective consciousness. This was the experience of total repression by a white racist society. The usual explanation of justification for anti-Chinese persecution, which functions to obscure the substance of history, has assumed a number of standard postures: we may refer to them as the ‘‘naturalistic,’’ the ‘‘psychopathological,’’ and the ‘‘altruistic.’’ The first contends that some sort of conflict naturally occurs when there are more people than jobs, when everyone is competing for the same limited number of crumbs or opportunities, e.g. the depression of the 1870s. Ill-will, fisticuffs and even racist invective understandably arise as a result. Betty Lee Sung exemplifies this orientation: Under favorable circumstances all is well, but in times of crises and hardship, people look for targets upon which to vent their pent-up emotions. They look for scapegoats to place the blame.40

According to the ‘‘psychopathological’’ view, white racism was the result of disturbed individuals or transplanted Southern bigotry. Journalist Millie Robbins, for one, suggests that fanatics like Denis Kearney were chiefly to blame for haranguing ‘‘unemployed, hungry and miserable’’ white of the Working Men’s Party. He was a troubled soul, grieving over the loss of ‘‘two little daughters and three young brothers,’’ and perhaps moving ‘‘hoodlums’’ to wreck and burn laundries and stone Chinese in the streets ‘‘helped him to bear his heavy burden of sorrow.’’41 Rose Hum Lee attributes the source of anti-Chinese sentiment to the presence of Southerners in early California: With Southern opinions dominant in the State prior to the Civil War, it was relatively simple to build up a general pattern of colour prejudice which became directed almost exclusively against the Chinese. This prejudice spread throughout the nation.42 46

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Historian Gunther Barth proposes, finally, the ‘‘altruistic’’ model: the free, individualistic American’s distaste for the Chinese system of domineering head clansmen was the raison d’eˆtre for their expulsion from the mining districts.43 The psychopathological and altruistic arguments do not hold up when the fact is considered that countless numbers of whites – from those in high office to the average forty-niner – behaved like deranged rednecks. Political scientist Frederick M. Wirt, who has just completed an extensive research project on San Francisco politics, observes that The forty-niners were a bloodthirsty, gold-grubbing lot who believed in equality – among Anglo-Americans. If you were Mexican, Indian or Chinese, and had by some miracle staked out a claim, the odds were excellent that one of those fortyniners would either steal it from you or shoot you for it. Before the turn of the century, one successful mayoral candidate (in San Francisco) ran on a platform openly advocating violence against the Chinese.44

Jacobus tenBroek, Edward Barnhart and Floyd Matson, in their study of the Nisei relocation experience, refer to the mental cargo of racism and anti-foreignism that early white pioneers brought to the West as ‘‘a well-defined conception of the social role of non-white groups and a pervasive distrust of ‘foreigners’ in general.’’ The ‘‘only display from the beginning was the doctrine of white sumpremacy,’’ to which was added ‘‘nationalistic sentiment and more than a touch of greed.’’45 Contrary to the Chinese Historical Society’s finding that San Franciscans ‘‘in the early days regarded the Chinese with some interest and curiosity rather than hostility,’’46 the celestials were objects of abuse and violence from the moment they set foot on the shores of California. ‘‘Although there were many individuals and a few groups who championed the Chinese, these seem to have been isolated and unrepresentative of general opinion.’’47 The anti-Chinese stereotype, writes sociologist Stanford Lyman, was already visible in 1852, particularly among Californians outside of San Francisco.48 In that same year, John Bigler, the governor of the state, charged that coolies were little more than slaves, degrading white labor and presenting themselves as inherently unassimilable.49 For the next fifty years, and well on into the first four decades of the [twentieth] century, the charge was elaborated in sermons, popular fiction, motion pictures, newspapers and the rest of the media. What of the naturalistic explanation, which argues that anti-Chinese behavior was the understandable product of local competition between whites and Chinese for a limited number of jobs? Intolerance for the Chinese, expressed in the form of popular tribunals and mob violence, drove the ‘‘heathen Chinee’’ from the mining fields to embrace menial and unskilled jobs in the cities, jobs with which white empire builders could not be bothered.50 The Chinese laborer proved to be so ‘‘valuable’’ that even at the height of anti-Chinese agitation, he was defended by some white employers for his willingness to endure work wherein the ‘‘drudgery was greatest and the gain the least.’’51 Up until the 47

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1880s, the demand for cheap agricultural labor was also filled by the Chinese. With the end of the Civil War and, ironically, the completion of the transcontinental railroad, the labor market was flooded with easterners who had been lured westward by misleading advertisements about fortunes to be had and cheap land to be bought. Then came the economic dislocations of the 1870s and thousands of whites found themselves stranded in the Golden West, unemployed. The union movement, in the meantime, was agitating for better working conditions, particularly the eight-hour day. Their weapon against management was the strike, but it was not altogether successful since cheap Chinese labor was brought in to break the strikes. We can appreciate, at this point, the obvious inadequacy of Betty Lee Sung’s ‘‘understandable competition’’ argument, for unemployed whites and Chinese did not vie with one another for a limited number of job openings. The Chinese were already in possession of the jobs that whites, who suddenly saw the value of plain work, wanted! (Being only one-twelfth of the state’s population at the time, the Chinese were holding down one-fourth of the wage laborer positions.) Unions, moreover, wanted the heathens to leave in order to force management to bend to the demand for an eight-hour day. Thus the celestials were driven bodily out of the manufacturing, service and agricultural areas. ‘‘Amid rising hostility, agitation, and mob violence, reaching peaks of arson, pillage, and murder . . . , the Chinese became ‘unassimilable,’ ‘dangerous,’ and ‘criminal’. . . . ’’52 Even white women, previously employed in work more glamorous than domestic service,53 hollered ‘‘Women’s Rights and No More Chinese Chambermaids!’’ at mass anti-Chinese rallies.54 It was true, of course, that the Chinese did offer real economic competition to white workers in the sixties and seventies, especially in the manufacturing and service trades. They did better work and were willing, in some instances to even do it for less than white pay. Racistic persecution did not spread as it did in the depression years of the seventies simply because white men, to begin with, had maintained an aversion to degrading, low status work. With the advent of severe hardships, Chinese competition, real and imagined, galvanized the white working population and the all-white labor unions to mount a systematic vendetta against the Yellow Peril and those who would employ him.55 The oppression was as thoroughly annihilative as the firebombing of Dresden. Legal abuse was heaped on top of physical violence, robbery and senseless destruction. The initial opposition in the mining districts was followed with the levying of a series of foreign miner’s taxes, alternately repealed and reenacted from 1850 to 1856. When the Chinese fled to the cities, crimes against them went unpunished. In 1854, in the case of the People vs. Hall, the California Supreme Court ruled that Chinese could not testify against whites, since the former, according to the Chief Justice, were to be classified as Indians, ‘‘a race of people whom nature has marked as inferior . . . ’’56 This meant open season on the Chinese, who could be robbed with impunity. The few who were so bold as 48

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to seek redress in public courts received none, even when cases were decided in favor of the plaintiff.57 In the early sixties, Chinese homes in several parts of the state were destroyed and the occupants driven off. Employers of Chinamen were frequently beaten and killed. The Six Companies submitted a report to the State Senate in 1862 that told of the murder of 88 Chinese in that year, eleven of them by tax collectors. One outlaw ‘‘delighted in tying Chinese together by their pigtails, suspending them over a branch, and then holding target practice.’’58 A legislative change of heart in 1863 permitted Negroes to testify against whites, but Indians and Chinese still could not. The Chinese, however, were allowed to attend segregated schools (1865), while Negroes had access to public schools only if white parents allowed it (1866). Although San Francisco soon became, with its heavy concentration of unemployed whites and Chinese, the center of anti-Chinese activity, events in other parts of the state and the West attested to the pervasive character of the movement. On October 24, 1871, twenty-one Chinese were killed by gunfire and hanging in Los Angeles. Prior to the enactment of federal exclusionary legislation in 1882, the Golden State instituted exclusion acts of its own. A $500 bond was required for each Asian immigrant, a law which was clearly unconstitutional since only the federal government is empowered to regulate immigration. In San Francisco, a series of harassing ordinances were passed with the stated intent of driving the celestials to other States. In 1870, the San Franciscans forbade Chinese to peddle ‘‘by pole and basket’’ and laundries were required to pay special taxes. The same year saw the creation of the Cubic Air Ordinance. Enforced only in the ghetto, it jailed those who lived in dwellings which did not provide 500 cubic feet of air per person; tenants rather than landlords were incarcerated. The Chinese were quick to point out that ‘‘the city jail, where Chinese offenders . . . were lodged, provided much less than the statutory 500 cubic feet per prisoner.’’59 By 1874, the state itself passed a cubic air law. In the following year, 1871, a Theater Ordinance stipulated that the Chinese could not attend their Chinese operas, nor could they make noise, between the hours of 12 and 6 a.m. Laundries without vehicles were taxed $15 a year. The Queue Ordinance placed a tax on pigtails; offenders (those who refused to pay) were arrested and had their queues shaved to one inch. A public health law later required the queue to be cut altogether. Small-mesh shrimp net had to conform to standards set on size (1876); and the remains of the dead could not be shipped back to China (State Dead Body Law, 1877). ‘‘Ineligible aliens’’ could not fish, and it was a misdemeanor to hire ‘‘Mongolians’’ (1879). Laundry work was prohibited between the hours of 7 p.m. and 6 a.m. (1880). The Forty-fourth Congress sent a special investigating committee to San Francisco in 1876. In a summary of allegations against him, the heathen was found unassimilable and guilty of debaucherous customs, in addition to being responsible for lowering wages and the American standard of living. Kearney’s 49

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influential Workingmen’s delegation to the state constitutional convention of 1879 played a key role in securing passage of the infamous Article XIX of the State Constitution, which forbade the employment of Chinese in any corporation formed in the state, on any state, municipal and country public works, and provided for legislation whereby any city or town might expel its Chinese inhabitants.60

Article XIX, however, simply made legal what had transpired in previous years. The Los Angeles incident of 1871, initiated by the killing of a white man during a tong war, involved a white mob pillaging the Chinese quarter, ‘‘killing twenty one persons, of whom fifteen, including women and children, were hanged on the spot from lampposts and awnings.’’61 Like similar cases dating back to the fifties, those responsible escaped punishment. The Chinese were driven from small towns and camps, their homes destroyed, their possessions confiscated, and their families injured or killed. The celestials were to become ‘‘victims of every variety of fraud and chicanery.’’62 Agitation continued for the next half century, promoted by anti-coolie clubs which sprang up all over the west coast, pandering racist polemics through mass gatherings, publications, and boycotts of Chinese merchants. An eyewitness to the endless hostilities (1876) told of seeing Chinese ‘‘stoned from the time they passed out of the ships, rocks thrown at them, until they reached Kearney Street. I have seen them leaning over the sides of the wagons with their scalps cut open . . . No arrests were made, no police interfered.’’63 ‘‘In San Francisco incidents (similar to the Los Angeles mass lynching) . . . were common during the seventies, culminating in a sustained orgy of looting and burning in 1877.’’64 The Chinatown of Tacoma, Washington, was burned to the ground in the same year, with similar attempts that were not as complete also occurring in Portland, Seattle, and Olympia. The Chinese were forced to evacuate from Santa Barbara, Oakland, Pasadena and other cities. In 1878, the entire Chinese population of Truckee, a thousand people, was ridden out of town. Twentyeight celestials were murdered in a single day in Rock Springs, Wyoming (1885), and in Snake River, Oregon, ‘‘ten Chinese gold miners were robbed and murdered by men masquerading as cowboys.’’65 The use of Chinese as strikebreakers in Massachusetts. Ohio and Pennsylvania added to the fuel which ignited the spread of anti-Chinese feelings to other parts of the country.66 The shock waves of massacres, lootings and destruction were still reverberating when moves were made to use the law against the Chinese in another fashion: they were punished or harassed and eliminated from occupations, now why not keep them out of the country altogether? Political parties, particularly the Democrats who were desirous of the labor vote, led the campaign for total exclusion of the Chinese from immigration: the Republicans were also forced to adopt a similar stand. In 1882, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, 50

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which formally suspended the immigration of Chinese for ten years. Later amended in 1884, the Act was extended another ten years in 1892. The Scott Act of 1888 limited return to America those Chinese who visited their homeland temporarily, and the Geary Act of 1892, in addition to extending exclusionary legislation, required Chinese aliens to register and prove the legality of their existence. Those without certificates hid away in Chinatown. By 1902, all exclusion laws relating to Chinese immigration were extended for an indefinite period. An anti-American boycott was mounted by China in 1905 in protest of exclusionary legislation and in sympathy with the mistreatment of overseas Chinese. Historian Kwang-Ching Liu described the effectiveness of the action: The boycott was organized by merchants in Shanghai, Canton, and five other coastal cities and supported by students at China’s modern schools (missionary institutions included). It lasted in some cities for six months, caused heavy losses to American merchants, and played a significant role in the growth of nationalism in China.67

In particular, the Chinese were disgruntled about police harassment of the Chinese colony in Boston. Several thousand persons had been surrounded and 234 were arrested, in order that 40 deportable Chinese might be located (1903). Sixty-eight years later, in June of 1971, similar raids in search of aliens were launched against Chinese restaurants in Washington, DC.68 It might be noted that efforts to exclude the Chinese took place simultaneously with America’s attempts at securing rights for Americans in China! Harold Isaacs wrote: Even as the rights of Americans in China were being enforced by arms when necessary and by the exercise of extraterritorial rights which placed foreigners in China above Chinese law, the American government moved to discriminate legally against the Chinese within its own borders.69

The Integration of Imagery With Personality Following the horror of the anti-Chinese movement, the Chinese were completely shattered. The refuge of Chinatown was the only haven for those trapped by poverty that barred them from returning home by white oppression, which excluded them from assimilation into the life of the host society. Kept from reproducing a second generation by exclusionary and anti-miscegenation laws, the sojourner who once ventured all over the West – leaving a rich legacy of enduring accomplishments wherever he went – was demoralized, isolated and frozen. The traditional vehicles for effecting social and political change – peasant revolts, secret societies, organized strikes and boycotts – were not functional;70 51

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one had trouble enough dealing with the Chinatown merchant establishment. The white American power structure was out of reach. Survival could only be found now in the mediocrity of unskilled labor in curio shops, domestic service, laundries and restaurants. Only after 1930, as recently as forty years ago, with the presence of enough Chinese women to produce a new generation, did some semblance of family and community life appear in Chinese America. Reactivating the earlier survival mechanism, the Chinese dignified their withdrawal by appealing to the appropriate stoic and aescetic strains in Confucianism which stressed the supreme virtue in ‘‘taking care of one’s own.’’ Children of the new generation were taught the ‘‘gracious heritage’’ of ‘‘filial piety,’’ thus stifling the possibility of bringing serious and critical question to bear on their own oppressed condition. The ‘‘supercaution of what the American saw as an unreacting expressionlessness’’ was adopted and ‘‘a great care’’ was taken ‘‘not to become involved in matters that might draw the white man’s attention to them.’’71 Interviewees from Isaacs’ lengthy study of images held by whites revealed that Chinese-Americans appeared to ‘‘know their place,’’ and were ‘‘less venturesome intellectually;’’ they tended to ‘‘live in a closed society, to stay by themselves, to stand apart’’ and to ‘‘avoid taking positions’’ on issues.72 The facade apparently convinced the white community, and the image was carried to all of America through such means as Carl Glick’s book, Shake Hands With The Dragon, which portrayed the Chinese as humble, supplicating, selfeffacing, industrious, reclusive and adorable. Emotionless in his life of glorious self-denial, the admirable alien was seen to be biding his time until he could go back to the land of his ancestors.73 During that same period of the 1930s–1940s, psychologists Daniel Katz and Kenneth Braly extracted from 100 Princeton students the following ‘‘traits most frequently assigned’’ to the Chinese (in rank order): superstitious, sly, conservative, tradition-loving, loyal to family ties, industrious, meditative, reserved, very religious, ignorant, deceitful and quiet.74 The deception was not complete. The psychic energies of the Chinese community had been turned inward, the appearances dignified by appeal to the wisdom of ‘‘tradition.’’ The passive, self-sufficient, satisfied-with-little Chinaman was not to be bothered. As long as white America was no longer threatened by the old menace of the Yellow Peril, these quaint, exotic creatures were even deserving of admiration. Fulminating with greasy racistic condescension, in the tradition of atrocious textbooks, Ruth Holland’s The Oriental Immigrant in America affirms the thoroughness of the original deception and teaches the Chinese-American youngster today who he is supposed to be: Little by little, Americans began to see that they had nothing to fear. The Chinese did not compete for their jobs. They did not expect the government to help them when they were down and out. They were peaceable, law-abiding citizens. In New York and San Francisco, businessmen discovered that the small ‘‘Chinatowns’’ were actually important tourist attractions that benefited the entire city. . . . 52

Chinese American Historical Psychology Many Chinese-Americans fought valiantly in the armed forces of the United States. During World War II, China was our ally and helped us to defeat Japan. It became quite obvious that the Chinese Exclusion Act was unfair. Here were honest, hard-working, gentle people being discriminated against for no reason except blind prejudice. . . . . . . It’s hard to know whether the meek, compliant attitude of the Chinese helped them gain acceptance. Or perhaps their tendency to withdraw from the rest of the community prevented Americans from getting to know them and like them. They have not been ‘‘Americanized’’ as easily as other immigrant groups. But it has always been harder for non-white people to be accepted by a community. . . . 75 (Emphasis supplied.)

With the validation and reinforcement of white America’s mass media and institutions, the image originally foisted up as a protective screen came back full circle: succeeding generations of native-born Chinese-Americans eventually came to believe that they in fact were supergracious, timid, apathetic and ploddingly industrious. Well into the early decades of the twentieth century (and up to the present day), the Chinese in America continued to suffer humiliation, harassment and deprivation, despite the frontal display of gracious passivity. The Exclusion and Immigration Service regulations empowered whites to deny them – in legal proceedings hidden from public view – due process of law, representation by counsel, trial by jury and prohibited them from confronting witnesses against them.76 Hostility and suspicion did not subside with isolation in ghettoes and erection of the mask of inscrutability. Immigration officials and local police made constant raids on Chinatowns in Cleveland, Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, New York and San Francisco. It was not uncommon for Chinese to be ‘‘arrested without warrants on the streets’’ and ‘‘fired at if they tried to escape; homes were broken into and businesses destroyed – all in the name of the law.’’77 Matters were made worse by the bitter and contemptuous reports of American missionaries in China. The proselytizers who first visited the Celestial Empire in the eighteenth century had been awed by its splendor, sophistication, vastness and power. In the following century, disastrous internal rebellion and foreign wars led to weakness and corruption. With China ‘‘carved up by the predatory imperialism of half a dozen foreign powers,’’78 and no longer envied as the epitome of enlightened civilization, the once quaint and exotic pagans were now condemned for having been misled by their own false gods. Western missionaries inveighed against the ‘‘vileness’’ of concubinage and the ‘‘sin’’ of arranged marriages, as well as other customs which violated the Christian sensibility. The Chinese literati, however, viewed the Western Gospel as cultural imperialism and vigorously resisted its threat to Chinese thought and institutions. News of the brutal treatment of travelers, diplomats, merchants and students, not to mention overseas immigrant-laborers, in the United States aggravated the hostility toward foreigners and unleashed riots against missionaries.79 53

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Alien Land Laws were passed in 1913 and 1920 to keep Orientals from buying property. The Immigration Act of 1924 ‘‘denied the right of an American-born Chinese to marry an alien Chinese woman and bring her into the country.’’80 Coupled with anti-miscegenation laws and the existing shortage of Chinese women in the United States, the Act condemned many Chinese men to lonely lives without wives and children. The final genocidal cruelty is reflected in the fact that of the 6,000 San Francisco Chinese senior citizens today who are over 65 years of age, an estimated six to seven of every ten are men.81 In one lurid publishing sensation after the next, popular magazines and fiction portrayed the ‘‘mysterious’’ Chinese quarter as a den of iniquity seething with opium addicts, slave girls and tong villains. In her study of Oriental themes and characters in American movies, Dorothy Jones wrote of the stereotypic devices used in the 1920s and 1930s: The mystery of Chinatown was suggested by a whole series of visual cliches – the ominous shadow of an Oriental figure thrown against a wall, secret panels which slide back to reveal an inscrutable Oriental face, the huge shadows of a hand with tapering fingers and long pointed fingernails poised menacingly, the raised dagger appearing suddenly and unexpectedly from between closed curtains.82

The description best suited, of course, the character of Fu Manchu, Sax Rohmer’s silk-gowned, almond-eyed torturer of beautiful bosomy white women, who assumed star status with moviedom’s Chinese slave girls, houseboys and highbinders. With the virtual cessation of immigration in 1924, the complete withdrawal of Chinese from open competition with organized labor, and the arrival of the Japanese as new racial scapegoats, the image shifted from one of ‘‘fearsome strangeness’’ to that of ‘‘unfearful oddity.’’83 Now Charlie Chan emerged, observed writer Frank Chin, to offset the negative image of Chinese projected by the Fu Manchu series. Essentially the same guy, both are cunning, philosophical and scientific and full of folk wisdom and have a curious way of announcing their lines with a narrowing of their eyes. The good Charlie Chan was a necessary evil because the Japanese by invading the China of the Protestant missionary, had turned all Chinese into heroes, and allies.84

The opium-smoking, slave-importing tong was replaced by the wise, bettereducated Chinese, whose mark of high cultural status was evident in the propensity to preface profundities with ‘‘Confucius say–.’’ Countless aphorisms have passed into the national consciousness through a million and two fortune cookies containing single-sentence, pidginized insights that begin with gracious acknowledgement of the Great Awliental Teachah. The war with Japan created the first major escape hatch for emergence from the ghetto: the Chinese and Chinese-Americans (the two are usually one and the 54

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same to most Americans) became heroic comrades, a new image that was sustained by Pearl Buck’s gooey romanticizing of humble, struggling, sodown-to-earth Chinese peasants; by Madame Chiang Kai-shek’s autobiographical sketch of a brave, patient and staunch Christian Chinese lady; and by Lin Yutang’s Norman Vincent Pealish homilies on ‘‘the importance of living.’’ The fact of military alliance and the participation of Chinese-Americans in the war effort led to the overnight repeal of the Exclusion Act and the relinquishing of American extraterritoriality in China. As for the nasty Jap enemy, the Nisei on the west coast were rounded up and confined behind barbed wire, many beyond the duration of the war. The sudden and unprecedented right to enjoy citizenship and the opening of previously closed occupational and educational doors gave many, like Rose Hum Lee, reason to believe that the ‘‘conditions favouring total integration’’ were well nigh at hand. The Chinese who waver between partial or total integration should assess their own emotional, psychological and social tendencies, and make their own adjustments to the realities of the times. The China which their parents or elders held up to them is no more. Those who are China-oriented should be helped to look forward, not backward.85

Demographic changes reflected the new optimism. Whereas San Francisco Chinatown of 1940 embraced the majority of the city’s Chinese-Americans (72%), outward movement to other parts of the metropolis dramatically reduced the figure to less than half (41%) by 1950. Ten years later, five years before the radical changes in federal immigration policy, only 23% were in Chinatown proper. The Korean Conflict created a momentary uneasiness but the image of the admirable coolie–assimilable alien prevailed.86 Chinatown, in the meantime, became an inducement for white America to make seasonal tourist sojourns, to visit the exquisite Shangri-La on American soil run by grateful celestials for the pleasure of Kind Sir. Withdrawal behind the exotica of glorious docility had proven to be an economically viable proposition – the white stereotypes of the Chinese were now marketable items. With the fascination that accrues from the separation of groups over time and the warming thought of Chinese as faithful compatriots in war, America rediscovered its previous craze for sinophilic faddism. Flecks of tinsel culture were consumed – mah jong, chop suey, chow mein, lanterns, teakwood chairs, firecrackers, azaleas, wisterias, chopsticks, fans, wooden puzzles, dime store porcelain and kites. Although the parent culture of the foreign-born remained strong, and the native-born enmeshed themselves in fetishistic soul-searching about the ‘‘marginal man,’’ the promotion of Chinatown as an extension of the Far East was a move which represented not so much a conscientious attempt to ‘‘preserve the heritage’’ as it did a method for survival. And, as far as white Americans were concerned, nothing Chinese could go wrong. The ghetto was 55

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good for the urban economy – hotels, airlines, restaurants, night clubs and convention-based businesses all had a piece of the action. The insulation of the protective stereotype worked only too well, however. Asked to be left alone, the Chinese became encapsulated and deprived themselves of the resources of the larger society. The white man or Lo Fan had been told that they could ‘‘take care of their own,’’ and he gladly accorded respect to the self-sufficient celestials who found it so unthinkable to burden their own home country with problems. Another critical factor that ensured entrapment for many was the fear of detection. ‘‘Paper sons’’ who had entered the country illegally87 were fearful of having their status disclosed, which very often guaranteed deportation. One did not seek help, therefore, from public welfare. Nor could mistreatment by whites or unscrupulous Chinese employers be reported. Lacking the social consciousness that once propelled the Chinese to sue for public school desegregation (an ironic contrast with the anti-busing sentiment of recent vintage!), levy strikes and boycotts against formidable white opposition, and mount protests and even armed self-defense against racistic injustices, inscrutable Chinatown hid the existence of festering community problems. Responsibility and blame for any and all problems were absorbed in order to keep whites at a distance, but the narrowed conception of pao-tia – looking after one’s own immediate relations or personal well-being only – kept Chinese America from moving collectively to resolve its social ailments.88 Those growing up during the years of a very favorable image were kept ignorant of the past. The order of the day was to work hard, make as much money as possible, and get the hell away from the rats and the cockroaches. There were two main second-generation, native-born groups – one born during the Twenties and the Thirties, the other during the ‘‘baby boom’’ following the end of World War II. Because each did grow up during ‘‘favorable’’ years, when social and economic escape valves suddenly materialized with a positive shift in imagery, they entertained more fantasies about the possibilities of unprecedented opportunities in the larger society than the ‘‘realistic’’ indigents of the ghetto who experienced little or no mobility. The ‘‘acculturated’’ escapees discovered the undeniable benefits of the positive stereotype. The notion of the quiet, industrious, reliable Chinaman, the Chinaman who was good with quantitative skills (‘‘They make damn good accountants, clerks and engineers’’), paid off. Prospects of living away from congested apartment units with common kitchens and thoughts of not being condemned to follow in the footsteps of one’s predecessors (‘‘My father cooked and washed in a restaurant for 25 years’’) justified the turning of ethical sensibilities to one side in the face of racistic treatment. If Burlingame does not sell me house, I’ll move on to San Mateo. If the University of California Medical School has filled its hidden quota for Oriental applicants, I’ll try again next year or go to Utah State. If I do not ‘‘make it’’ out there in the world beyond Chinatown, especially when the iron is hot, I have only myself to blame. 56

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Lacking any awareness of the direction his generational group was traveling, the college-bred native-born became convinced that discriminatory barriers were down or, if not entirely lowered, on their last leg. He could not help but feel this when his own personal experiences affirmed the truth of the conviction. Of course, some – particularly those who went through their teen years during the middle and late Thirties – were well aware of the tenuous nature of the image. Things could go wrong if someone were to ‘‘rock the boat’’ and ‘‘make the Chinese look bad.’’ One, therefore, simply toed the line, minded his own business (took care of his own), and made as big a fortune as possible . . . and brought up his kids in the same way.

The Psychological Impairment of Chinese America I am a Chinese and I am an American. I’m proud to be both. Helen Lee (graphic designer) Culturally I will always be a Chinese. Fred Wu (statistician)89 Chinese-American collegian (in button-bedecked field jacket, orange-colored shades and long hair): ‘‘Sheet, man, y’all a jive-ass Uncle Tong. Them racist honkey muddafuckahs done worked yore mind over, man! D’you dig the shit that’s comin’down, man?’’ Chinese-American adult (in Brooks Brothers suit): ‘‘Young fellow, if I were to close my eyes, I would swear you were a black.’’ Collegian: ‘‘Sheet, man, if I closed my eyes, I’d say I was talking to a white.’’ (Incident at a conference) We are confronted with a growing amount of work in being alert for ChineseAmericans and others in this country who would assist Red China in supplying needed material for promoting Red Chinese propaganda. J. Edgar Hoover (Director, FBI)

Ignorance or denial of his rural Cantonese peasant-laborer lineage – and the 150year experience of his predecessors on these shores – kept the Chinese-American trapped behind constrictive, deadening variations of the ‘‘Chink’’ stereotype. Imported to America and reactivated for its functional and adaptive value, the survival psychology of ‘‘meek and mildness’’ solidified and, in its all-toosuccessful response to total repression by white racism, became embedded in the Chinese-American psyche as a permanent identity. Two illusory elements attributable to the ‘‘positiveness’’ of the image sealed this transformation: the stereotype was synonymous with the aristocratic ‘‘heritage’’ of the privileged scholar-official class in China (‘‘We are from an old, sophisticated and highly cultured civilization in the Far East’’), and a cause-and-effect relationship was 57

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perceived between the stereotype and worldly success (‘‘Be humble, dignified, quiet and industrious and you will do well’’). Sensitivity to the precarious nature of the image, which was always subject to change with historical circumstance, upheld the Chinese-American’s need to continually blot out his own history,90 and hence, his own existence. In the years before the tumult and exhilaration of black-inspired civil rights activism – and even now – the stereotype bore a remarkable resemblance to such earlier black slave images as Uncle Remus, Aunt Jemima, Buckwheat and Stepin Fetchit. While he was not exactly identical with them, the Chinese-American was not found wanting for submissiveness, loyalty and an adorable childishness.91 White and Yellow Chinkism The identity alternatives created by this meshing of stereotype with psyche are two: the Chinese-American is either to be ‘‘Chinese’’ or ‘‘American’’ or, in some fashion, ‘‘the best of both.’’ Driven by a vague sense of continuity with something ‘‘great’’ dating back to the dawn of history,92 the Perpetual Mandarin or Yellow Chink stuffs his living room with teak and antique vases, plays the expert commentator on ancient customs and the ‘‘state of China today,’’ and forces his children to learn Chinese. He is never quite certain of what the Unbroken Tradition really is, but life somehow is incomplete without it. If need be, his kids must stomach constant doses of the stuff, like cod liver oil. Remarked one housewife in the Diamond Heights district of San Francisco, ‘‘Chinese school is good for the children. They’ll learn! We did.’’93 Straining for acceptance by whites, the Banana or White Chink goes out of his way to obliterate all traces of a ‘‘noticeable accent’’ and expends superhuman amounts of energy to prove he is ‘‘just as good as Lo Fans.’’ He may even send his children to the finest all-white private schools and exhibit disgust at the sight of blacks moving into the neighborhood. Finally, the Chinese-American trying to wear both hats at once finds himself caught in a vicious dilemma. To guard against not being Chinese enough, he forces his children to learn Chinese and yet will feel uncomfortable about close association with the ‘‘foreign immigrants’’ in Chinatown. On the other hand, this type wants to be regarded as being as American as the next fellow but may experience self-consciousness and be accused of pretensions if his behavior becomes too much like that of Lo Fans. All the while, lack of confidence in his own facility with Chinese and English refrains him from prolonged verbal exchange with relatives and with the white world. The net result of this cultural schizophrenia is unmistakable even if it is not always readily observable: self-contempt and self-hatred.94 To blunt the sting of these emotional quandaries, the native-born developed separate institutions – churches, political clubs, social-charity organizations – that were quasiwhite as well as ‘‘Chinese’’ in appearance, thereby covering over the reality of a cultural anomaly. Native-born middle-class Chinese Americans drive for miles every Sunday to return to Chinatown for church activities; Chinese-American 58

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Democratic and Republican clubs provide for their members a sense of active involvement in the political processes of the larger community. The so-called identity crisis, belabored to death by hack writing and glib rhetoric, simply refers to that growing number among acculturated (but never assimilated) native-born Chinese-Americans who cannot accept the alternatives of this ‘‘either–or’’ syndrome. Youth trapped in the ghetto with no life alternatives at all seldom speak of such a predicament, which would refute the universality behind the anthropoligically naive observation by psychoanalyst Erik Erikson that young adolescents are always confronted with inevitable ‘‘identity’’ problems.95 The self-fulfilling prophecy The positive stereotype, in addition, contains a self-validating mechanism which serves to keep Chinese-Americans encased in a limited number of occupations. At the initial stage of this ‘‘self-fulfilling prophecy,’’96 Chinese-Americans went into low-level clerical and technical work in order to avoid direct competition with whites. Once they performed well, thanks in large measure to the obsession to be the ‘‘best damned workers around,’’ the positive image was reinforced. These then became established as fields in which Chinese-Americans just ‘‘naturally’’ excelled. And parents pushed their offspring into accounting, engineering, drafting and clerical work, since Chinese-Americans were wanted in these ‘‘proven’’ fields, causing the process to run full cycle. Status-hungry (or just plain hungry) Asian-Americans, gratified at the ‘‘much improved position’’ of assimilable aliens who had to earn and prove their worth in their own homeland, became what one student has called ‘‘math and science freaks,’’ ‘‘even eating their meals with slide rules.’’ While 14% of San Francisco’s population is Chinese-American, only 4.3% of the city’s 19,261 civil service employees are of Asian descent.97 Of this number (834), Asian-Americans are confined, for the most part, to clerical jobs, ‘‘or limited to only selected departments, such as accounting and engineering.’’98 Most of the better paying jobs and positions of power are occupied by whites. Minority employees, moreover, are rarely found in appointive office. They are, instead, ‘‘in the Controller’s Office, Library, Public Health and Public Works, indicating Chinese preference, not by choice, but by necessity.’’99 Federallyfunded programs administered by the mayor’s office – Model Cities, Office of Aging, Office of Youth Affairs, Manpower Coordination – do not have ChineseAmerican staff personnel. There are, to be sure, two Chinese-American clerktypists on Mayor Alioto’s staff. Frank A. Quinn, regional director of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, admitted: A pattern I have noticed in other industries as well is the greater utilization of Oriental women, mostly clerical workers. I recall once that an employer asked me if I could find him a ‘‘good Japanese or Chinese girl’’ for his secretary because 59

Ben R. Tong after all the secretary, as he put it, was the office wife and Oriental women have been trained to be subservient to the man in the home and therefore would make good secretaries. . . . Another point about the insurance industry, another stereotype about Orientals is that they are very good with figures and make excellent accountants. There may be a higher proportion of accountants and technicians among Orientals than among other ethnic groups, but I suspect that if so, it is a function of the positive stereotype in that parents will move their children to this kind of activity, and it is not a function of an inherent biological gift. . . . in my opinion the major barrier that Orientals face is not the need for training but is discrimination based on race and national ancestry.100

The earning power of Asian-Americans, furthermore, is not up to par with the incomes commanded by white Americans, when both groups are matched in terms of comparable levels of educational attainment. According to Harry Kitano and Roger Daniels: . . . Japanese-Americans and . . . Chinese Americans have become more white than the majority, if by white we mean highly educated, middle-class persons. Despite all these achievements, however, the census data demonstrate conclusively that Chinese and Japanese are still discriminated against. . . . Although (they) . . . are better educated than California’s white population, they do not have the income usually associated with advanced education. Although college graduates are 11 percent more likely to be found among Japanese males than among white males, and 24 percent more frequent among Chinese males, white men make considerably more money. For every $51 received by a white Californian, Japanese get $43 and Chinese $38. If we look at the very well off, the imbalance is even greater. A white man’s chances of achieving an annual income of $10,000 or more are 78 percent better than those of a Chinese and 57 percent better than those of Japanese.101

Affirmation of self through negation Another irreparable damage rendered by the acceptance of demeaning racial stereotypes is the truncation of one’s own humanity. Psychiatrist Frantz Fanon wrote of this phenomenon in his works on the blacks of Martinique and French Algeria: ‘‘In the man of color there is a constant effort to run away from his own individuality, to annihilate his own presence.’’102 This is because in a white world, to be human is to be white. Technology, for example, could not be trusted by the colonized of pre-revolutionary Algeria, for one’s identity was defined by denial of that which was associated with the white colonizer. The radio could not be part of the native Algerian’s world, at least not before the revolution (which ultimately gave it an entirely different status and meaning). These metallic, cutting, insulting, disagreeable voices (from the radio) all have for the Algerian an accusing, inquisitorial character. . . . it is the voice of the oppressor, the voice of the enemy. The speech delivered is not received, deciphered, under60

Chinese American Historical Psychology stood, but rejected. The communication is never questioned, but is simply refused, for it is precisely the opening of oneself to the other that is organically excluded from the colonial situation. Before 1954, in the psychopathological realm, the radio was an evil object, anxiogenic and accursed.103

Similarly, segments of the black community in the United States have maintained something of an anti-intellectual tradition on the premise that the life of the mind of ‘‘booking’’ is a white characteristic. To be articulate and learned is to be white.104 Since the Lo Fan has appropriated that part of human experience associated with ‘‘outspokenness,’’ the Chinese-American, by the same logic of racistic self-denial, defines himself in terms of a dignified silence. Responding to a young native-born writer’s aggressive remarks concerning the complacency of his community, a Chinese-American housewife of Sunnyvale, California, exclaimed: You say Chinatown is too closed. Yes, it is crowded. So we sent our sons and daughters to be doctors, lawyers, engineers, pharmacists, so they can get out of Chinatown. You say that is not enough. OK. I will go tell Mrs. Hong to get her son to take English major like you. So he can go out make, as you say, self expression, and tell the Lo Fan who he really is. I know who he is. He is Mrs. Hong’s son who gets a B average and wants to work in the Post Office. . . . You say we are all geniuses and should not sit in ‘‘nothing jobs’’ and must express ourselves. Good. Is expressing ourselves a virtue? This is a Lo Fan’s obsession and you say we must be like him not be ourselves. . . . Ah, yes, we have problems, problems right here in the City, in Chinatown. Doesn’t everybody? We need solutions. Ah . . . you say the solutions lie in emulating the Lo Fan, more aggressive, more self-expression, more artistic. You are also very concerned about the blacks, should we also emulate them? You do not like us to remain Chinese. . . . ?105

Sitting quietly in the back of the classroom and grubbing for high grades on multiple-choice, true–false exams, many a young Chinese-American stifles the development of his own mental capacities. According to a growing body of psychiatric research: Lack of confidence, and fear of appearing aggressive, usually interfere with critical thinking. Timidity in voicing ideas can prevent organizing them sufficiently to arrive at intelligent conclusions. Any personality trait that hampers the use of mental capacities tends to limit . . . (the) functioning (of intelligence).106

Acceptance of white America’s stereotypic descriptions has led the ChineseAmerican to feel that he cannot speak for himself. His experiences are valid only if they are validated by whites. Since one’s English is not ‘‘good enough’’ and Chinese, if erroneously claimed as ‘‘our native tongue,’’ is unintelligible, objections have seldom been raised to insulting commercial images, white versions of 61

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Chinese-American language, and the portrayal of the ghetto as an Oriental carnival of nocturnal mysteries. Rose Hum Lee’s judgment of Chinese American behavior during the early decades of the century still applies today: . . . no person of Chinese ancestry wrote refuting or substantiating the beliefs held by Americans. They had to rely on friendly Americans to defend them.107

Ethnic awareness: the lack of viable models With the shattering of the most cherished assumptions of American middle class culture in the face of racial turmoil, Vietnam, university complicity in defense research, and environmental pollution, white youngsters sought new meaning in ‘‘life styles’’ to be found in ‘‘counter cultures’’ and political radicalism. Young blacks, in like manner, rejected the WASP mythology and, in place of the old black stereotypes of groveling servitude, anchored their identities in a host of new and dynamic models: Martin Luther King, Eldridge Cleaver, Bill Cosby, Huey Newton, Malcolm X, Angela Davis, Jim Brown and others. These forces have thrown the inadequacies of the ‘‘meek-and-mild’’ stereotype into sharp relief, causing long-suppressed emotions and attendant ‘‘identity problems’’ to surface. Wrote one native-born Chinese-American student, in response to being thoroughly shaken up by an Asian-American Studies instructor: I’m writing this out of desperation and anger because like you said I’m a PHONY. Sure I know it, I’ve known it all along but it took what happened yesterday to prove it to myself. What do you think school has been for me? It’s been one big pain in the ass. I’m a Chinese American and one of those stereotype dummies you’ve been talking about all semester. Ever since first grade I’ve been kissing up to every goddamn teacher to get myself that grade and a goddam pat on the back. And what have I accomplished and what have I to show for it? It’s got me my grades sure, but its turned me into a spineless, empty, apathetic worm . . . I’m a phony like 95% of all the Chinese in this city. My friends are phonies and bigots and so am I. My whole childhood was spent among whitewashed kids in a whitewashed community . . . Yesterday I sat back and let you yell at me like the stereotype I am. Why? Because I was afraid I would get an F for sure. Now I don’t care goddamn it. If you feel I deserve an F then give me one. Just let me say one thing; you’re the first teacher who’s ever spoken to me in such a manner and I was pretty much stunned. Yeah, I was shocked but you’ve gotta understand one thing, that when you deal with Asian Americans most of them will be like me, fairly studious, quiet and pretty much apathetic. They’ll also be hiding their apathy behind such well known sayings as ‘‘What do you want me to do about it?’’ or by displaying big emotional scenes about how it hurts them to see their own people suffer so. . . . The friends I made at schools (in the past) were all Asians and all were in some way prejudiced. I spent most of my childhood around the Larkin and Jackson area. We just moved out here to the avenues about 4 years ago. The only times I went to Chinatown was to eat like a tourist. I still have the same attitude today. I don’t like to associate with the Chinese immigrants, I don’t speak 62

Chinese American Historical Psychology Cantonese and I never gave a helping hand to aid my people or the Chinatown community. In other words I’m a banana. All my life I’ve been a selfish son-of-abitch; everything I did, I did for myself. . . .

Another student in the same class expressed, in a steadier narrative, a similar metamorphic struggle with the requirements of the image: I was born and raised in San Francisco. I lived in a flat above a store in Chinatown for 13 years. In 1968 I moved into a flat in the Richmond District with my family. My parents were in the Chinese pastry/noodle business. I practically grew up in the store beneath the flat. We had breakfast, lunch, and dinner there. As a child, it was really an astounding experience to be away from the store, or even Chinatown for that matter. Chinese, especially my parents, tend to center their lives in work. . . . Since my parents were first generation Chinese in America, they made it a rule for all their children to attend Chinese school. I went to St. Mary’s, and lived six years of misery memorizing something I didn’t understand at all. The Chinese I speak I learned in the home. I speak enough to communicate, but not enough to translate an income tax return [presumably for her parents]. . . . My parents kept telling me to stay from people of other races, but I defied their warnings. I found that I had a lot of fun learning from other people. . . . My parents brought me up to be a very righteous person. There were many strict and old-fashioned Chinese rules and regulations, do’s and don’ts. This hindered my personal friendships and social activities I may have had. They emphasized the fact that the only way to survive in this world is to work. I found this to be pretty much true whether it be for school grades or for extra money. . . . I live up to the Oriental stereotype of being quiet. I wasn’t always quiet. I think I ‘‘quieted down’’ in about the ninth grade when I started thinking to myself. It’s hard for me not to be quiet now. I have the feeling that I might be this way for the rest of my life. I have found it easy to express myself in music or in dance, but I still have trouble with words. . . .

More viable models for Chinese-American young people have made themselves available in the form of black personages who represent a broader spectrum of possibilities than the meek-and-mild stereotype. Asked to name an ‘‘individual of recent times who embodies the values and qualities you admire most,’’ students in the present writer’s study of Chinese-American high schoolers listed such figures as Malcom X, Martin Luther King and Huey Newton. Only one respondent out of thirty-four mentioned a Chinese-American, Herb Lee, a local policeman. (It is also interesting to note that San Francisco Chinese-American high school males, especially the native-born, tend to exhibit a constant wardrobe of black jackets and black denim trousers. No other group, white or third world, appears to dress in this fashion.) The deficiencies of the positive image and the attractiveness of black styles are best revealed, perhaps, in this student’s autobiographical sketch: I was raised in the Fillmore District which is almost all bloods. I went to a all blood elementary school which was cool for me because the teachers there liked 63

Ben R. Tong the Asian kids because we were quiet and did our work not the like the bloods who were loud and hardly did any work. At around 3rd grade I began to act a little different. I would talk back to teachers, I didn’t give a shit what they tried to do to me, to stop me from expressing my feelings. The one thing I still remember was when one day a teacher told me to do something and I didn’t understand what she said, she just started getting on me and yelling and carrying on. I said something back to her and all of (a) sudden she said, ‘‘Why don’t you be quiet and sweet like the rest of the Chinese people?’’ This really tripped me out because no one had ever said anything like that to me. . . . In about 1966 or 67 the Black Panther Party came out and all the bloods had Black Panther buttons, they started to get leather coats like the Panthers, and they were talking about Black Power and all that shit. I thought to myself why don’t some Chinese guys start a Party and have Chinese guys talk about Yellow Power and things. Soon after that Leway came out with the unity button, the Yellow Power button with a hand holding a pair of chopsticks, and there were also the Yellow Peril buttons. I thought we was going to get the Yellow Power thing on. Like it was badder when George Woo and Wah Chings made the front of the newspaper. Then the Red Guards [originally patterned after the Panthers] came out in ’68 or 69 and I thought they’ll be bad like the Panthers but this was not so, but I feel that the Yellow Revolution will soon come. When I mean the Yellow Revolution it means that the Yellow people will all unite and start taking what belongs to us. . . . Sometimes I says to myself ‘‘Are you Chinese or not.’’ Like I eat Chinese food, talk Chinese, went to Chinese school, go to Chinese movies, but am I really Chinese? Like I never thought about Chinatown and the problems the people have there. I never joined any clubs or organization to help the people in Chinatown. As a matter of fact I don’t even go near Chinatown.

The Image and the Perpetuation of the Ghetto The damage wrought by living behind the stereotype is not limited to individual egos. The Chink mentality is also actively imposed by its chief adherents on the impoverished and destitute of Chinatown: ‘‘Work hard, mind your own business and you’ll make it. I had to do that and so should you.’’ When impatient young foreign-borns resist the formula – one stated, during a disillusioning search for work, ‘‘I knew I would have to start at the bottom of the employment ladder, but I had no idea that the bottom rung was so far underground’’ – the admonitions from those who did make it the ‘‘hard way’’ are immediate and odious. Declared one A. A. Hom in angry response to Chinese-American student protest over Chinatown conditions, . . . how many of these ladies who used to work in sweat shops are now owners of valuable properties and parents of college-educated, ungrateful, empty-headed ‘‘revolutionaries’’?108 64

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The invidious exhortations from established Chinese-Americans are predicated on three considerations: (1) A limited number of quiet and industrious ones did and will continue to ‘‘make it,’’ thus keeping the success prophecy alive; (2) sensitivity to the ever-present possibility of an adverse shift in the image sustains the fear among the ‘‘Haves’’ or ‘‘Have-a-Little-Want-Mores’’ that what little they have achieved might be taken away; and (3) the perversity of establishment reasoning insists that the present generation must begin at the level of dish washers and boot lickers because the latter are not to be exempt from taking their share of abuse reserved for all Chinese. With this kind of thinking, community leadership is discouraged from emerging and problems continue to be denied and covered up. Caged in a claustrophobic world of dingy, substandard matchbox apartments, the elderly suffer the quiet desperation of isolation and neglect. The immigrant young, frustrated at every turn in their feverish search for a decent existence, explode in sporadic anger, straining an unstable social fabric already torn at countless points by the consistent and systematic denial of the most basic human needs. Those in the middle income brackets continue to content themselves with the narcissistic pursuit of the American Dream in the few niches to be had in small businesses and clerical-technical jobs, their meager share being ‘‘more than what any Chinese-American has a right to expect.’’ The Chinatown establishment, providing enlightened leadership conspicuous for its absence, remains implanted on its haunches, with real estate valued at $35 million and an agenda for community improvement that includes exorbitant rents, a high-rent highrise Mandarin Towers, $75,000 moongates, and $1.5 million wax museums. Schools continue to whitewash ‘‘the leaders of tomorrow’’ by persisting in their pitch about the ‘‘minority’s that’s moved up.’’ Only a small percentage of them has been on welfare or in trouble with the law. . . . Chinese-Americans have succeeded because of strong family ties . . . . self-confidence, hard work, and racial pride . . . . the lack of prejudice against them has done much. Not everyone agrees on the reasons for their success. But success they certainly have achieved. In doing so, they have managed to overcome many obstacles – poverty and prejudice, among them . . . . (Source: Junior Scholastic, May 2, 1969.)

The assimilable aliens remain frozen out of most of the occupations, the labor unions and elective and appointive political positions. Native-born students, biding their time before eventual entry into the tiny Chinese corners of the corporate-civil service labor force and the Good Life, wail profundities about the loss of identity and the need to ‘‘get back to the people.’’ Above it all, the establishment therapist recommends finding self pride in immediate circumstance. The sickness of Chinese America, however, is not to be treated by psychotherapy. Something else is required. Something of a radical political nature that has yet to be seriously considered. 65

Ben R. Tong Notes and References 1 See, e.g., Stanley L. M. Fong, ‘‘Identity Conflicts of Chinese Adolescents in San Francisco,’’ in Eugene B. Brody, ed., Minority Group Adolescents In The United States (Baltimore: Williams and Wilkins, 1968), 111–32. 2 Melford S. Weiss, ‘‘Interracial Romance: The Chinese-Caucasian Dating Game,’’ a paper delivered at the Southwestern Anthropological Association Conference, Las Vegas, Nevada (April 5, 1969). This was later retitled ‘‘Selective Acculturation and the Dating Process: The Pattern of Chinese-Caucasian Interracial Dating’’ and published in the Journal Of Marriage And Family 32(2), (May 1970). 3 Weiss cited, e.g., the instance of a Chinese-American female student who posted a sign on her dormitory door which read: ‘‘WANTED . . . A NON-CHINESE AMERICAN – OF CHINESE DESCENT!’’ ibid., 7. 4 Rf. Allport’s essay in Rollo May, ed., Existential Psychology (New York: Random House, 1961), 99. 5 Cf. Jerome Agel, The Radical Therapist (New York: Ballantine Books, 1971), x–xi: ‘‘The therapist touts himself as a magician. But he doesn’t follow through. Instead of allying himself to the tradition of soul healing (witch, witch doctor, GP, priest), he allies himself to the status quo – and bolsters it. He sells his skill like a vendor of fried chicken. He uses his prestige to discredit and slur social protest, youth, women’s liberation, homosexuality, and any other different kind of behavior. Therapists’ rewards come from helping the system creak on. Claiming to be ‘detached and clinical,’ therapists never are. They can’t be. Their words and acts demonstrate their bias. Current therapy’s emphasis on the individual cools people out and/or puts them down. It cools them out by turning their focus from society that fucks them over to their own ‘hang-ups.’ It puts them down by making them ‘sick’ people who need ‘treatment’ rather than oppressed people who must be liberated.’’ 6 Cf. 45–6: ‘‘We do not believe that assimilation necessarily involves hatred for self. The Marginal Man can try to assimilate without derogating the Chinese once he feels secure in saying that he is a Chinese American. Like the Marginal Man, the Asian-American is assimilating in many ways. Once the Asian-American’s identity is firmly rooted, the ‘Banana’ will be less threatening and less an object of scorn.’’ 7 See 46: ‘‘Aspects of . . . racism place Chinese-Americans under greater emotional distress than members of the host society. When these sources of stress become too great, mental health problems are frequently the result.’’ Cf. p. 37: ‘‘ . . . it is beyond the scope of this paper to analyze racism, . . . (which) can be individual and institutional.’’ 8 Betty Lee Sung, Mountain Of Gold (New York: Macmillan, 1967), 7. 9 I am grateful to my colleagues, Frank Chin and Jeffery P. Chan, for providing me with this reference. 10 The only systematic attempt to date has been a syllabus turned out by Thomas Chinn, Philip Choy and Him Mark Lai of the Chinese Historical Society of America: A History Of The Chinese In California (San Francisco: Chinese Historical Society, 1969). The Consolidated Asian-American Resources Project of the Asian American Studies Department at San Francisco State College is currently developing materials in oral history, creative writing and film which will be aimed at capturing the sensibility and the variety of expressions through which it has manifested itself. The going has been rough for lack of funds. 11 Franz Schurman and Joseph Levenson, China: An Interpretive History (Berkeley: University of California, 1969), 85. 12 Arthur F. Wright, The Confucian Persuasion (Stanford, 1960), 4. 13 Alfred Doeblin, ‘‘Virtue and Leadership,’’ in A. Jeff Tudisco, ed., Confucianism And Taosim (San Francisco: Field Educational Publications, 1969), 10. English translation of an original text.

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Ibid., 16–17. Ibid., 17. Ninian Smart, The Religious Experience Of Mankind (New York: Scribner, 1969), 149. Ibid., 150. ‘‘The scholar-officials and their state found in the Confucianist doctrine an ideology that suited them perfectly . . . . in Han times, shortly after the foundation of the empire, it became a state doctrine. The virtues preached by Confucianism were exactly suited to the new hierarchical state: respect, humility, docility, obedience, submission, and subordination to elders and betters.’’ This, argues sinologist Etienne Balazs, was the key to Chinese history. Capitalism, the buds of which ‘‘most certainly did exist in China,’’ ‘‘never came to flower’’ because of ‘‘the continued existence of the scholar-officials’ centralized, hierarchical, and bureaucratic state.’’ The peasant, unlike the serf of medieval, pre-capitalistic Europe, was not able to ‘‘take refuge in free towns under the protection of . . . (an) autonomous bourgeoise.’’ See Etienne Balazs, Chinese Civilization And Bureaucracy: Variations On A Theme (New Haven: Yale University, 1964), especially the essay on ‘‘China as a Permanently Bureaucratic Society,’’ 13–33. Rf. also Schurmann and Levenson, op. cit., 89: ‘‘Han Confucianism was genuinely persuasive, a doctrine of stability appropriate to the staying power of the bureaucratic Han type of state . . . . Violence came, swept away dynasties, but never (until modern times) swept away ‘the system’ . . . . ’’ Dennis Bloodworth, The Chinese Looking Glass (New York: Dell, 1969), 109. Hans Gerth and C. Wright Mills, Character And Social Structure: The Psychology Of Social Institutions (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1964), 34. Wright, The Confucian Persuasion, 5. Ibid., 10. Ibid., 12–13. See also Robert Ruhlmann, ‘‘Traditional Heroes in Chinese Popular Fiction,’’ in the same anthology. Reischauer and Fairbank, East Asia: The Great Tradition (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1960), 374. Rf. also 373 and 375. Ibid. Ibid., 375. See reference to Hsu’s thesis in Gardner Murphy and Lois B. Murphy, ed., Asian Psychology (New York: Basic Books, 1968), 169–77. See, e.g., Francis L. K. Hsu, Americans And Chinese (New York: Doubleday, 1953); and Ch’u Chai and Winberg Chai, The Changing Society Of China (New York: New American Library, 1969). Gunther Barth, Bitter Strength: A History Of The Chinese In The United States, 1850–1870 (Cambridge: Harvard, 1964), 81. Stanford Lyman, Asian In The West (Reno: Desert Research Institute, 1970), 60. Ibid. Cited in Alexander Saxton, The Indispensable Enemy: Labor And The Anti-Chinese Movement In California (Berkeley: University of California, 1971), 104. Rf. also H. Mark Lai, ‘‘Chinese on the Land,’’ East/West, September 10, 1969: ‘‘The extent of their control (over truck gardening in the Los Angeles area) was demonstrated vividly in the winter of 1870–1879, when the Chinese went on strike in protest against some new and confining ordinances regulating vegetable peddlers. Many people of Los Angeles were deprived of vegetables for several weeks.’’ See, e.g., C. P. Fitzgerald’s China: A Short Cultural History, 541–6. Up until the collapse of the Manchu dynasty at the beginning of the [twentieth] century, the Confucian social system prevailed without a break for over 2,000 years. Its mechanism for change existed in the form of a military structure – consisting of a soldiery made up of conscripted peasants, social outcasts, hired mercenaries and bandit gangs, headed up by war lords – which stood parallel to the traditional social order and provided upward mobility for its constitutents when

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46 47 48 49 50

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dynasties were overthrown in the wake of periodic natural disasters that discredited the monarchy’s claim to rule with a ‘‘mandate from Heaven.’’ Rf. Shu-Ching Lee, ‘‘Administration and Bureaucracy: The Power Structure in Chinese Society,’’ Transactions Of The Second World Congress Of Sociology (Vol. II) (London: International Sociological Association, 1954), 3–15; and Hsiao-Tung Fei, ‘‘Peasantry and Gentry: An Interpretation: of Chinese Social Structure and Its Changes,’’ American Journal Of Sociology, 52 (1946): 1–17. See, e.g., Paul Jacobs and Saul Landau, To Serve The Devil, Volume II: Colonials And Sojourners (New York: Vintage, 1971), 106–7. See, e.g., C. Wright Mills, The Sociological Imagination (New York: Grove Press, 1959), chapter 8, especially 159–64. Rf. the Sues article, 36–7. See Kenneth A. Abbott, Harmony And Individualism: Changing Chinese Psychosocial Functioning In Taipei And San Francisco (Taipei: Orient Culture Service, 1970). Like anthropologist Francis Hsu, Abbott offers the simplistic and highly questionable dichotomous distinction between ‘‘situationally-oriented’’ Orientals and ‘‘individualistic’’ Americans, without ever considering the obvious contradictions in the contemporary Western obsession with ‘‘recovery of community’’ and the fact of ‘‘other-directed’’ corporate types. Even the first European settlers did not cross the western plains in separate covered wagons. Cultural values alone do not explain the differences that exist between human groups. Abbott gives lip service to the possible import of historical and situational factors but, like the Sues and so many others, does not deal with them directly and seriously with any scholarly conviction and finally clings to manifest ideological values as the most decisive determinant of modal personality. Rose Hum Lee, The Chinese In The United States Of America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1960), 140. The final outcome of the rationalistic cosmology has been suggested by E. E. Cummings’ poem, ‘‘Pity This Busy Monster, Poor Manunkind,’’ in which man cannot relate himself in any organic fashion to the rest of Creation. Fromm sees the end-result in the form of two ‘‘guiding principles’’ of modern industrial society: technological development as the foundation of ethics (i.e., what man can do has become synonymous with what he should do) and maximum output and efficiency as the ultimate goals of human progress. Erich Fromm, The Revolution Of Hope (New York: Harper and Row, 1968), 33–4. Sung, Mountain Of Gold, 3. Millie Robbins, ‘‘From Grief to Grievance,’’ San Francisco Chronicle, May 6, 1971. Rose Hum Lee, The Chinese In The United States Of America, 12. See Gunther Barth, Bitter Strength, chapter 6. Frederick M. Wirt, ‘‘Alioto and the Politics of Hyperpluralism,’’ Trans-Action, April 1970: 48. Consult the Institute for Governmental Studies at Denison University for information regarding Professor Wirt’s research on San Francisco politics. J. tenBroek et al., Prejudice, War and the Constitution: Causes And Consequences Of The Evacuation Of The Japanese Americans In World War II (Berkeley: University of California, 1968), 11–14. Chinn et al., A History Of The Chinese In California, 9. tenBroek, Prejudice, War and the Constitution, 338. Lyman, Asian In The West, 20. tenBroek, Prejudice, War and the Constitution, 18. Lyman, Asian in the West, 13. Economist Shien-Woo Kung lists these lowly occupations to have been the following: general labor, domestic service, cooking, gardening, carpentry, factory work, boot- and shoe-making, cigar manufacture, and clothing production. S. W. Kung, Chinese In American Life (Seattle: University of Washington, 1962), 67. Harold R. Isaacs, Images Of Asia (New York: Capricorn, 1956), 111. Before a special federal investigative committee, Charles Crocker, the industrial magnate responsible for importing

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52 53 54 55

56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70

71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79

80 81

thousands of Chinese laborers for railroad construction, testified that ‘‘if Chinese labor was driven out of this state . . . white laborers . . . would have to come down from the elevated classes of labor they are now engaged in and take the place of these Chinamen. . . . ’’ Roger Daniels and Harry Kitano, American Racism (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1970), 41– 2. In other words, the Chinese were valuable because the country was to have been built on their backs. Isaacs, Images of Asia, 112. Daniels and Kitano, American Racism, 36. Ibid., 40. Ibid., 38–9. Thus did the Chinese ‘‘contribute’’ to the development of a strong sense of solidarity in the labor movement in San Francisco, ultimately enabling the city to become the most highly unionized urban center in the country! Rf. also Lyman, Asian In The West, 21. Ibid., 37. Kung, Chinese In American Life, 67. Daniels and Kitano, American Racism, 38. Ibid., 41. Lyman, Asian In The West, 23. tenBroek, Prejudice, War, . . . , 16. Ibid., 15. Cited in ibid., 16. Ibid. Kwang-Ching Liu, Americans And Chinese: A Historical Essay And A Bibliography (Cambridge: Harvard, 1963), 24. Lyman, Asian in the West, 15. Liu, Americans and Chinese, 25–6. East/West, June 16, 1971. Isaacs, Images Of Asia, 112–13. During the construction of the transcontinental railroad in mid-1868, 2,000 Chinese who were ‘‘engaged in tunnel work in the high Sierras went on a strike.’’ They insisted on (a) a raise to $40, (b) a reduction in work hours (‘‘Eight hours a day good for white men, all the same good for Chinamen.’’), (c) an end to the practice by overseers of the company of whipping Chinese and restraining them from leaving for other jobs. Although the strike collapsed after a week for lack of support from other workers, it ‘‘so alarmed the railroad that they wired East for several thousand Negroes as replacement.’’ Chinn et al., A History Of The Chinese In California, 46. Isaacs, Images of Asia, 115–16. Ibid., 116. Carl Glick, Shake Hands With The Dragon (New York: Whittlesey House, 1941). Daniel Katz and Kenneth W. Braly, ‘‘Verbal Stereotypes and Racial Prejudice,’’ in Eleanor E. Maccoby et al., eds, Readings In Social Psychology (New York: Henry Holt, 1958). Ruth Holland, The Oriental Immigrants In America (New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1969), 30–2. Jacobs and Landau, To Serve The Devil: Volume II, 112. Ibid., 116. Fitzgerald, A Short Cultural History Of China, 547–8. Rf. also Isaacs, Images of Asia, 71. Liu, Americans And Chinese, 15–16, 18, 22, 25; Franz Schurmann and Orville Schell, Imperial China: The Decline Of The Last Dynasty And The Origins Of Modern China, 18th And 19th Centuries (New York: Vintage, 1967), 269–305. Jacobs and Landau, To Serve the Devil: Volume II, 115. Data drawn from Report Of The San Francisco Chinese Community Citizens Survey And Fact Finding Committee (H. J. Carle and Sons, 1969), frequently referred to as the ‘‘Baccari Report.’’

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Ben R. Tong 82 Dorothy Jones, The Portrayal Of China and India On The American Screen, 1896–1955 (MIT: Center for International Studies, October 1955), 24. 83 Isaacs, Images Of Asia, 117. 84 Cited from a syllabus written by Frank Chin for ‘‘Alienation and the Asian American,’’ a course offered in the spring of 1970 at University of California, Davis, 10. 85 Rose Hum Lee, The Chinese in the United States of America, 2. 86 At the time of mainland Chinese involvement in the Korean War, the long-suffering and inept Chinese took on a new look: He was now, for the first time in the American mind, a skilled warrior. Ghengis Khan with jets and missiles. The encounter with the ‘‘heartless gooks’’ summoned up again the dreaded specter of the Yellow Peril of old. This time, however, the threat to civilization and God’s chosen was not the undetectable bacterial epidemic of the late nineteenth century, the slow-killing oozing yellow tide in the night. Now America confronted the blatant, murderous aggression of the new Mongol hordes, a ‘‘human sea’’ of expendable suicidal lunatics who overran American positions on Pork Chop Hill through sheer vastness of numbers. Led by brutal, sadistic, democracy-hating leaders like Mao, the Red Menace was poised on the brink of wiping the US aggressors and their ‘‘imperialist running dogs.’’ Fortunately for the image, America needed the stereotype of a Good Chinaman – Chiang’s Taipei government became the last remaining vestige of the noble ally Chinese, dedicated to the eventual recapture of the mainland for democracy and freedom. Chinese-Americans, naturally, picked up the cue for survival and displayed proNationalist sentiments with unceasing patriotic gusto. Children in Chinese schools were made to learn and sing the Nationalist anthem, and pictures of Sun-yat sen and Chiang were exhibited, with the appropriate flags, at every opportunity. The Kuomintang, of course, had treated the Taiwanese as a conquered people and brutally put down an uprising in 1948 at the cost of 10,000 lives. But no matter, Chinese America had to put first things first. In time, the admirable coolie emerged again, in the form of the ‘‘poor yellow bastard’’ who wanted no part of Mao’s treacherous schemes for the enslavement of millions. Those who made their way over to Hong Kong were given the opportunity to emigrate to the United States, under the provisions of the Refugee Relief Act of 1953 and the Refugee Escape Act of 1957. 87 Immigration during the enforcement of the Exclusion Act (1882–1943) frequently took the form of ‘‘paper sons.’’ Citizenship could be claimed through birth since the United States Supreme Court had affirmed the qualification in 1898. Since the earthquake of 1906 destroyed San Francisco public records, many Chinese proceeded to claim that they had been born in the City by the Bay. Citizenship was then available for offspring in China during a sojourner’s infrequent visits home. This derivative citizenship was also possible for a son born abroad if the father had acquired American citizenship through legal entry before 1882 (only a few were able to do this) or after 1943. If a man did not sire a son on a trip home, he could still claim that he had. This created an available ‘‘slot’’ which was given or sold to anyone who wanted to emigrate under the assumed identity. Since they could not risk detection, many paper sons became slaving dependents in Chinatown, and, like their peasant-laborer forebears, became exploited by those of their kin running shops, restaurants and factories in the ghetto. 88 Those who did not escape the ghetto were caught in the jaws of poverty, their plight compounded by immigration reform in 1965 which repealed the previous National Origins Quota System, permitting up to 20,000 (instead of the previous 105) Chinese to enter each year. In that same year, when the ghetto was officially designated a ‘‘poverty target area’’ by the federal government, 41% of the families were earning less than $4,000 a year. Even before the huge influx of newcomers, the 1960 census had indicated that the average Chinese adult living in the core area of Chinatown had only 1.7 years of education. Little wonder that male unemployment was nearly twice that of the city’s average. Hidden behind the neonized Orientalia, the ghetto of ‘‘rotting lumber and crumbling stone’’ is second only to Manhattan as the most densely populated area in the nation, with 231

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89 90

91 92

93 94

95 96 97

98 99 100 101

persons per acre, in stark contrast to the citywide average of 33 per acre. Here exists the highest incidence of tuberculosis in the metropolis – nearly three times the city’s rate. The rate of suicide is nearly double that of the city’s, which has the dubious distinction of being roughly three times the national average. Local schools are miserably overcrowded, understaffed and unresponsive to the urgent need for bilingual education (83% of the teaching staff in the school system is white, while only 35% of the students are Caucasian) for a population which receives a 20% increase each year in non-English speaking school-age children. Chinese-Americans continue to be barred from ‘‘equal employment opportunity’’ in every field of work, whether connected with civil service, business, the professions or labor. The first three quotations were borrowed from Bridge Magazine, a bi-monthly publication of the Basement Workshop, Inc., New York. Depictions of opium dens and tong murders by the new Chinatown Wax Museum in San Francisco’s Chinatown prompted The Chinese Times to deplore, in a scathing editorial in March of 1971, the crass commercialism which exploited the vice and violence of old Chinatown. The editors of East/West did likewise. A group of students from City College condemned what they felt to have been ‘‘a confirmation of the old stereotype.’’ ‘‘While these scenes might have some historical basis, they are certainly not representative of Chinese people, particularly not the overseas Chinese.’’ . . . ‘‘As to the display of a tong murder, you . . . seem to be playing upon a stereotype which says that Chinese used to run around with hatchets killing each other [which they did indeed] . . . . the Tongs were organized to prevent the murder of many innocent Chinese [presumably by whites].’’ The obvious ignorance of historical fact requires no further elaboration. Rf. East/West, March 31, 1971. Rf. Esquire, November 1970, for a brief but colorful treatment of the history of changes in the black image. This compulsion is reinforced by institutions of the dominant culture, the most effective of which is probably the educational system. An endless succession of white teachers taught the Chinese-American to regard himself as the legatee of thousands of years of magnificent Cathay civilization. From a recent issue of East/West. In his essay, Stanley Fong (rf. footnote 1: ‘‘Identity Conflicts of Chinese Adolescents in San Francisco,’’ in Brody, Minority Group Adolescents In The United States) contends that this last type, who ‘‘accepts both cultures with undue conflict and doubt,’’ ‘‘has integrated the strands of two cultures’’ into a well-functioning personality. He, however, has not been studied by social scientists, confesses Fong, and the need exists ‘‘to determine how the identity conflicts of this (social type) . . . are resolved.’’ One wonders how Fong justifies the existence of this type in the first place. See Erik Erikson, ‘‘The Problem of Ego Identity,’’ in Maurice Stein, et al., eds., Identity And Anxiety: Survival Of The Person In Mass Society (New York: Free Press, 1960). This idea is borrowed from a concept developed by social philosopher George Herbert Mead. Fair Employment Practices Commission hearing (FEPC) transcript, December 10, 1970, 22. Available on request from the San Francisco, California FEPC office, 455 Golden Gate Avenue. East/West, June 9, 1971. FEPC hearing. Ibid., 37–8. Kitano and Daniels, American Racism, 80. From a larger perspective, whites and third world Americans, when compared in terms of family head’s education and family income, show a distinct disparity in median wages. On all levels of educational attainment, whites outearn third world people, the difference ranging anywhere from $1,000 to nearly $3,000 per annum. US Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstract Of The United States: 1969 (Washington, DC, 1969), 325.

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Ben R. Tong 102 Frantz Fanon, Black Skin/White Masks (New York: Grove Press, 1967), 60. 103 Frantz Fanon, A Dying Colonialism (New York: Grove Press, 1965), 88–9. 104 At the recent April 1971 convention of the Western Psychological Association, Stephen Rauch, chairman of the Psychology Department at San Francisco State, related a story about a black youngster who snuck into his office and requested a book that would provide him with insight on the motivations of his girl friend. All the while, the young man insisted on maintenance of the strictest secrecy, since any word of the transaction reaching his friends would result in instant embarassment and loss of status. With the appropriate volume tucked under his coat, the young man left Dr. Rauch’s office much in the same manner James Bond would sneak across the Iron Curtain on a super-spy mission. Rf. also J. E. Seigel, ‘‘On Frantz Fanon,’’ American Scholar (Winter 1968), 86: ‘‘Man (i.e., white man) is civilized, rational, (while) the Negro is primitive, genital.’’ 105 East/West, February 25, 1970. 106 Reported by a prominent psychiatrist, San Francisco Examiner, circa 1960. 107 Rose Hum Lee, Chinese In The United States, 362. 108 East/West, March 17, 1971.

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CHAPTER

THREE

Chinese-American Personality and Mental Health: A Reply to Tong’s Criticisms* Stanley Sue and Derald W. Sue

In their article on Chinese-American personality (Amerasia, July, 1971), Sue and Sue proposed a typological scheme of Chinese personality and analyzed the mental health problems. Tong (Amerasia, November, 1971) recently criticized Sue and Sue for having, among other things, a sexist orientation, little understanding of Chinese America, conceptually imprecise typologies, overconcern with the ‘‘psyche’’ as opposed to social and political forces, no novel suggestions for therapeutic approaches, support of a ‘‘meek-and-mild’’ position, and a view of Asian-American activities as debilitated creatures. In short, Tong accuses Sue and Sue of fostering elements of ‘‘lunacy’’1 and of holding ‘‘extremely dangerous’’2 views. The validity of his comments are more apparent than real. Tong typically uses verbal hit-and-run tactics that fail to withstand closer analysis. ASSERTION 1: For example, he implies that Sue and Sue are sexist since they designate the Marginal Man as a man (rather than, say, as a man and woman). REPLY: Admittedly, our analysis was more male than female oriented. It represents our greater familiarity with the personality of Chinese males rather than chauvinistic attitudes. Tong, unfortunately, failed to mention Sue and Sue’s acknowledgement that sex differences were not adequately handled in the analysis.3 He also fails to realize the bias in his own article. Instead of using the term ‘‘Marginal Man,’’ he substitutes the word ‘‘banana,’’ which seems to apply equally well to males and females. Throughout his discussion, however, he substitutes the masculine pronouns ‘‘he’’ for the banana4 and ‘‘he’’ and ‘‘his’’ *Stanley Sue and Derald W. Sue ‘‘Chinese-American Personality and Mental Health: A Reply to Tong’s Criticisms.’’ Amerasia Journal 1(4) (February 1972): 60–7. Reprinted by permission of Asian American Studies Center Press.

Stanley Sue and Derald W. Sue

for the Chinese American.5 Why exclusively use the masculine pronoun? Tong is obviously quite willing to find fault with Sue and Sue’s terminology, and yet, his own use of words suggest hypocrisy.

Gross Distortions Perhaps the most serious problem in Tong’s comments is in his construction of a ‘‘straw man’’ in characterizing Sue and Sue’s propositions. He inaccurately represents our position and then proceeds to destroy this flimsy position. His contentions, grounded on faulty assumptions, can be enumerated as follows: ASSERTION 2: Sue and Sue’s case histories all point to parental hangups as the source of mental health problems. REPLY: Where did Tong ever get this idea? In the case of Janet T., her parents were mentioned only once. (Her parents expressed objections to her white boyfriends.) Even in the other case examples in which conflicts arose between the students and their parents, the conflicts were viewed as differences in values. To say that the cases illustrated ‘‘parental hangups’’ is a gross misinterpretation. In addition, Tong ignores our statement that we know of parents who are as ‘‘Third World’’ as their AsianAmerican sons and daughters.6 ASSERTION 3: Sue and Sue view the Asian-American as suffering from the unhealthiness of intrapsychic conflicts and from left wing obsessions. REPLY: We did not suggest that Asian-Americans are unhealthy or obsessed. In another paper, it was argued that militancy is not due to some inner psychopathological defect.7 We do feel, however, that militancy can lead to obsessions. Asians are in a unique position. While Blacks probably face more overt forms of racism, Asians often encounter individual racism of a more subtle nature. They have typically responded to subtle forms of racism by ignoring the results. Many Asian-Americans now react angrily and aggressively to prejudice and discrimination, responses which we believe are necessary. However, it is not always clear whether the behavior of white individuals is motivated by racism. It is this ambiguity that often places Asians in a particularly uncomfortable position. Obsessions can occur when one attributes all feelings of rejection and discomfort to racism. ASSERTION 4: Sue and Sue’s expertise is limited to insight therapy. REPLY: First, we did not mention our mode of therapy. Tong apparently has a preconceived notion of our background. Neither of us is primarily insight oriented in our therapeutic approach. Second, Tong shows a distaste for insight and yet he never explains why. What is wrong with insight therapy for some Chinese clients? It is not wrong merely because Tong believes so. Third, we mentioned that community intervention is a valuable therapeutic orientation. This form of intervention cannot be equated with insight therapy. ASSERTION 5: The Traditionalist and the Marginal Man are strangely indistinguishable. Both are passive and find difficulty in admitting to racism. 74

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REPLY: In claiming that the Traditionalist and Marginal Man are indistinguishable, Tong fails to note the differences between the typological characters in terms of self worth, behaviors that arouse guilt, and attribution of blame for failure.8 Important differences were also mentioned in regard to the reasons behind the reaction to racism. The Traditionalist minimizes racism since he believes he can overcome the handicap by working hard; the Marginal Man ignores racism since he aspires to join White society. ASSERTION 6: Sue and Sue failed to carefully read the study by Weiss9 since the findings indicated that Chinese (1) males were not predisposed to pursuing White women and (2) females seemed as loyal to their parents as the Traditionalist. REPLY: The results of the study by Weiss were used to support the belief that many Chinese prefer ‘‘White’’ characteristics in their dating partners.10 This preference illustrated the rejection of Chinese characteristics – a mild form of self hate. The fact (which is debatable) that Weiss did not find Chinese males pursuing White females or Chinese females being disloyal to their parents is irrelevant and immaterial. Weiss did not specifically compare the dating patterns or loyalties of Traditionalists versus Marginal Man. Rather, his results were based on a large undifferentiated sample of Chinese students. How can Tong draw the conclusion that there were no differences in male dating patterns and female loyalty between the two types? In addition, what does Tong mean by ‘‘loyalty?’’ Surely those Chinese who are contemptuous of other Chinese as dating partners would be a source of consternation to traditional Chinese parents. Loyalty is determined not only be behaviors but also by attitudes. ASSERTION 7: Sue and Sue’s analysis fits squarely into the existing WASPoriented psychotherapy frame of reference which stands in need of overhaul. REPLY: This assertion exemplifies Tong’s appalling use of hit-and-run tactics. The labeling of Sue and Sue as WASP-oriented is prejudicial. We are unable to defend ourselves, since Tong never clearly defines what a ‘‘WASP’’ orientation is. If he objects to our use of clinical impressions, then he should demonstrate (1) how clinical data are WASP and (2) the inappropriateness of clinical impressions. On the other hand, if Tong finds the use of psychodynamic terminology offensive, he is contradictory. Tong himself uses words such as ‘‘projected self hate,’’11 ‘‘meek and mild syndrome,’’12 ‘‘psychic energies,’’13 and ‘‘total repression.’’14

Unreasonable Demands Tong takes Sue and Sue to task for not writing an ‘‘adequate’’ article. His assertions are summarized as follows: ASSERTION 8: Sue and Sue condemn psychotherapy but do not go beyond the mere stating of the problem. REPLY: Tong does not seem to disagree with our statement that psychotherapy is often geared for highly verbal, white 75

Stanley Sue and Derald W. Sue

middle-class individuals. His comment that we merely state the problem is simply untrue. Suggestions were made for modifying therapeutic approaches to meet the cultural experiences of Chinese-Americans. They included the need for more bilingual therapists, for changes in the process of psychotherapy, and for community intervention programs.15 Tong might find fault with our proposals; his statement, nevertheless, that we merely state the inadequacies of traditional psychotherapy is irresponsible. One wonders if Tong read the article with sufficient care. ASSERTION 9: There is little explanatory value in the typological scheme. REPLY: Tong does not understand the words ‘‘typology’’ and ‘‘conceptual scheme.’’ These terms are descriptive rather than explanatory. We made no claim to incorporate an explanatory analysis of the Traditionalist, Marginal Man and Asian-American. In fact, it was mentioned that the article would not specifically deal with the factors determining the typological characters.16 This is a question that would be best approached through empirical research. ASSERTION 10: There was no attempt to come to grips with the historical and institutional base of self contempt. REPLY: Of course, we did not adequately discuss the historical and institutional factors. It might be added that Sue and Sue also failed to analyze self hate from an economic, political, sociological, and anthropological orientation. The point is that our background is primarily in psychology. While we recognize the importance of various viewpoints, it would be self deceptive to believe that all points of view can be represented in one article. Tong’s requirements for an ‘‘adequate’’ article are that we (1) devise a novel and nonWASP-oriented form of therapy, (2) explain precisely why ChineseAmericans behave the way they do, and (3) become historians and sociologists in the analysis of self hate. We do not have the naivete nor the grandiose belief that such an article can be written. Tong’s own analysis of the Chinese personality in no way meets the same criteria that he imposes on Sue and Sue, as discussed later.

Meaningful Discussion As stated in the original article, our hope was to raise issues and stimulate thinking. We wanted to examine and conceptualize some of the conflicts encountered by Chinese-Americans. No claims were made to have perfected a comprehensive view; limitations were noted in the analysis. We did not expect complete agreement, and meaningful dialogue is often made possible by controversy and disagreement. On the other hand, criticisms based on distortion and the lack of critical thinking increase misunderstanding and demonstrate irresponsibility. Tong has done a far better job in criticizing what we did not say than he has done in critically evaluating what we did say. 76

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Self Pride: A Reanalysis In our previous article, it was stated that self pride can be found in the Traditionalist, the Marginal Man, and the Asian-American. Self pride has to be ultimately determined by the individual in his circumstance. Tong feels that our beliefs support a meek-and-mild position – a ‘‘banana’’ point of view. Again, Tong’s rhetoric serves to inflame rather than to examine the issue. We do not advocate finding self pride in a meek character. Our position is that pride must be defined individually. It is rather self righteous to suggest that Chinese must behave in a certain way in order to meet someone else’s notion of self pride. Missionaries occasionally made the mistake of believing that natives could not have self pride if the ‘‘heathens’’ ran around nakedly. By suggesting that Chinese cannot have self pride in being meek, Tong implies that he knows what self pride is, and is not, for others. Self pride is a moral-evaluative term which arouses strong emotions. We feel that moral terms have been frequently misused. Rather than to motivate through the use of such moral appeals, we believe in functional appeals. If one wants to motivate Asians to be less meek, one should demonstrate the effects of racism and the changes that can be made by adopting an assertive stance. But to tell Asians that they are meek and therefore cannot have self pride divides Asians and illustrates self righteousness.

Comments on the Ghetto of the Mind Tong offers a theoretical and historical perspective of the factors shaping the Chinese-American character. According to the analysis, Chinese-Americans descended from the peasant class. Their heritage of a meek-and-mild syndrome enabled them to survive in an oppressive society. The meek mentality was, at first, a facade – a survival mechanism to be activated at will. Later, this facade was transformed into an actual identity. Whites were fooled into believing that Chinese were super gracious and timid; and soon Chinese fooled themselves. With succeeding generations, Chinese-Americans thought they inherited characteristics of passivity and conformity. Eventually, these characteristics paid off. Chinese found that they could function in White society by taking a nonthreatening stance. Tong concludes by stating that the establishment therapist, with his ahistorical frame of reference, incorrectly perceives Chinese detachment and meekness as a traditional family value. Moreover, Chinese problems cannot be treated with psychotherapy. Rather, something of a radical-political nature has to be found. Tong’s general analysis is interesting but highly speculative. Since our expertise is not in history, our comments are limited to certain assumptions made in his analysis. First, Tong spends considerable time exploding the ‘‘myth’’ that Chinese-Americans descended from a scholarly, intellectually sophisticated class. 77

Stanley Sue and Derald W. Sue

He seems to be unaware of the fact that many Chinese-Americans already know that their ancestors were country peasants. DeVos and Abbott17 and Ling18 clearly point out the peasant background of the early Chinese immigrants. Second, Tong believes that the meek-and-mild syndrome was originally a facade. Chinese used this facade in order to survive. The ‘‘sly’’ Chinese merely fooled White society; they were not actually meek. These behaviors were used because oppression was undeniably present. There seems to be a logical inconsistency in these propositions. If one is not meek and mild, why would it be necessary to activate this facade in order to survive oppression? To be meek and unaggressive in order to survive, ipso facto, demonstrates an actual meekness. The notion that Chinese as defined by Tong found it necessary to use the defense mechanism of meekness destroys the argument that it was a facade. Third, let us assume that Tong is correct: somehow the facade of the Chinese changed into an actual identity. When did it occur? How did it happen? Were any Chinese immuned to this transformation? If so, why? Does the historical account of the meek syndrome sufficiently explain the personality of Chinese? Tong is fond of criticizing Sue and Sue’s analysis as inadequate, and yet he presents a rather weak and simplistic explanation of Chinese personality. Fourth, Tong feels that the view of the ‘‘traditional family’’ as being meek, conforming, and family oriented is inaccurate. The family did not originally possess these traits although they later became true characteristics. For example, let us imagine that individual A’s great grandfather was not really meek and mild. He merely used meekness as a survival mechanism. Later, individual A’s grandfather grew to actually believe Chinese were conforming and mild. He identified with these values and acted accordingly. Individual A’s father also grew to believe his own passivity and transmitted these values to A. Tong believes that this transformation of the meek syndrome into an actual identity has been inaccurately labeled as a characteristic of the family. That is, since meekness was not originally an identity, it cannot be properly called a traditional trait. We believe that passivity and meekness can be called a traditional characteristic of the family. Although it may not have been initially a part of the Chinese family (and this is argumentative), it is a ‘‘tradition’’ now. In the case of A, the ‘‘tradition’’ of meekness started with his grandfather; whether A’s great grandfather was a part of the ‘‘tradition’’ is irrelevant. The transmission of family values, if part of several generations, can be labeled a tradition. Fifth, Tong argues that the active life and the daring ventures of Chinese (mah jong parties, elaborate celebrations, and adventurous journeys) demonstrate their aggressiveness. What Tong fails to realize is that Chinese can be quite active among their own and also quite passive in response to White society. One can hardly find individuals who are passive and conforming in all situations. The boldness of many Chinese does not exclude them from being mild in White society. Sixth, Tong again castigates and stereotypes the establishment therapist as being ahistorical. However, he never defines the ‘‘establishment’’ therapist. Is 78

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the establishment therapist one who dispenses insight? Is he one who conducts therapy? Are community action psychologists establishment oriented? Are all establishment therapists ahistorical? (What about the therapist Carl Jung who delved into the generational background and inherited racial characteristics of his patients?) Finally, after criticizing Sue and Sue for not offering some solutions (which is false), one might expect Tong to end his article by stating a novel and revolutionary idea. On the contrary, he ends in a rather impotent manner. He vaguely states that something of a radical political nature is needed that has yet to be seriously considered.19 What is this ‘‘something’’? Despite the rhetoric, Tong offers nothing new.

Notes and References 1 B.R. Tong, ‘‘The Ghetto of the Mind: Notes on the Historical Psychology of Chinese America,’’ Amerasia Journal 1 (November, 1971): 2. 2 Ibid., 3. 3 S. Sue, and D. W. Sue, ‘‘Chinese-American Personality and Mental Health,’’ Amerasia Journal 1 (1971): 44. 4 Tong, ‘‘Ghetto of the Mind,’’ 18. 5 Ibid., 21. 6 Sue and Sue, ‘‘Chinese-American Personality,’’ 44. 7 D.W. Sue and S. Sue, ‘‘Ethnic Minorities: Resistances to Being Researched,’’ Professional Psychology, in press. 8 Sue and Sue, ‘‘Chinese-American Personality,’’ 44–5. 9 M.S. Weiss, ‘‘Selective Acculturation and the Dating Process: The Pattern of ChineseCaucasian Interracial Dating;’’ Journal of Marriage and the Family (1970): 32. 10 Sue and Sue, ‘‘Chinese-American Personality,’’ 40. 11 Tong, ‘‘Ghetto of the Mind,’’ 3. 12 Ibid., 4. 13 Ibid., 14. 14 Ibid., 9. 15 Sue and Sue, ‘‘Chinese-American Personality,’’ 48. 16 Ibid., 38. 17 G. DeVos, and K. Abbott, ‘‘The Chinese Family in San Francisco,’’ MSW Dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 1966. 18 P. Ling, ‘‘Causes of Chinese Emigration,’’ Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences 39 (1912): 74–82. 19 Tong, ‘‘Ghetto of the Mind,’’ 24.

Reply to Sues One possible definition of the Establishment Therapist could be centered, I suppose, around the person who occupies himself in desperate, thrashing, point-by-point defense of himself, without ever getting to the heart of important 79

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issues. Another, and perhaps more accurate, conception would be he who advocates adherence to the status quo in the name of mental health. The Marginal Man can try to assimilate without derogating the Chinese once he feels secure in saying that he is a Chinese-American. Like the Marginal Man, the Asian-American is assimilating in many ways. Once the Asian-American’s identity is firmly rooted, the ‘Banana’ will be less threatening and less an object of scorn. What Tong fails to realize is that Chinese can be quite active among their own and also quite passive in response to White society. One can hardly find individuals who are passive and conforming in all situations. The boldness of many Chinese does not exclude them from being mild in White society.

May I suggest that the good Doctors Sue step out from behind their pretentious professional fronts and stop acting as though their ‘‘functional appeals’’ were morally neutral. No one, not even a professional psychologist, is free of philosophical and ideological bias. They were quite correct in reprimanding me for criticizing their ‘‘typology’’ as not having explanatory force. I was, after all, dwelling on its prescriptive and predictive claims: Where do they get the idea that assimilation is possible and, if it is, that the process and objective is somehow desirable? If they had read my article even casually, the Sues would have gotten some strong suggestion of the heavy tools exacted by the present, and the only available, method for Chinese-Americans to assimilate (up to a point, of course) into the White Mainstream. (I failed to mention, now that it occurs to me, that AsianAmericans have been exhibiting a significantly higher incidence of hyperactivethyroidism than other racial groups in the country, an ailment which psychosomatic research may soon demonstrate to be casually related to the ‘‘turning in’’ of such powerful emotions as frustration, indignation and anger). Assimilation is annihilation. The Chinatown parents who are resisting school integration in San Francisco may be depriving their children of certain kinds of meaningful educational experiences – and that is sad indeed – but the other horn of their dilemma – i.e., to expose their youngsters to whitewashed white middle-class teachers, administrators and counselors – could be viewed as even less preferable. I appreciate the Sues for attempting to extend my point of view with appropriately stimulating questions. . . . let us assume that Tong is correct; somehow the facade of the Chinese changed into an actual identity. When did it occur? How did it happen? Were any Chinese immuned to this transformation? If so, why? Does the historical account of the meek syndrome sufficiently explain the personality of Chinese? [Don’t they mean to say ‘‘Chinese-Americans?’’]

I suppose I could return the favor by raising similar queries about their position: How is ‘‘the process of psychotherapy’’ to be changed on behalf of ChineseAmericans? Why are bilingual therapists needed if ‘‘The possibility that 80

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immigrants can maintain traditional values is highly unlikely since their number is relative small?’’ What is ‘‘community intervention?’’ (No, I have no qualms about clinical language, so long as terms are clear and their use is explained.) Actually, it is a little late in the day to be simply appealing for needed modifications in the therapeutic process or for an increase in bilingual practitioners. (‘‘Community intervention’’ has a promising ring, if only the Sues had done something with it.) These reforms are urgently needed, no one can argue about that. I was certainly reminded of the point when I recently attempted, with dubious success, to give consultation to a young white psychiatrist at San Francisco General who wanted to know how to communicate with an unemployed middle-aged Hong Kong-born suicidal patient who had slashed her wrists and throat and taken sulfuric acid. One need not claim minimal expertise in history and sociology, however, to see that helping individuals to ‘‘cope’’ or find ‘‘self pride’’ is not enough and, perhaps, hardly even the most desirable treatment. Let me illustrate the point with a portion of the transcript from a recording of a mental health workshop, held last spring at UC Berkeley. Herb Lau, psychiatrist:

B.T.:

Lau: B.T.:

I think there are a lot of people who are considered ‘‘crazy’’ enough to be seen by a psychiatrist but who really aren’t ‘‘crazy’’, at least not by the way psychiatrists define it and who really shouldn’t be sent to therapy. The caricature of this is the guy who goes into an H.D.R. office because he wants to get a job. And he’s queried so much that he’s sent off to welfare. And everybody there tells him: ‘‘Y’know, you’re really sick. You can’t work. You can get on welfare.’’ And so he’s shunted onto the welfare rolls. And he says, ‘‘What am I doing here? I came in to look for a job . . . ’’ And now he’s getting 185 bucks a month welfare. That really isn’t enough to feed his wife and kids with. Nor is it what he really wants, to begin with. (to Sanford Tom, another psychiatrist) Then at the end of a long string of fruitless ‘‘referrals,’’ he winds in your office, Sanford. With his head out of whack and possibly a foot over the Golden Gate Bridge. And its a waste of your time to be seeing this guy, I think. The worst thing would be for you to refer him back to some agency, so that he ends up starting all over again.

If the fellow in the dialogue above were to turn schizophrenic or blow his brains apart, the already atrocious statistics for Chinatown would skyrocket even higher and the predictable reformist outcries would be ‘‘Why aren’t there more bilingual therapists?’’ or ‘‘What’s wrong with therapy these days?’’ 81

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In the final analysis, it is a question of on whose behalf a professional dogooder ultimately works. I am thinking of the difference between a sensitive, intelligent and compassionate social worker who ministers to the poor and a sensitive, intelligent and compassionate social worker who works to eliminate poverty. The one provides the impoverished individual with every bit of ‘‘aid’’ available from the system and might even consider marching on the state capitol to ensure ‘‘welfare rights’’ for his client. The other may do no less, but will take his activities one step further, to struggle with the very system which perpetuates the myth that ‘‘there will always be the poor,’’ at the risk of working himself out of a job. Yes, I did suggest the need for radical political alternatives. And I do not have the answer, much to the delight of the Sues. No clear-cut, viable program for revolutionary change is available at the present moment. I think of my friend, job agent Lincoln Fong, who has plagued himself with the awful question, ‘‘If I fight to get an unemployed Chinese construction worker a job with the work force building a Holiday Inn in the ghetto, what am I ultimately contributing to?’’ I believe that one becomes a part of the answer when one’s very being is seized in the grip of such questions. Short of that, all else is academic. Ben R. Tong

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FOUR

A Critique of Strangers from a Different Shore* L. Ling-chi Wang

Not since the publication of Victor and Bret Nee’s Longtime Californ’ in 1972 has there been a non-fiction book on Asian Americans that has attracted as much national media attention and rave reviews as Strangers from a Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans, by my friend and colleague, Prof. Ronald Takaki, at the University of California, Berkeley. The marketing and promotional strategy taken on its behalf across the nation is remarkably similar to the ones undertaken when Maxine Hong Kingston’s first book, The Woman Warrior, was released in 1976. On the dust jacket, three Asian American politicians – US Senator Daniel K. Inouye, Representative Robert Matsui, and Representative Norman Mineta – give their resounding commendations. Also printed are the appraisals of two distinguished scholars from UC Berkeley. Historian Lawrence W. Levine proclaims, ‘‘At last, a comprehensive history of Asian Americans written with compassion and insight from the perspective of the immigrants and their descendants.’’ Sociologist Bob Blauner writes, ‘‘Takaki’s work is destined to be a classic of ethnic history. . . . This is a book I’ve been looking for on Asian Americans since I began teaching courses on race and ethnicity twentyfive years ago.’’ Outside the academy, mass media commentators have shared the same sentiments. In the August 27, 1989 issue of The New York Times Book Review, Jon Foreman wrote, ‘‘The book is among the first to examine the composite AsianAmerican experience in its 150-year entirety. For the general reader, it is the best volume yet published on the subject.’’ The reviewer concluded, ‘‘Mr. Takaki succeeds magnificently in his work of investigation and reclamation.’’

*L. Ling-chi Wang ‘‘A Critique of Strangers from a Different Shore.’’ Amerasia Journal 16(2) (1990): 71–80. Reprinted by permission of Asian American Studies Center Press.

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Echoing Foreman, the Chronicle of Higher Education (October 11, 1989) featured Takaki’s portrait and characterized the book in this manner: ‘‘Mr. Takaki seeks to give Asian Americans a voice in American history and to give readers of all backgrounds a fresh vision of immigration in the United States.’’ According to Carolyn J. Mooney, the writer, ‘‘Mr. Takaki’s book traces the history of Asian Americans by looking at the diverse experiences of various Asian ethnic groups . . . (and) seeks to dispel many myths and stereotypes.’’ According to her, Takaki found ‘‘the most satisfying part of his research was hearing – and later telling – stories that had not been told before.’’ He told her, ‘‘I became a listener. Everywhere I went, Asian Americans were pouring their stories out to me.’’ Writing in Cal Monthly (December 1989), a UC alumni magazine, George A. De Vos, professor of anthropology, said that the book gave ‘‘eloquent voice to this silenced segment (Asian Americans) of our complex American society.’’ In assessing the value of the book, he wrote, ‘‘For specialists in the field of ethnicity, Takaki’s volume brings forward new material. But Strangers isn’t limited to readers with a special interest in ethnic problems or ethnic history. It is about the human condition.’’ At least four conclusions regarding the significance of the book can be drawn from these and other reviews published to date. First, Strangers from a Different Shore, in the opinion of the reviewers, is not only ‘‘the first’’ but also ‘‘the best’’ comprehensive history of 150 years of Asian experience in the United States. Secondly, the book provides Asian Americans ‘‘a voice in American history’’ and its readers both ‘‘new material’’ and ‘‘a fresh vision of immigration.’’ Thirdly, from the point of view of historiography and methodology, Prof. Takaki is credited for his ‘‘work of investigation and reclamation,’’ which, according to him, consisted of mostly ‘‘hearing – and later telling – stories that had not been told before.’’ Lastly, the work succeeds in dispelling many myths and stereotypes on Asian Americans. With such national acclaims and aggressive marketing strategies, many of you must wonder why I decided late last year to organize this panel and what we can possibly add to the findings and conclusions outlined above. In my opinion, the orchestrated national concensus on the book to date has been so skillful that it has indeed transformed the book overnight into the most important work in Asian American studies, at least among non-specialists, both within the Asian American community and in the general public. The campaign successfully integrates aggressive marketing with selective celebrity endorsement, rendering it virtually impossible to distinguish a sales pitch from scholarly assessment. The popular consensus in the mass media is extraordinary. In fact, the media coverage has been so exceptional that I think it already has profound implications for the twenty-one-year history and future development of Asian American studies, and indeed, for the future role of the Association of Asian American Studies, as the sole national organization devoted to the professional advancement of Asian American studies. 84

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As I said, the verdict on the book to date is unanimous: it has been characterized as the most original, definitive, authoritative, and comprehensive history of 150 years of Asian experience in the US. The scholarship in the field of Asian American studies in the last twenty-one years has finally produced what recognized scholars and national critics have been waiting for, according to the popular opinion-makers. However, the jury that has delivered the unanimous verdict to date is problematic. First, the jury is almost all white which, in the early years of ethnic studies, would have been rejected as biased, thus illegitimate. For myself, I have never subscribed to such skepticism based on skin color. However, what disturbs me most, (and I hope the association will share my sentiment), is the fact that none of the jurors are known for their research and teaching in the field of Asian American studies. This raises a very serious problem for those of us who have been involved in Asian American studies research in the past twenty-one years. What constitutes sound scholarship in Asian American studies? Who should be asked to review the scholarly products in Asian American studies? What should be the qualifications of the reviewers? What should be the criteria for reviewing scholarly work in Asian American studies? In short, how well do these reviewers and national publications know about the state of Asian American scholarship to qualify them to deliver the verdict? Because of their national stature and influence, are scholars in Asian American studies supposed to set aside their own peer review standards and defer their judgement on the book to these non-specialist outsiders? In short, are Asian American scholars being stampeded or bulldozed into accepting the conclusions of non-specialist reviewers and Madison Avenue mind-managers? For the sake of Asian American studies, I hope not. I find the standards that publishers and editors have used to date to select reviewers to be arrogant, offensive, if not outright racist. When a history book on the Civil War is released, publishers and editors invariably ask Civil War authorities to review the work. The reviews will not be credible if they were written by experts on the American revolution or World War I. It would have been perfectly legitimate and credible for publishers and editors to have asked white scholars such as Roger Daniels and Stanford Lyman, who have done substantial research on Asian Americans, to review works on Asian American subjects. Scholars of Asian American studies have every right to expect the final verdict on the quality and importance of a work on Asian Americans to be in the hands of researchers and experts in the field of Asian American studies. To rely on non-specialists to reach far-reaching conclusions, whether they happen to be correct or not and whether the intent behind the selection of reviewers was good or bad, is to show contempt for the scholars in the field of Asian American studies and to impose extraneous standards of scholarly excellence, whether they be appropriate or not, on a field about which they possess neither demonstrated interest nor expert knowledge. 85

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Moreover, I hope none of us will approve of non-specialist opinions used for commercial purposes. This, to me, is the foremost issue for the Association for Asian American Studies and for those concerned with the autonomy, credibility, and quality of scholarship in the field to tackle. We are involved in Asian American Studies, not to take part in popularity contests, but to advance knowledge and scholarship. The field is now twenty-one years old. Many lay and professional scholars have labored in the trenches to uncover our buried past and to collect and produce a body of scholarship much of which is still unknown or unacceptable to the mainstream. If we cannot define our own field and our own standards of scholarship, what would be the point of advancing the interests and maintaining integrity of our profession? I certainly have no intention of accepting nonexperts’ opinions of what constitute credible scholarship in Asian American studies. (Remember how and why Asian American studies was started twentyone years ago?) Neither am I prepared to be treated as a second-class scholar whose sole legitimacy must be derived from the benevolence of non-experts. It is our professional right and obligation to define our field of studies and to set standards of excellence within the field ourselves. It is solely for this purpose that this panel was organized. Frankly, I have been deeply troubled by what has been written and said about the book in the mass media. I decided to try to assemble a group of distinguished scholars from different disciplines to critically appraise Takaki’s first comprehensive work in the field of Asian American studies. As scholars we are not interested in popularity contests nor are we seeking acceptance by mainstream scholars who have excluded the Asian American experience in the past. Only by self-criticism can we hope to advance the cause of Asian American studies. The original plan of this panel was to invite an expert in each of the following disciplines: history, literature, sociology, and political science. Original invitations went to Profs. Sucheng Chan, Elaine Kim, Paul Wong, and Peter Kwong. All have long been conducting research in the field of Asian American studies. All recognized the importance of having such a panel and responded positively. Unfortunately Profs. Paul Wong and Peter Kwong later developed schedule conflicts. Last minute attempts to find their replacements failed. I have another reason for organizing this panel. Many of you are familiar with the issue of confidentiality in the tenure review process and how some women and minority candidates have been discriminated in the secretive proceedings. I personally think the entire review process is grossly unfair and inconsistent with the goals and objectives of intellectual pursuit. I think scholarly appraisals and intellectual discourses should be carried out openly and standards used for appraisals should be fair and accountable. Whatever we have to say about each other’s work should be open to public scrutiny, much like the book review articles we write for journals or the scholarly forums in which we participate routinely. If we work in the same field or in the same department as colleagues, we should not have to hide any disagreements behind 86

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secrecy for fear of reprisal. Whatever we have to say about each other’s works should be known publicly. I simply see no legitimate reason for us to work as friends and colleagues, on the one hand, and to criticize each other only behind closed doors, on the other hand. Whatever disagreements there are, we should be able to voice them candidly and openly. For that reason, I strongly support the recent unanimous decision by the US Supreme Court in the case involving Chinese American Prof. Rosalie Tung at the University of Pennsylvania: that a candidate for tenure should have the right to find out if a negative decision is biased or not. This forum is an example of what I think is the only legitimate forum for scholarly appraisal, that is, scholarly appraisal conducted openly and candidly without fear of reprisal or intimidation. Prof. Takaki was informed of this panel late last year and invited to be a respondent. I deeply appreciate his willingness to participate in this discussion. I know it is not easy for colleagues to be critical of each other openly. However, I know of no other forum better suited for honest intellectual discourse and pursuit of truth and knowledge. I know today’s discussion will help shape the future direction of research in Asian American studies. When the concept of ‘‘Asian America’’ was first coined in the late 1960s by a group of California college students of predominantly Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Pilipino descent to represent both their newly found collective identity and shared political aspirations in the United States, the established Asian communities and the general public were uniformly apprehensive about, if not outright hostile to, the use of such a politically charged self-designation and the political agenda advanced by the new movement. But by the early 1970s the new term had become widely recognized and accepted. By the late 1970s it encompassed also the newly arrived people from Indochina and South Asia. The movement also stimulated scholarly efforts, mostly through newly established programs of Asian American studies at the university level, devoted to understanding and redefining Asian American identity and conditions, both past and present. However, behind this convenient collective identity are several diverse, fastgrowing communities made up of peoples from different cultural, linguistic, national, class, and historical origins. Such heterogenity has given rise to interand intra-community conflicts contrary to the very notion of a single Asian American identity and the vision of political solidarity voiced in the 1960s. Likewise, the growing concentration of Asian American populations, still regarded by many as ‘‘foreigners,’’ in major metropolitan areas and within elite universities, has ignited anew the anti-Asian exclusionary impulses of the pre-World War II era. In the past twenty-one years Asian American studies has contributed much toward correcting distorted histories and uncovering the buried past, to borrow Yuji Ichioka’s felicitous term. But the field of Asian American studies is still far from producing a comprehensive history of any of the Asian American 87

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subgroups, much less a general history. The reasons are obvious: not enough basic research on each of the groups has been done, including the systematic collection and interpretation of sources in both English and Asian languages. So there still exist significant knowledge gaps within the history of each Asian subgroup. Worst of all, there is neither an interpretative nor an analytical framework for understanding the period since the late 1960s — the very period of Asian American history that gave birth to the unique notion of Asian America and charted the political and cultural developments of the Asian American communities in the past quarter century. These deficiencies, however, have not inhibited some brave scholars from tackling the monumental task of synthesis. Two veteran historians, using sharply different styles and approaches, recently did just that. With uncharacteristic trepidation and near apology, Roger Daniels wrote Asian America: Chinese and Japanese in the U.S. since 1850. A pioneer in Asian American history, Daniels attempts to assess the historical role of just two Asian subgroups about whom relatively more has been written than about others. The result is an informative, conventional summary of what is known about each of the two, which still is not much. Reading more like two separate books bound into one, the book makes only occasional attempts to compare and integrate their experiences and provides no interpretation of the period since the late 1960s. It is a bold, but, in his own words, ‘‘premature’’ synthesis, resembling what he himself would have characterized as a ‘‘negative history,’’ – that is, ‘‘history that recounted what was done to these immigrant peoples rather than what they themselves did.’’ Daniels’ courage, modesty, and honesty are commendable. Taking an entirely different approach and relying heavily on published and unpublished sources and oral histories, Ronald Takaki skillfully assembles existing knowledge of each of the Asian American subgroups and attempts to integrate them into American history, much like a composer borrowing musical themes, motifs, and idioms to create an opus that is more a romantic rhapsody rather than a musical synthesis like Bach’s Musikalische Opfer. Essentially, Strangers from a Different Shore is built on several familiar Asian American themes and concepts developed in the past twenty-one years by Asian American activists and scholars. These themes and concepts are heavily embellished with densely orchestrated ‘‘voices,’’ taken indiscriminately from both literary and historical sources. Putting it in another way, the book neatly recapitulates familiar themes and concepts in Asian American studies, as in a coda, under a main theme, ‘‘strangers from a different shore.’’ Instead of using the old push–pull theory to depict the experience of each Asian subgroup that came to the US, Takaki elegantly describes how each was driven by ‘‘necessity’’ and stirred by ‘‘extravagance,’’ two recurrent subordinate themes he acknowledges to have come from Sauling Wong’s unpublished study on Maxine Hong Kingston. So powerful are those anguished, defiant voices that they transcend the book’s narrative, like soaring coloraturas. Written for popular consumption, the book is 88

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at points mesmerizing, even if its obvious indebtedness to other writers and students is not precisely documented and some of its interpretations open to scholarly challenge. Nevertheless, the result is an inspiring synthesis for the uninitiated and an insufficiently acknowledged tribute to researchers who have labored in the trenches in the past two decades of Asian American studies. In terms of its approach, Takaki’s book is similar to Victor and Bret Nee’s Longtime Californ’ (1972) because both are media through which diverse Asian American voices surface. The major difference is in how they collected and use the voices. The Nees identified and selected representative personalities from different segments of the Chinese American community in San Francisco, whom they laboriously interviewed themselves over a two-year period, and placed these lengthy, in-depth interviews largely verbatim in their book with minimal narrative and analysis. From the analytical standpoint, the book broke no new ground. But it succeeded in giving us the sights, sounds, flavors, perspectives, and feelings of the community that had never before been permitted to surface. For their labor, the book received lavish reviews by the mainstream press. Takaki’s approach is virtually identical with the Nees except the voices used tend to be fragmentary and mostly collected from indirect sources. To begin with, no attempt was made to distinguish voices and quotes from literary works from voices of oral histories, documents, and newspapers. Unlike the Nees, only a very tiny percentage of the voices, probably less than 15 percent, are based on personal interviews by Takaki and of these, most are interviews of the author’s relatives and colleagues. In this respect, the author depends almost entirely on available primary and secondary sources, leaving readers wondering how representative they are. Also like the Nees, the book offers no analytical breakthrough for our understanding of either Asian American history or the newly emerging communities. Particularly disappointing is Takaki’s silence on the historic emergence of ‘‘Asian America’’ in the late 1960s and early 1970s and his ahistorical approach to the ensuing decades in Asian American history. The rise of ethnic and political consciousness, the emergence of new community organizations, and the rise of Asian American studies are among the most important developments in the history of Asians in the United States, in my view. To me, the genesis of the Asian American movement is the turning point in our history in this country. Influenced heavily by the Black, civil rights and the anti-war movements, the primary objective of the Asian American movement was to liberate Asian Americans from a structure of dual domination represented, on the one hand, by a long history of racial oppression and, on the other hand, by an ever-present political and cultural domination by the countries from which our ancestors came. The struggle for liberation and the rapid development of new social and political institutions within the communities have been among the most dramatic and dynamic forces to unfold in the past twenty years. In the process of liberation, the movement heightened class conflicts within each 89

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of the communities and provoked various responses from different sectors of the white society. It is only within such a framework that we can best understand, for example, the nationwide struggles for the rights of Leonara Perez/Filipina Narciso, Iva Ikuko Toguri, Chol Soo Lee, and Vincent Chin, on the one hand, and the uphill fights against the agents of Chiang Kai-shek and Chiang Ching-kuo, of Park Chung Hee, Chun Do Hwan, and Roh Tae Woo, and of Ferdinand Marcos, on the other hand. The national mobilization for bilingual-bicultural education, affirmative action, redress and reparation, immigration reforms, and the campaign against racist media stereotypes are additional examples of the struggle for liberation. The rise of the new Asian American consciousness has also unleashed the creative energies and expressions of Asian Americans in all areas of art and culture. Unfortunately, both Daniels and Takaki failed to adequately treat this period of ‘‘Asian America’’ that gave them the titles for their books, a term that captures the richness of the newly emerged Asian American political and cultural expressions. In this respect, the book reviewers mentioned in my opening remarks are wrong in characterizing Takaki’s book as a ‘‘comprehensive history of 150 years of Asian experience in the U.S.’’ It is more accurate to describe the book as a history of Asians in the US up to World War II, with the final two chapters of anecdotal events since then tacked on as an epilogue. (The same thing can be said about Daniels’ history.) I also think the critics are speaking from ignorance when they credit Takaki for collecting new materials and fresh visions, when in fact, most of the materials are secondary – voices previously gathered by others. I only wish that the footnotes were more complete and precise, so the intellectual labor of others were more fully acknowledged and future students can have easier access to the exact sources, including those not identified. Takaki, however, must be credited for putting together in one convenient, highly readable volume the culmination of works generated or uncovered in the twenty-one year history of Asian American studies. The work is enlightening for the uninformed public and it is also a useful introduction for those interested in Asian American studies. In the final analysis, from the point of view of Asian American historiography and scholarship in Asian American studies, Takaki’s book offers very little new material and provides neither new methodology nor a new interpretation. However, the book represents a major step forward in making the white reading public and Asian Americans unfamiliar with our past more aware of who we are. For researchers unfamiliar with the scholarly advances in Asian American studies in the past two decades, the book also provides an excellent introduction to the history and diversity of Asian experiences in the US. This in itself is a significant contribution toward interracial understanding. Only because of this important public service does the book deserve an award from the Association for Asian American Studies. 90

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FIVE

Strangers from a Different Shore as History and Historiography* Sucheng Chan

To assess the scholarly standing of Strangers from a Different Shore, we must examine, as we should do with any academic study, its author’s sources of information, methodology, and explanatory framework. Historians who rely so heavily on written documents are more often than not prisoners of their sources. For that reason, even though historians, unlike social scientists, do not always discuss methodology and theory explicitly, serious evaluations of historical writings usually consider the following questions: a) What kind of primary sources has the author used and how appropriately has he or she used them? b) How carefully has he or she interpreted the insights derived from the secondary literature and has he or she adequately acknowledged his or her intellectual debt to others? c) What narrative strategies has he or she employed to give the work thematic coherence, excitement, or human interest? and d) How well does the theoretical framework used (if any) fit with the empirical evidence presented? These are the questions I shall address in this review.

Use of Primary Sources To those who are familiar with the archival collections and the published literature in Asian American Studies, even a cursory look at the endnotes in Strangers will indicate that its author relies very heavily on other people’s findings. In history and the social sciences, a distinction is often drawn between two kinds of academic writing: original research based on an analysis of primary *Sucheng Chan ‘‘Strangers from a Different Shore as History and Historiography.’’ Amerasia Journal 16 (2) (1990): 81–100. Reprinted by permission of Asian American Studies Center Press.

Sucheng Chan

sources and works of synthesis that use and evaluate the secondary literature. Strangers is unusual in that its text not only borrows a lot from the existing literature but also uses an enormous amount of primary material that had been compiled by others, to whom the author owes an immense debt. But quite a different picture is presented in the promotional efforts for the book. A comment made by Takaki to Susan Yim, who wrote a review of the book in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin and Advertiser, is revealing: ‘‘It’s different from Pau Hana in that . . . most of my documents are living people . . . I had to go out to talk to people, become a listener.’’1 How many people did the author talk to? The endnotes indicate that forty individuals were interviewed by the author himself, with another two by his wife. The stories told by these people, however, represent at most one-sixth of the life stories cited in the book, but this important statistic is not stated. Instead, in his ‘‘A Word of Appreciation’’ (placed at the end of the book on p. 493), Takaki expresses his ‘‘deepest thanks to all the people who told me their stories [emphasis added] and enabled me to write their book.’’ The wording of this statement suggests that most of ‘‘the people’’ whose stories he presented had talked to him personally. By claiming to be a ‘‘listener’’ who indefatigably collected such stories, he gives the impression that he carried out far more original research than he did. Moreover, the forty individuals interviewed by Takaki seem to have been chosen mainly on the basis of their availability, so that convenience, rather than systematic methodology, led to their inclusion as informants. Seven of the interviewees are the author’s relatives,2 four are his co-workers,3 one is the mother of a co-worker,4 three are graduate students at the University of California, Berkeley,5 three are speakers he met at the 1988 conference of the Association for Asian American Studies held at Pullman, Washington,6 while the rest are either undergraduates at Berkeley and at two or three other universities elsewhere in the United States where he had given talks in the late 1980s or are individuals he talked to as opportunities presented themselves. Of the available unpublished collections of life histories used in Strangers, the most material was culled from the archives of the Survey of Race Relations project. The white scholars who conceived of the project in the mid-1920s intended to produce several books, but due to various difficulties, only part of the materials collected was presented in two books: Resident Orientals on the American Pacific Coast by Eliot Grinnell Mears (1927) and Americans in Process: A Study of Our Citizens of Oriental Ancestry by William C. Smith (1937). The documents, many of which never found their way into print, are now deposited at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.7 Forty-eight of them, some cited multiple times, are used in Strangers – a number that exceeds the number of interviews the author himself conducted. A second unpublished collection Strangers taps heavily was gathered by James Earl Wood, a graduate student who never wrote up his research on Filipinos into a dissertation. Wood’s papers are now housed in the Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley. Historian Howard DeWitt first called the 92

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attention of the scholarly community to the existence and value of these records in the late 1970s.8 Even though Takaki quotes thirty-one items from the Wood collection, he does not explain who Wood was nor does he acknowledge DeWitt. Smaller amounts of material are culled from several other archival collections: transcripts of interviews done in the mid-1920s now deposited in Special Collections at the University of Oregon Library, the Washington State Oral/ Aural History Program collection at the Washington State Archives in Olympia, and the Kam Wah Chung Company papers, a set of which is now available at the Asian American Studies Library at the University of California, Berkeley. Strangers also relies on numerous unpublished student papers, the most important of which were written by Allan Miller, Virgilio Felipe, and Christopher Kim. Miller’s lengthy paper, ‘‘An Ethnographic Report on the Sikh (East) Indians of the Sacramento Valley,’’ was prepared for a graduate anthropology seminar at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1950. It is repeatedly cited in the sections on Asian Indians. Many excerpts from Felipe’s MA thesis, ‘‘Hawaii: A Filipino Dream,’’ appear in the parts on Filipinos. A 300-pageplus paper by Kim, who wrote ‘‘Three Generations of Koreans in America’’ while an undergraduate at the University of California, Berkeley, serves as an important source for the chapter on Korean Americans. In addition to the above ready-made but unpublished sources, a great deal of the human interest material is borrowed from several published anthologies of oral histories, each of which was a community-based collective project. Though Takaki cites their published titles in his endnotes, he does not reveal how these oral history compilations came into being. Even more troubling is the fact that quotes from these oral histories sometimes are inserted into Strangers in a manner that gives the impression that the interviewees had talked directly to Takaki. Since Strangers provides only a single endnote for each paragraph, it is difficult for readers to figure out which bit of information came from what specific source. Had the author discussed the origins of his sources more explicitly, readers would more readily realize that the book could not possibly have been written without the combined efforts of hundreds of individuals over the last several decades, when Asian Americans themselves and some sympathetic white scholars and journalists have actively recorded their life stories. Three oral history anthologies that Strangers relies on heavily are Issei: A History of Japanese Immigrants in North America by Kazuo Ito and translated by Shinichiro Nakamura and Jean S. Gerard, four volumes of oral histories compiled by the Ethnic Studies Oral History Project at the University of Hawaii, and The Issei: Portrait of a Pioneer by Eileen Sarasohn, who wrote up materials collected by researchers in the Issei Oral History Project in Sacramento, California. Almost seventy pages of Ito’s Issei are cited, some more than once. (Most of the poems found in Strangers come from this anthology; the remaining are from Marlon Hom’s translation of folksongs by Cantonese immigrants in Songs of Gold Mountain.) Kazuo Ito, a Tokyo-based newspaperman who worked for the 93

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Yomiuri Shimbun, collected published works in Japanese and solicited unpublished writings from Issei in the Pacific Northwest in the late 1960s. These he eventually divided into twenty-one parts, each with several chapters, and published under the title Hyakunen Sakura. The anthology was translated into English as Issei in the early 1970s. Regarding how the book was put together, Ito noted: ‘‘For the sake of formality I stand as the author of the book, but actually it was compiled by me but each one of you who took part in it are the authors’’ (p. 987). This statement, I think, is an example not so much of Japanese politeness, but of an author’s gracious attempt to give credit to all those who had made the book possible. But unlike Ito, Takaki does not acknowledge the widespread community support that Ito had received and that eventually benefited him. Similarly, Uchinanchu: A History of Okinawans in Hawaii, one of the four published volumes of oral histories collected by the Ethnic Studies Oral History Project in Hawaii, was a long-term, large-scale project made possible by community support and cooperation. It contains fourteen life histories totaling almost a hundred pages, eleven of which are quoted by Takaki. An additional eleven life stories used in Strangers come from Sarasohn’s The Issei. Most of the interviews included in the latter were conducted in Japanese by the Reverend Heihachiro Takarabe, translated into English by Mabel Saito Hall, and edited by a committee of devoted individuals. Takaki’s debt to many other authors is less heavy, but still substantial. He uses life stories of Chinese Americans found in Victor and Bret de Bary Nee, Longtime Californ’: A Documentary History of an American Chinatown, Jeff Gillenkirk and James Motlow, Bitter Melon: Stories from the Last Rural Chinese Town in America, and Diane Mei Lin Mark and Ginger Chih, A Place Called Chinese America; of Japanese Americans in John Tateishi, And Justice for All: An Oral History of the Japanese Detention Camps; of Korean Americans in Sonia Sunoo, Korea Kaleidoscope: Oral Histories, Brenda Sunoo, Korean American Writings: Selected Material from Insight, Korean American Bimonthly, Harold and Sonia Sunoo, ‘‘The Heritage of the First Korean Women Immigrants in the United States, 1903–1924,’’ and Bong-Youn Choy, Koreans in America; of Filipino Americans in Roberto Valangca, Pinoy: The First Wave, Filipino American Oral History Project, Voices: A Filipino American Oral History, and Fred Cordova, Filipinos: Forgotten Asian Americans; of an Asian Indian interviewed by Karen Leonard, whose (then unpublished) work Takaki used without the author’s knowledge or permission; and of recent East Asian immigrants and Southeast Asian refugees from Joan Morrison and Charlotte Fox Zabusky, American Mosaic: The Immigrant Experience in the Words of Those Who Lived It, Thomas Bentz, New Immigrants: Portraits in Passage, Thomas Kessner and Betty Boyd Caroli, Today’s Immigrants, Their Stories: A New Look at the Newest Americans, and other compilations. Unlike many books that contain appendices discussing their sources and methodology, Strangers does not include such an essay. Its author therefore 94

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not only fails to give other researchers who had collected the data he uses so freely the credit they deserve, but he also avoids assessing how reliable and appropriate his sources may be. From this fact flows two additional historiographical problems. First, several autobiographies and fictional works by Asian American authors are used in Strangers as paradigms, with the authors of these works being depicted as representatives of the subpopulations of which they were members. The question, ‘‘How representative was Jade Snow Wong or Monica Sone of their generation or ethnic group?’’ is not asked. Second, fiction and history are often conflated. For example, though subtitled ‘‘A Personal History,’’ America Is in the Heart is not really Carlos Bulosan’s autobiography. Yet, specific incidents from the book are cited in Strangers as though they had actually happened to Bulosan himself. Each type of material a scholar uses has its own integrity, so written texts, as well as other kinds of evidence, need to be either analyzed and evaluated in a manner consistent with their genres or, as current academic fashion recommends, ‘‘interrogated’’ in order to reveal the ‘‘positionality’’ of those who generated them and ‘‘deconstructed’’ to unveil the nature of the discourses based on them. No such appraisal is offered in Strangers.

Use of the Secondary Literature In addition to the primary sources listed above, Strangers made extensive use of the secondary literature in Asian American Studies. However, some of the interpretations derived from the available writings are questionable. Whereas minor factual errors can be overlooked, authoritative–sounding interpretations or explanations based on a less-than-careful reading of other people’s works cannot be casually waved aside. One example of this problem is the explanations offered for why more Japanese women than Chinese women emigrated to the United States. It is claimed that one reason more Japanese women emigrated was that ‘‘while women in China were restricted to the farm and the home, women in Japan in the nineteenth century were becoming wage-earning workers away from home. . . . By 1900, women composed 60 percent of Japan’s industrial laborers. . . . The movement of Japanese women to Hawaii and the United States was an extension of a proletarianization process already well under way in Japan’’ (pp. 47–8). There are several problems with this sweeping generalization. For one thing, the percentage of women in the labor force given in different sources varies, partly depending on what category of workers statisticians include in their computations. For example, who are included in the ‘‘labor force’’? All workers or only those who worked for wages? If only wage workers are counted, do the available figures refer to those employed in enterprises with five or more laborers, in those with ten or more, or in even larger establishments? Furthermore, during Japan’s early 95

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industrialization, as was the case in England, most western European countries, and the United States, textiles dominated factory production. Thus, when we talk about the ‘‘proletariat,’’ are we refering to textile workers, or factory workers, or all industrial workers? To illustrate the difference among the above three categories of workers, let me cite some available statistics. Roughly three-quarters of Japan’s factory workers in 1882 were employed in textile production. Of the latter, approximately 90 percent were female. The female percentage in textiles dropped to 83 percent in 1909 and 80 percent in 1920.9 By 1911, according to one study, textile workers had fallen to 51 percent of all factory workers, with females representing 84 percent in textiles and only 22 percent in the metallurgical, machine-tool, chemical, food processing, and other industries. Combining textile manufacturing with these other industries, women and girls made up 54 percent of all factory workers in 1911.10 In 1920, female factory workers stood at 53 percent, counting only factories with five or more employees.11 By 1934, females had declined to 44 percent.12 But just as the number of workers in textiles is not the same as that in factories, so the latter is not synonymous with the number of industrial workers (the category used in Strangers). The latter includes people in industries not housed in factory buildings. One such industry was mining, which in the mid1910s employed almost 295,000 workers, compared to over 950,000 Japanese earning a living in factories.13 In this period, females comprised 23 percent of all miners.14 Combining factory workers with miners, females represented 47 percent of all industrial workers. This brief exercise indicates that citing a single figure to prove a point, as Takaki has done, is sometimes of questionable value. To be meaningful, statistics need to be placed in perspective. The most important thing to remember here is that, despite its rapid industrialization, Japan remained an overwhelmingly agrarian country in the early decades of this century: its industrial labor force represented only a little over one percent of the country’s total population.15 That is, relatively few Japanese, male or female, had become ‘‘proletarianized’’ during the peak years of Japanese emigration to North America. More important, a very large majority of the female workers were young teenagers, sent or recruited to work in small factories that provided strictly supervised dormitory living in rural areas under three- to five-year contracts. They worked to help support their families and to accumulate some savings in preparation for marriage.16 Notwithstanding the tight control exercised over these girls, one study has shown that in the closing years of the nineteenth century, more than 46 percent of them stayed less than a year at their jobs and only 23 percent stayed one to two years. Fewer than 5 percent worked up to five years.17 In other words, their stint as members of the ‘‘proletariat’’ was very brief indeed. More to the point, I know of no studies that show a causal connection between factory experience and the tendency of Japanese women to emigrate. In the available oral histories of 96

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Japanese immigrant women, few, if any, mention that having been factory or industrial workers in Japan was what had encouraged them to come to the United States. The contrast with China is also misleading. In China many stages of silk and cotton production also employed largely female labor. In his classic study of the Chinese labor movement, Jean Chesneaux indicates how, as textile production increasingly moved from cottages into factories, female and child labor was likewise exploited.18 Thus, Chinese women were also being ‘‘proletarianized’’ or, more accurately, being sold into hard labor. Perhaps because he consulted only writings on the historical development of the Japanese, but not the Chinese, working class (all six of the sources cited deal with Japanese women), Takaki has drawn a dubious comparison between the two groups. A declarative statement such as ‘‘women in China (the wording implies all women) were restricted to the farm and the home’’ further ignores the finer nuances in Chinese social history, as well as any regional differences that might have existed. There were women in China who worked outside the home: girls from poor peasant families became domestic servants in the households of richer families in their own villages, in nearby towns, or even faraway cities; less fortunate ones were sold into prostitution; while yet others worked in factories as these were established. A second reason given in Strangers for the differential rates of Chinese and Japanese female emigration is that ‘‘Japanese women were also more receptive to the idea of traveling overseas than Chinese women’’ (p. 48). Why? Because they were more educated, Takaki says. Most of the paragraph illustrating this fact is devoted to quotes from Michiko Tanaka [pseudonym], whose life story has been told by her daughter, anthropologist Akemi Kikumura, in Through Harsh Winters: The Life of an Immigrant Japanese Woman. What Takaki does not note is that Tanaka did not emigrate to the United States until 1923. It is true that many girls were going to public schools in Japan by the early twentieth century, but by that time, some girls in China were also receiving an education (in contrast to the nineteenth century when only a small number of girls in wellto-do families received a little private tutoring at home). Thus, two sets of conditions separated by several decades of historical development are being compared. A contrast that Strangers attributes to a dissimilarity between two countries and societies may in fact be a reflection of a difference in time. This is an example of a methodology that might be called ‘‘temporal juggling’’ – using evidence from one historical period to substantiate generalizations about another. The book’s loose treatment of time and its neglect of historical changes that occur over time may also have caused its author to overlook a number of technological and intellectual developments that may have influenced female emigration. There is a possibility that improvements in ocean travel may account in part for the divergent rates of Chinese and Japanese female emigration. The vast majority of the Chinese women came in the 1850s, 1860s, and 1870s on ships that belonged to British and American companies that provided no 97

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scheduled crossings. The voyages were unsafe, uncomfortable, and lengthy. (The ships of the Pacific Mail Steamships Company did not begin scheduled runs between ports in Asia and those in North America until 1866.) The bulk of the Japanese female emigrants, on the other hand, did not come until the 1910s, when Japanese as well as Western steamships plied the trans-Pacific route regularly, making it easier, safer, cheaper, and faster for Japanese women to cross the ocean, which may help to account for their greater willingness to undertake the voyage. Likewise, the exchange of photographs may have facilitated the marriage of women in Japan to Japanese immigrant men in America, but not of women in China to Chinese male immigrants across the Pacific, because photography was more readily available in the early twentieth century than it had been in the nineteenth. Finally, ideas about the proper role of women – particularly whether or not they should be allowed to leave home – had also changed significantly between the period when the largest number of Chinese women came to the United States and the peak years of Japanese female immigration. A third explanation offered in Strangers for differences in Chinese and Japanese female emigration rates is that ‘‘the emigration of women was also influenced by views on gender and the system of land inheritance in Japanese society’’ (p. 48). Using a single example, the author concludes that ‘‘emigration for her [the woman quoted] was not a choice but rather an obligation as a wife’’ (p. 49). He then goes on to generalize that ‘‘whether a Japanese woman went to America depended on which son she married – the son ‘to follow’ or the son ‘in reserve’ ’’ (p. 49). Next comes a paragraph on Japanese primogeniture and the structure of the traditional Japanese family, which ends with the statement that ‘‘younger sons were not as tightly bound to their parents as their Chinese counterparts, and they were allowed to take their wives and children with them to distant lands’’ (p. 49). Three sources are cited as authority for the assertion that patterns of inheritance and family structure were related to Japanese female emigration: a) p. 6, 7, 39, 40, and 42 of Japanese Rural Society by Tadashi Fukutake (available in English translation), b) an article, ‘‘Asian American Socioeconomic Achievement: The Strength of the Family Bond,’’ by Victor Nee and Herbert Y. Wong, and c) a quote from Hajime Mitsumori of Seattle found in p. 33 of Kazuo Ito’s Issei. The cited pages in Fukutake’s translated book discuss the size of landholdings, agricultural productivity, and the nature of the Japanese ie (stem family) and bunke (branch family), but say nothing about emigration. The quote from Ito refers to one Issei’s recollection that school principals used to tell their students, ‘‘First sons, stay in Japan and be men of Japan. Following sons, go abroad with great ambition as men of the world!’’ Whether other school teachers gave the same advice is not known. Thus it seems that Takaki’s thesis is based primarily on the assertions of Nee and Wong, whose article is itself problematic, relying as it does, not on in-depth research, but on only two secondary works: the same book by Fukutake, and a second, Japanese Society by Chie Nakane (likewise available in English translation). 98

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It is important to realize that Nee and Wong were only inferring that in ‘‘contrast to the strength of lineages in South China, the extended kinship system in Japanese villages was much weaker’’ (p. 292). There is no question that non-successor sons in Japan had to seek livelihood away from the family farm, and for that reason were not bound as tightly to their natal households. However, the connection between that fact and Japanese overseas emigration, particularly that of women, cannot be automatically assumed. As a large-scale retrospective survey done by the Japanese American Research Project shows, a higher than expected (expected, that is, in terms of sociological logic) proportion of the Issei who responded to the JARP questionnaire in the late 1960s were successor, i.e., eldest sons.19 And as Takaki himself states in the paragraph immediately following, ‘‘Actually, immigrant men also included first sons’’ (p. 49). Before making any bold leaps of logic, hard empirical data that correlate successor or non-successor status with the tendency to take wives to America are needed. In the absence of reliable findings, it is a disservice to scholarship to make definitive but unsubstantiated statements that may distort our understanding of the subject at hand for years to come. Finally, Takaki argues that ‘‘whether Japanese women migrated depended also on the government policies and economic conditions of the receiving countries. Where the U.S. government strictly prohibited the entry of Chinese women, it allowed Japanese women to come under the terms of the Gentlemen’s Agreement’’ (p. 50). Here again, historical nuances are ignored. As I have shown elsewhere with regard to Chinese woman,20 the federal government’s initial concern was to deny entry to those suspected of being prostitutes or who appeared to be intended for prostitution. Only later did immigration officials and the courts put up hurdles to stop the coming of other groups of Chinese women. At no time did the influx of Chinese women stop completely; even during the years of strictest exclusion, hundreds entered each year, as Takaki himself notes on p. 235 of Strangers. As for Japanese women, the Gentlemen’s Agreement did not explicitly deal with them, concerned primarily as it was with laborers. Women were just mentioned in passing: only laborers ‘‘previously domiciled’’ in the United States or the parents, wives, and minor children of such laborers could enter after the agreement went into effect. In discussing the impact of government policies on female emigration, we cannot look only at US and Hawaiian policies, as Strangers has done. I believe the policies of the Chinese and Japanese governments must be taken into account as well. Technically, emigration from China was illegal during the years when most Chinese women came. Although the 1868 Burlingame Treaty forced China to recognize the right of its citizens to emigrate, Chinese statutes prohibiting emigration were not removed from the books until the turn of the century. This was a hurdle that aspiring Chinese emigrants, men and women alike, had to overcome, which made their exodus more hazardous that it would have been otherwise. The Japanese government, on the other hand, once it had decided to sanction emigration, played an active role in supervising and regulating it. 99

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Even after government-sponsored emigration ended, the Japanese government, as Alan Moriyama’s fine study has shown, controlled the activities of private emigration companies in order to prevent abuse.21 Moreover, as Japan aspired to become an imperialist power, some Japanese began to think of overseas settlement as a way to broaden their country’s influence in other parts of the world.22 Since true settlement is possible only with the establishment of families and the birth of children, it can be hypothesized that the promotion of female emigration may have been one aspect of Japan’s foreign policy. Only future research into the extant primary sources will show whether such, in fact, was the case. Limited space does not permit me to offer other examples, so the above discussion will have to suffice as an illustration of the dangers of theorizing prematurely with regard to topics for which little reliable empirical evidence is available. It is true that giving easily understood explanations is a proven narrative strategy to make one’s tale memorable, but facile generalizations, more often than not, detract from, rather than enhance, a book’s academic credibility. Given the large gaps in the empirical information available in Asian American history, I think it is unwise to sacrifice scholarly integrity for popular effect.

Narrative Strategies Several narrative strategies have been used in Strangers. The most obvious is repeating certain catchy words or phrases – specifically, ‘‘necessity,’’ ‘‘extravagance,’’ ‘‘immensity,’’ ‘‘stranger,’’ ‘‘sojourner,’’ ‘‘liminality,’’ ‘‘racial uniform,’’ ‘‘ethnic antagonism,’’ ‘‘ethnic solidarity,’’ ‘‘industrial reserve army,’’ ‘‘internal colony,’’ and ‘‘gilded ghetto.’’ All of these words and terms are borrowed from others: ‘‘necessity’’ and ‘‘extravagance’’ from writer Maxine Hong Kingston, the pairing of these two words from literary critic Sau-ling C. Wong, ‘‘immensity’’ also from Kingston, ‘‘strangers’’ from sociologist Georg Simmel, ‘‘sojourner’’ from sociologist Paul C. P. Siu, ‘‘liminality’’ from anthropologist Victor Turner, ‘‘racial uniform’’ from sociologist Robert Park, ‘‘ethnic antagonism’’ from sociologist Edna Bonacich, ‘‘ethnic solidarity’’ from Bonacich and historian John Modell, ‘‘industrial reserve army’’ from Karl Marx, ‘‘internal colony’’ from sociologists Robert Blauner and Tomas Almaguer and political scientists Mario Barrera and Carlos Munoz, and ‘‘gilded ghetto’’ from criminologist Paul Takagi. Reiterating these words and phrases every few pages creates an echo effect that helps to hold together the chapters of a lengthy book, which might otherwise have been far more unwieldy. A second strategy that creates thematic coherence and human interest is the use of short quotes from hundreds of oral history interviews, but presenting none of them as a continuous text. By so doing, the author can pick and choose utterances that illustrate the points he wishes to make, without having to explain contradictions and ambiguities that the speakers/writers/interviewees themselves might have expressed. Since multiple sources are cited in the same 100

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endnotes without a clear indication of which quote came from what source, all the voices in the text merge into a single chorus. The sheer weight of so many quotes, relentlessly heaped one on top of another, can be quite overwhelming, establishing ‘‘truth’’ by saturated exposure, much as media advertisements often do. A third device employed, perhaps to convey ‘‘authenticity’’ and the impression that the voices in Strangers are indeed Asian ones, is sprinkling the text with transliterations of words and terms from various Asian languages. But this has been done rather carelessly. For example, the name of the same dynasty is transliterated two different ways (Ch’ing on p. 32 and Qing on p. 33); the same ethnic group is called Hakka and Kejia within four lines of each other (p. 32); and the same word in the same line is transliterated as Shan when used in Tan Heung Shan and as Saan in Gam Saan (p. 33). Scholars using Chinese terms usually follow one consistent system of transliteration, showing alternate systems in parentheses and explaining which is which. If they choose not to be consistent, they explain why not. No such explanation is given in Strangers, which makes the transliterated terms in there seem like an affectation. Finally, by including lots of statistics in the book, none of them, with the exception of those pertaining to Hawaii, based on his own original research, the author creates an impression of scholarly ‘‘authority.’’ Some of the statistics are used without attribution,23 some come from an unpublished paper and are used without the permission of the researcher who had painstakingly compiled, computed, and analyzed them,24 some are only estimates that Takaki presents as definitive counts,25 while no sources are given for yet others.26 Social scientists who do quantitative research usually disclose their methodology and discuss the margins of error in their data when presenting their findings. Ignoring this scholarly convention, the author of Strangers freely disseminates statistics taken from studies done by others without any assessment of their validity. This practice is especially regrettable, given his stature as a professor teaching at a major research university, because many readers will likely assume that all the information in the book is reliable.

Theoretical Framework The theoretical framework adopted in Strangers may be summarized as follows, using the catchy metaphors listed above. ‘‘Necessity,’’ in the form of harsh living conditions, pushed Asian emigrants out of their homelands, while ‘‘extravagance,’’ in the form of ‘‘immense’’ and ‘‘spacious dreams,’’ pulled them to America, where they, like their European peers, experienced ‘‘liminality’’ – a psychological state during which individuals, as a result of passing from one stage of life to another, feel not only uncertainty and anxiety, but also the excitement of new possibilities.27 But instead of being welcomed into the new society, Asians, unlike European immigrants who could remake themselves into 101

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new men and women, were transformed into ‘‘strangers’’ – people whose visible characteristics were so different that they had to be institutionally set apart and kept as ‘‘sojourners,’’ men who were not expected to form families or otherwise set down permanent roots in the United States. One mechanism that helped to make Asians into ‘‘strangers from a different shore’’ was a dual-wage labor system. Brought to America by capitalists to serve as a ‘‘transnational industrial reserve army,’’ Asian workers were paid lower wages and were confined in an ‘‘internal colony’’ by the ‘‘ethnic antagonism’’ of white workers. A second mechanism was an ideology that linked Asians to Blacks and Native Americans, so that the ‘‘racial uniform’’ worn by those two groups also cloaked Asians. A third was to bar Asians from naturalized citizenship and, consequently, the franchise. Denied access to the channels of economic, social, and political upward mobility open to whites, Asians pursued their dreams by establishing businesses – becoming small-scale ‘‘ethnic enterprisers’’ in a tightly confined economic enclave, holding their communities together mainly by ‘‘ethnic solidarity.’’ In time, these ethnic enclaves became ‘‘gilded ghettos’’ that attract tourists by their exotic aura. In its broad outline, this framework has often been used in the last two decades by Asian American specialists, either explicitly or implicitly.28 The catchy terms also have been in circulation for some time – some, like ‘‘stranger,’’ ‘‘sojourner,’’ and ‘‘racial uniform,’’ for quite a few decades. The only innovation in Strangers, therefore, is its author’s juxtaposition of these terms in the same book. The framework, though widely used, does have problems, however. The main one is that not all its components have been well substantiated by research findings. A lot more is known about certain aspects of the Asian American experience than of others. For example, to elucidate the nature of the ‘‘necessity’’ that pushed Asians out of their natal communities, good studies of the causes of emigration are needed, but these are not available for every group. With regard to the Chinese, no indepth research on their emigration to the United States has ever been done. Indeed, given the centuries of war and revolution in China that destroyed records of all kinds, a definitive study can probably never be done. Thus, available discussions of the causes of Chinese emigration, including my own,29 are only inferences – i.e., we have assumed that if certain upheavals occurred in a particular region at a point in time that coincided with an outward movement of people, then they must have had some effect on the exodus. But we can never ‘‘prove’’ if a majority or even a small fraction of the emigrants actually had motives related to such conditions. Compared to Chinese emigration, a lot more is known about Japanese and Korean, and, to a lesser extent, about Filipino emigration, because scholars have worked through and analyzed archival materials relevant to these topics.30 But even in the case of Japanese emigration, for which most information is available in the secondary literature, the author of Strangers does not seem to be reading the existing works with care. He claims on p. 43, for example, that in ‘‘Kumamoto, 102

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Hiroshima, and Yamaguchi, farmers were in an especially dire situation.’’ The only support for this statement is an observation made by a journalist, quoted on p. 45 of The Issei by Yuji Ichioka. But what Ichioka is talking about is the differential rates of emigration from districts within these prefectures; he is not comparing the prefectures to the rest of Japan. The first sentence of the relevant paragraph in Strangers, on the other hand, reads, ‘‘Farmers all over Japan [emphasis added] faced economic hardships.’’ So one must assume that when Takaki claims that conditions were ‘‘especially dire’’ in certain prefectures, he is measuring them against other prefectures in Japan, thereby unjustifiably stretching a local comparison into a national one. Like Chinese emigration, not much is known about the process of Asian Indian emigration. In this instance, Takaki does not distinguish between the large batches of ‘‘Indians [who] by the hundreds and thousands left their homeland to work in the British West Indies, Uganda, Maritius, and British Guiana’’ and the Punjabis who ‘‘went to Canada and the United States’’ (p. 63). These two emigrant streams were actually quite different: the former were recruited as indentured laborers largely from north central and, to a lesser extent, from south India, while the latter hailed from northwestern India and traveled abroad as free emigrants. To conflate the two is to muddy our understanding of the Asian Indian diaspora in general and to misconstrue the nature of Asian Indian immigration into the United States in particular. The existing literature on Asian immigration, in contrast to emigration, is more reliable. There is voluminous evidence to show that sugar planters in Hawaii systematically recruited Asian workers, but documentation on the conscious efforts of US mainland employers to bring Asians to serve as a ‘‘transnational industrial reserve army’’ is more skimpy. For instance, the boastful testimony of Cornelius Koopmanschap before a Congressional committee forms the only basis for an oft-made claim that capitalists, particularly the Central Pacific Railroad Company, recruited thousands of workers directly from China. Even if this were true, it is not known what percentage of the Chinese railroad workers were specifically brought from China and what percentage came from the Chinese population already in America. From the point of view of the immigrants themselves, there were certainly employment opportunities, but whether these represented ‘‘spacious dreams’’ is an open question. While the individuals quoted in Strangers did express hopeful visions, one must ask to what extent their poetic jottings reflected their true feelings and to what extent these compositions simply followed traditional Asian poetic conventions of form and content. As for ‘‘liminality,’’ it is an impressivesounding word, but its role in the overall theoretical framework is only alluded to, not clearly explained. The proposition that is best grounded in empirical evidence pertains to the mechanisms used to transform Asians into ‘‘strangers.’’ Plenty of discriminatory municipal ordinances, state statutes, national laws, court cases, newspaper accounts of mob violence, and articles in periodicals expressing the most 103

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demeaning stereotypes of Asians have been preserved to provide ample proof that such a transformation indeed occurred. But the corollary of that proposition – that Asians in America became ‘‘ethnic enterprisers,’’ even though ‘‘selfemployment was not an Asian ‘cultural trait’,’’ because they were excluded from the labor market – is more debatable. There is no question that Asians faced severe discrimination and continue to encounter inequality of various kinds. But many Asians in Asia and recent Asian immigrants in the United States and in other countries desire self-employment because they consider it more prestigious socially than holding blue-collar jobs (even though the latter may pay better), and not simply because it was ‘‘a means of survival, a response to racial discrimination and exclusion in the labor market’’ (p. 13). It was mainly Chinese and Japanese who followed this channel of upward mobility, while very few Koreans, Filipinos and Asian Indians did so. Why? Only very brief explanations are given. Takaki argues that Koreans did not establish ‘‘their own separate ethnic economy and community’’ because ‘‘they were too few in number to have developed their own colony’’ (p. 270); likewise, neither did Asian Indians do so because they, too, were ‘‘very few in numbers’’ (p. 307); while Filipinos ‘‘did not bring to America a tradition of mercantile enterprise, or institutions such as the credit-rotating system’’ (p. 336). If these explanations are correct, then exclusion from the labor market made Asian immigrants into ‘‘ethnic enterprisers’’ only if certain conditions – such as the presence of a numerical critical mass and the right cultural traditions – were present. More problematic is the fact that the above analysis ignores the internal class differentiation within each Asian immigrant community. A statement such as ‘‘early Chinese and Japanese immigrants had been peasants in their home countries . . . [but] became shopkeepers and ethnic enterprisers’’ (p. 13) seems to imply that all members of an Asian immigrant group belonged to the same class. This is poor class analysis. Not all the immigrants had been peasants; some of them had held other occupations – including shopkeeping and itinerant peddling – before they arrived. There are newspaper accounts dating back to the early 1850s commenting on the urbanity of Chinese merchants: men such as Norman Asing could not have come from peasant origins. Available statistics on the occupational background of Japanese immigrants show their different class origins even more clearly.31 And even if some peasants did become ‘‘ethnic enterprisers,’’ there is no evidence that all of them did. In place of simplistic inferences, which can obfuscate more than they illuminate, what we need are good studies of the occupational mobility of Asian immigrants – as individuals and as cohorts – so that the process of class formation can be better understood.

Conclusion Given the fact that Strangers cannot be held up as an example of meticulous scholarship, why has it been so widely acclaimed? I believe the answer lies in the 104

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capitalist nature of commercial publishing and the state of race relations in the United States today. Little, Brown and Co., the publisher of the book, with the active cooperation of the author, has promoted and marketed the book more aggressively than any academic or community-based publisher could have done. Many reviews of Strangers that have appeared in newspapers and periodicals, as well as the author himself during his lecture tours and television appearances, have discussed not only the book but also the writer’s own life story, in the process creating a public persona for Ronald Takaki, a descendant of plantation laborers who has truly made good in America. In short, here is one more heartwarming American success story! By embracing what might be called historical or literary pluralism, perhaps white Americans embarrassed by a decade of civil rights retrenchments under Ronald Reagan and George Bush can expiate themselves to some extent. Strangers is an excellent candidate for awards because it paints a panoramic vista, speaks with an epic voice, and is easy to read. But beyond the book’s ostensible merits lies a more subtle reason: even though its conceptual framework is highly critical of American history and society, the ultimate effect of the oral history quotes is to affirm the belief that, in America, even the downtrodden have a chance to demonstrate the triumphant tenacity of the human spirit. Whether or not its author intended to, Strangers tells a tale that makes its readers feel good. There is a real irony here, because Takaki has been a severe critic of such writers as David Henry Hwang, whose popular success he has attributed to the public’s desire for Oriental exotica.32 But Strangers, too, has helped to whet that appetite for something a little different, a little exotic. That it does so would not be much of a problem were it not for the fact that its author, by failing to acknowledge adequately his debt to other researchers and writers, has taken our communal history and commodified it, while garnering all the credit for himself.

Notes 1 Honolulu Star-Bulletin and Advertiser, August 20, 1989. 2 Richard Okawa, Minoru Takaki, Nobuo Takaki, Susumu Takaki, Takeo Takaki, Lillian Takaki Ota, and Jeannette Takaki Watanabe. 3 Chuong Hoang Chung, Roberto Haro, Liz Megino, and Wei-chi Poon. 4 Angeles Jucuntan. 5 Gin Pang, Jane Singh, and Judy Yung. 6 Frank Emi, Gordon Hirabayashi, and Norman Mineta. 7 Twenty of these documents were published verbatim in Orientals and Their Cultural Adjustment, Social Science Source Documents no. 4 (Nashville, Tennessee: Social Science Institute, Fisk University, 1946). (The longest piece included in this anthology, however, was written not by an Asian American but by a white woman who had married first a Chinese and then a Japanese man.) I had ‘‘rediscovered’’ the Survey of Race Relations archives in the late 1970s and had encouraged Judy Yung to sift through the documents for her ‘‘Chinese Women of America’’ project and later for her PhD dissertation. Yung was subsequently hired by Takaki as a research assistant. In this capacity, she ‘‘scouted’’ the collection for him.

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Sucheng Chan 8 Howard A. DeWitt, Anti-Filipino Movements in California: A History, Bibliography and Study Guide (San Francisco: R & E Research Associates, 1976), 112. 9 See Byron K. Marshall, Capitalism and Nationalism in Prewar Japan: The Ideology of the Business Elite. 1868–1941 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1967), 65, for the 1882 data, and Gary R. Saxonhouse, ‘‘Country Girls and Communication among Competitors in the Japanese Cotton-Spinning Industry,’’ in Japanese Industrialization and Its Social Consequences, ed. Hugh Patrick (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1976), 100, for the 1909 and 1920 figures. 10 Computed from Ushisaburo Kobayashi, The Basic Industries and Social History of Japan, 1914–1918 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1930), 122. Alan H. Gleason, ‘‘Economic Growth and Consumption in Japan,’’ in The State and Economic Enterprise in Japan, ed. William W. Lockwood (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1965), 409, and Kamekichi Takahashi, trans. by John Lynch, The Rise and Development of Japan’s Modern Economy (Tokyo: Jiji Tsushinsha, 1969), 343–4, which do not give detailed breakdowns for the different segments of factory production, show females at approximately 60 percent of the factory labor force during the first decade of the twentieth century. 11 Saxonhouse, ‘‘Country Girls,’’ 9. 12 William W. Lockwood, The Economic Development of Japan: Growth and Structural Change 1868–1938 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1954), 184, note 54. 13 See Kobayashi, Basic Industries, 196, for the figure on miners, and the Bank of Japan, comp., The Recent Economic Development of Japan (Tokyo: Tokyo Tsukiji Type Foundry, 1915), 122, for the number in non-mining industries. 14 Kobayashi, Basic Industries, 196. 15 Jon Halliday, A Political History of Japanese Capitalism (New York: Pantheon Books, 1975), 62. 16 Saxonhouse, ‘‘Country Girls,’’ 100–4. 17 Ibid, 101. 18 Jean Chesneaux, trans. by H. M. Wright, The Chinese Labor Movement, 1919–1927 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1968), 57, 73–6. 19 John Modell, ‘‘The Japanese American Family: A Perspective for Future Investigation,’’ Pacific Historical Review 37 (1968): 67–81. 20 ‘‘The Exclusion of Chinese Women, 1870–1943,’’ in Entry Denied: Exclusion and the Chinese Community in America, 1882–1943, ed. Sucheng Chan (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1991). 21 Alan T. Moriyama, Imingaisha: Japanese Emigration Companies and Hawaii, 1894–1908 (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1985). 22 This idea is suggested in Akira Iriye, Pacific Estrangement: Japanese and American Expansion, 1897–1911 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1972), 84–90. 23 The figures on the Chinese cited on 79–80 of Strangers come from my studies, ‘‘Chinese Livelihood in Rural California: The Impact of Economic Change, 1860–1880,’’ Pacific Historical Review 53 (1984): 273–307, tables 1–4 on 299–306, and This Bittersweet Soil: The Chinese in California Agriculture 1860–1910 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1986), tables on 62–3, 68–9, 74–5. The paragraph in Strangers citing these statistics, which took me more than a decade to compile and compute, has no endnote. In response to my complaint, Takaki wrote me a note saying he will acknowledge my work in the revised edition of Strangers. 24 The statistics on the ethnic background of the women whom Punjabi immigrants married cited on p. 310 of Strangers come from a paper Karen Leonard presented at an invitational conference in 1985, at which Takaki was not present, and was used without her knowledge or permission. When queried by Leonard (after Strangers appeared) about how he had got hold of a copy of her paper, Takaki said he does not remember, but promised to cite her nowpublished work, which took ten years to research, in the revised edition of Strangers. (Personal Communication from Leonard to Chan, May 1990.)

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Strangers: History and Historiography 25 The number of Asian Americans in the mid-1980s on p. 5 of Strangers are taken from Robert W. Gardner, Bryant Robey, and Peter C. Smith, ‘‘Asian Americans: Growth, Change, and Diversity,’’ Population Bulletin 40(4) (1985). In contrast to Gardner and his colleagues, who stated that their figures are estimates, Takaki cites them as though they are actual counts. 26 For example, no sources are shown for the figures on Issei farmers cited on p. 189 and 193 nor for those on Filipinos on p. 31–18 [sic] of Strangers. 27 This brief definition of ‘‘liminality’’ is based on my reading of Victor Turner’s work. Strangers does not explicate the concept. 28 Edna Bonacich has articulated this conceptual framework most fully in Lucie Cheng and Edna Bonacich, eds., Labor Immigration under Capitalism: Asian Workers in the United States before World War II (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1984), 1–185. However, her version of the theory does not include ‘‘spacious dreams’’ and ‘‘liminality’’ as aspects of the Asian American immigrant experience. 29 ‘‘Public Policy, U.S.–China Relations, and the Chinese American Experience: An Interpretive Essay,’’ in Pluralism, Racism and Public Policy, ed. Edwin G. Clausen and Jack Bermingham (Boston: G.K. Hall & Co., 1981), 5–38; Bittersweet Soil, 16–31; and ‘‘European and Asian Immigration into the United States in Comparative Perspective, 1820s to 1920s,’’ in Immigration Reconsidered: History, Sociology and Politics, ed. Virginia Yans-McLaughlin (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 37–75, especially 39. 30 Hilary Conroy, The Japanese Frontier in America, 1868–1898 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1953); Alan T. Moriyama, Imingaisha: Japanese Emigration Companies and Hawaii 1894–1908 (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1985); Yuji Ichioka, The Issei: The World of the First Generation Japanese Immigrants, 1885–1924 (New York: Free Press, 1988); Wayne Patterson, The Korean Frontier in America: Immigration to Hawaii 1896–1910 (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1988); and Mary Dorita, Filipino Immigration to Hawaii (San Francisco: R & E Research Associates, 1975). 31 The occupational background of Japanese immigrants is given in Yamato Ichihashi, Japanese in the United States (1932; repr. New York: Arno Press, 1969), 402–5. 32 Takaki criticized Hwang after a performance of M. Butterfly, which won the Tony Award for the Best American Play in 1988, during the 1989 national conference of the Association for Asian American Studies in New York.

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CHAPTER

SIX

A Critique of Strangers from a Different Shore* Elaine H. Kim

Ronald Takaki’s Strangers from a Different Shore is an important book. In a sense, it has become our face to the society at large, placing Asian Americans in the American cultural portrait. Written in lively prose and animated by a sympathetic spirit, it is highly readable and accessible to those to whom we have been unfamiliar: it introduces us to the American person-in-the-street in a way that few other books by Asian Americans have done. Gathering various nationality groups between its covers, Strangers from a Different Shore lays the groundwork for understanding lines of transmission between some of what has happened in the past and present-day circumstances. In this book, Ron Takaki attempts to ‘‘give voice’’ to the ‘‘little people’’ of Asian America, offering what he calls a ‘‘view from below’’ in direct challenge to the ‘‘great men’’ approach to history. Years ago, eminent Asian American historian Yuji Ichioka called for centering Asian Americans as ‘‘subjects’’ instead of as ‘‘objects’’ of history, and Takaki applies himself here to this task. The book makes significant use of Asian American ‘‘literature’’ as illustration and substantiation of ‘‘history.’’ It also purports to present a wholistic view of the Asian American experience, which must perforce encompass history as women, as well as men, have lived it. This commentary explores the book’s approaches to the problematics of ‘‘literature and history’’ and ‘‘history and gender,’’ as well as some of the possible implications of these approaches to Asian American Studies. Like many of today’s social studies teachers, Takaki uses fiction and poetry to breathe life into the facts and figures and to contribute an emotional dimension that he hopes will give history a human face.

*Elaine H. Kim ‘‘A Critique of Strangers from a Different Shore.’’ Amerasia Journal 16(2) (1990): 101–11. Reprinted by permission of Asian American Studies Center Press.

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New historicists have been grappling with the task of breaking apart traditional boundaries between history and literature. According to Hayden White, history is never ‘‘innocent.’’ By this, he means that historians are no less storytellers than are writers of fiction: both history texts and literary texts are constructed works. Historical works can be viewed as ‘‘verbal fictions . . . the contents of which are as much invented and found’’ as the contents of literary works. Neither is more a ‘‘given’’ than the other. Thus, historical treatises are essentially literary in nature; ‘‘their form is their fiction.’’ The historian orchestrates a coherence of the elements, fashioning them into a system, excluding certain facts in the interest of constituting others as components of comprehensible stories in an ‘‘overall coherence,’’ tailoring the ‘‘facts’’ to the requirements of the story form. Historians, in effect, translate ‘‘fact’’ into ‘‘fiction.’’ Thus, fact and fiction are not polar opposites, and fiction cannot be subordinated to history.1 Writers about literature, including myself, have often viewed ‘‘context’’ as the ‘‘historical milieu as if this milieu were more concrete and accessible than the literary work itself. Hayden White and others have pointed out that historical contexts are themselves products of the fictive capabilities of those historians who study them. When we discuss works of literature in their social contexts, we might keep in mind this precept. At the same time, historians must take care, when using literary texts to render historical knowledge more ‘‘palatable,’’ not to privilege what they take to be factual knowledge over so-called fictive texts. Otherwise, as White contends, the ‘‘common people’s stories’’ may become merely a ‘‘cosmetic’’ for knowledge ‘‘too dreary to be taken straight by readers.’’2 Further, the distinction between history and literature that underlies this ‘‘cosmetic’’ strategy has a long and not so honorable history within a dichotomizing frame of mind that pitted head against heart, reason against emotion, objectivity against subjectivity, and historical recitation against storytelling. It is readily apparent that this specious dichotomization has proceeded along gender lines – that is to say, truth, value, and historical narrative have been marked as male, while ‘‘mere storytelling’’ has been marked as female. Strangers from a Different Shore posits a direct relationship between so-called ‘‘facts’’ and so-called ‘‘fiction.’’ Implicit here is a hierarchical relationship in which literature is subordinated to history. The novels of John Okada, Younghill Kang, and Milton Murayama and the autobiographical or quasi-autobiographical narratives of Carlos Bulosan, Maxine Hong Kingston, Monica Sone, and Jade Snow Wong are taken literally for use as illustrations of ‘‘history,’’ and the multiple identities of the writers as both determined and determining are denied. Failing to distinguish between ‘‘truth’’ and ‘‘fact’’ denies the possibility that imaginative writers might get at the ‘‘truth,’’ but not by pursuing ‘‘facts.’’ Narratives are not factual accounts; in them, cultural scripts are being adhered to or rebelled against. The narrative form itself and what it is possible to say within that form is, in fact, prescripted by the ideological requirements of the culture from which it emerges. Sequences of events come to the historian 109

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already preencoded, and the historical vantage point should enable the historian to consider in his or her refiguration what is not being said. For example, Takaki uses Sone’s Nisei Daughter to exemplify the ‘‘duality’’ experienced, he says, by Nisei in the World War II era. The historian should ask, as Takaki does not, how this false choice between East and West was culturally scripted. Attention needs to be paid to how the circumstances faced by Japanese Americans at the time Nisei Daughter was written and published might have helped shape Sone’s narrative strategies. Using autobiography as historical ‘‘fact’’ ignores the narrative as already ‘‘fictionalized.’’ In his treatment of Jade Snow Wong’s Fifth Chinese Daughter, Takaki extracts only what is literally on the page, while paying little heed to what is not said, within the context of what it might have been like to be an Americanborn Chinese woman writing in the 1940s in retrospect about growing up in San Francisco in the 1930s and early 1940s. Are there not silences built into the narrative by the social and political conditions of the time? Failure to attend to these silences suggests neglect of the dialectical relationship between what is said and what is not said, between the writer’s agency and the ways in which she and her writing are determined by her social and political context. How might Jade Snow Wong’s presentation of self and the Chinese American ‘‘dualities’’ Takaki attributes to her been shaped by encouragement from English teachers, editors, and publishers whose ideas about US ‘‘minorities’’ were influenced by post-war ideologies at a time when people of developing countries, clamoring for freedom from direct colonial rule, were questioning the validity of US world leadership? Was there a drive for ‘‘success stories’’ of young ‘‘primitives coming up to the light’’ of civilization? I myself recall being encouraged by teachers and peers to believe that my parents and community represented eastern feudalism, sexism, and communalism against which I should struggle in order to achieve an albeit conditional identity as a Western democracy-loving American individual. Jade Snow Wong’s Fifth Chinese Daughter is inscribed in Takaki’s book as an example of a second-generation Chinese American’s linear progression from the communal to the individual as she challenges ‘‘traditional Chinese attitudes towards women.’’ Shirley Lim has written convincingly that Fifth Chinese Daughter might alternatively be read as a capitulation to Chinese American patriarchy.3 This argument can be made both in terms of the writer’s ardent desire to prove worthy of her father’s love and approval and in terms of the culturally scripted choices at that time. Autobiographies are multi-layered: to ignore the writer’s states of mind, what the writer wants to tell about herself and what she chooses to withhold, denies these layers and the multiple identities of the storytellers. Another example of the conflation of ‘‘fact’’ and ‘‘fiction’’ and the abandonment of the dialectic between the writer’s agency and cultural scriptedness can be seen in Takaki’s treatment of Carlos Bulosan’s America Is in the Heart. The fact that there are few other published first-person accounts by Filipino Americans in Bulosan’s era notwithstanding, using Bulosan’s book as pure illustration of Filipino American history essentializes that experience and denies the 110

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mediations and constructions of the writer. I don’t think we can ignore Bulosan’s political agenda. As Marilyn Alquizola compellingly argues, the distinction between the ‘‘knowing’’ author and the naive narrator is what makes possible an ironic critique of US colonialism and racism at a time when American publishers and readers were arguably looking for the personal tale of the ‘‘little brown brother.’’4 We know from the work of Norman Jayo and others that the narrator of American Is in the Heart is not in fact one and the same with Carlos Bulosan, who wrote less about what actually happened to him than about what could have happened to some Filipino in America, sometime and somewhere.5 Taking America Is in the Heart as a purely ‘‘factual’’ account of Bulosan’s experiences to prove a point about Filipino Americans denies Bulosan’s mediations and deliberate constructions. The narrator of America Is in the Heart is a ‘‘composite protagonist.’’ As Sau-ling C. Wong has succinctly pointed out, the book is already a mediated text;6 using the book to prove points about ‘‘history’’ makes up a composite from what is already a composite. Takaki uses Younghill Kang’s novel East Goes West to demonstrate the ‘‘patriotic fury’’ of Korean exiles in America on the one hand, and the frustrated hopes of the Korean immigrant who longs for acceptance into the mainstream of American life on the other. The theme of longing for acceptance, which is in keeping with the overall theme of Takaki’s book, is certainly apparent in Kang; however, we cannot ignore the fact that Kang presents us with a series of characters whose responses to their American experience are diverse, shifting, interrelated, and often highly ironic. Moreover, Kang roots Chungpa Han’s ardent desire for American acceptance in the particularities of his Korean identity, with specific reference to the global contexts in which Korea was situated at that particular point in time. These are contexts that Takaki does not address. I have come to believe that there is a need to go beyond the East/ West, push/pull, Asian/Euro-American paradigmatic binarisms, so that we can begin to address the complexities of the multiracial character of US society that has never been limited to confrontations between Asia and America or between whites and non-whites. In stark contrast with his treatments of Asian American literary work are Takaki’s treatment of canonical writers like Herman Melville and Bret Harte, whose works he does not subject to the purely literal interpretation applied to Asian American literary work. Takaki reads Melville’s Moby Dick on a symbolic level and examines Bret Harte’s writings about Chinese in terms of authorial intent and social effect. A hierarchy of values is implied here: it may be axiomatic that there is more interpretive material available about Melville than about Monica Sone, but we must at least interrogate why this is so. Otherwise, we are uncritically silencing some voices and elevating others. It seems to me that the consciously stated aims and strategies of Strangers from a Different Shore contradict the unconscious methodological and ideological assumptions of its subtext. Although Takaki contends that he will establish the self and subjecthood of Asian Americans by retrieving their voices from 111

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oral history, songs, letters, diaries, autobiographies, short stories, novels, and poems that are ‘‘cuttings from the cloth of languages,’’ his strategy in fact takes away the voices of those Asian Americans who spoke, disempowering their constructions while giving voice only to himself as master storyteller and orchestrator of elements into a kind of Asian American metahistory. Thus in the end, there is only one voice. In a quest for unity, this one voice presents the so-called ‘‘untold story’’ of what supposedly ‘‘really happened,’’ as if history were totality waiting to happen, and that the hitherto partial history of the US could be supplemented and corrected by simply tacking on Asian Americans. This compensatory approach to history is based on the notion that there is an ‘‘objective’’ or ‘‘right way’’ of telling history for ‘‘all time,’’ that there is such a thing as a ‘‘universal history.’’ In this Western positivist allegorical script that claims the New World in terms of Manifest Destiny and the ‘‘Westward Ho’’ pioneer spirit, Asian Americans and other people of color have never been more than mere props and objects, not members of the cast and thus cannot be tacked on. If people of color have been only props in the old allegory, women have been the stage set. Searching for a ‘‘place’’ for women in history has led many feminists to the conclusion that the script must be ruptured and not simply added to, if there is to ever be a history that establishes women’s centrality and selfhood on their own terms. What Gerda Lerner has called ‘‘compensatory history,’’ and ‘‘contribution history,’’ both of which are attempts to ‘‘fit women’s past into empty spaces of [male-defined] historical scholarship,’’7 have been insufficient and inadequate to this crucial task. We can no more accept women’s history as refracted through a male lens than Asian American experiences distorted through the lens of whites: just as Asian American women are not white women with color, we are not Asian men with female gender. New categories are needed to organize historical material. We need not a single framework but multiple ones that take into account the way women have experienced history, which we find is different from the way men have experienced it. Clearly, we need a woman-consciousness inquiry that accounts for female experiences, the development of women’s consciousness, a vision through the eyes of women and ordered by values women define. In Strangers from a Different Shore, women are folded into the narrative almost from beginning to end. However, even though we are told that they act independently, the women in Takaki’s story have no centrality, subjectivity, or autonomy. His is the story of males moving through a female terrain: women are only the space that men move through in their drive for the ‘‘City on the Hill.’’8 Existing primarily in relation to men, the women in Takaki’s narrative are left behind in Asia or brought to America by men; they long for and are longed for by men; they tie men to family and village in Asia or have a ‘‘softening influence’’ on them in America. Sought after by men as wives and prostitutes, they offer sexual release to men and provide or prevent a base for men’s establishment of families in America. They contribute to the war effort and 112

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work beside men in fields and shops, and, like men, they are exploited workers in American society. Besides being left behind, longed for, and needed by men, what else are they? Takaki frequently elaborates on the status of women vis-a-vis the family, which we know presents only one level of functioning. This is something to which men’s histories are never limited. By accepting such conventions, Takaki cannot apprehend women’s complexities and subjectivities, and we cannot learn about such critical issues as women’s sexuality, aspirations, or their evolving consciousness and strategies in response to tensions between patriarchal assumptions and their struggles for autonomy. Even Takaki’s references to Confucian prescriptions for female chastity do not evidence awareness of the possibility that idealization is often a defensive ideology and an expression of tension within society: tracts, sermons, and handbooks for women have often served as prescriptions for desired as opposed to actual behavior. Takaki does make use of materials written by women like Emma Gee,9 Sonia Sunoo,10 and Alice Chai,11 but the self-same information can be interpreted differently according to the interpreter. A case in point may be his choice of material from Songs of Gold Mountain, a collection of folk songs published between 1911 and 1915, selected, translated, edited and therefore mediated by Marlon Hom. As Hom notes in his prefatory remarks, songs such as those expressing wives’ longings for their absent husbands were occasional poems composed by men on agreed-upon themes which, although certainly based on commonly enough experienced situations, do not necessarily represent the ‘‘voices’’ of actual women.12 Sau-ling Wong points out that the poems in the ‘‘Lamentations of Estranged Wives’’ section of Hom’s book are in keeping with the Chinese poetic ‘‘lament of the boudoir’’ tradition.13 Takaki adds his mediation to Hom’s, selecting songs about wives in China lying in cold beds yearning for their husbands to illustrate how the loyal wife left behind experienced the mutilation of the Chinese American family. In the same collection, there are a number of lamentations Takaki does not select, songs written by men in the voice of resentful wives who curse their husbands as morons, simpletons, and idiots whom they would divorce if they could. These songs were occasional poems penned by male writers (who also wrote songs about resentful husbands, since the agreed-upon theme was the convention of complaint about marriage mismatches). Marlon Hom points out that they comprised proportionally few of the anthologized songs. But reading them makes me want to know not only about the faithful wives in China fingering old yellowing photographs of their distant husbands but also if there were women who resented being left behind with their husbands’ families. Is it possible that some of these forsaken women actually felt relieved at not having to deal with the men as long as they received regular remittances that elevated their standing in the village? Does the male gaze project sexual desire and longing upon female anxiety over social and economic security? The mediations are so thick and heavy that I wonder if the voices of the women in China have been 113

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buried and erased and, if so, by how many layers of men and to what ends? Here again I am tantalized by what is not being said. I was struck, as Takaki apparently was not, by the juxtaposition in Hom’s collection of the men’s joyful songs, however fantastic, of white-haired old bachelors who finally married women half their age with songs about the fate of Chinese prostitutes who, unlike the old men, cannot easily be ‘‘saved’’ by fortuitous marriages late in life. What is missing from this picture is the women’s viewpoints of themselves and their experiences. Especially since we know that the preponderance of published materials on early Asian Americans is centered on men and men’s perspectives, we can see that primary research from a woman-centered or at least woman-conscious perspective could serve the historian well. For example, Alice Chai makes use of interviews of Korean picture brides to construct a picture of their evolving consciousness rather than focusing only on the ‘‘contributions’’ they make as political activists in Hawaii.14 Sucheng Chan brings forth the multi-layered life story of Mary Paik Lee.15 Judy Yung’s unpublished dissertation on Chinese American women highlights contradictions and paradoxes and attempts to trace the development of the women’s political and social consciousness in the pre-World War II era.16 Japanese American women are brought from margin to center in Mei Nakano’s recent study, which describes work, family, and community from the women’s perspectives.17 Feminist approaches to Asian American history bring new possibilities to light: Evelyn Nakano Glenn challenges the notion that Chinese American family patterns were built on what are frequently believed to be Chinese cultural mores, demonstrating the ways in which the development of industrial capitalism and the particularities of cultural domination in the United States profoundly disrupts and transmutes the Chinese American family.18 In her Issei, Nisei and War Bride, which is based on interviews with women in domestic service, Nakano Glenn foregrounds Japanese American women.19 Using gender as an analytical category of history, Dana Takagi studies Nisei women’s ‘‘rage,’’20 and Nazli Kibria analyzes power, patriarchy and gender conflict in the Vietnamese immigrant community by showing how the women negotiate their gender constraints by striking ‘‘patriarchal bargains.’’21 By accepting the conventional periodization of history in terms of men’s activities, we lose sight of the fact that what advances men’s social position has often had the opposite effect on women. Conversely, what has at times been detrimental to men in the ethnopolitical territory they have defined has been of comparative benefit to women. As Valerie Matsumoto has pointed out, the wartime internment, for example, resulted in erosion of male dominance in Japanese American communities: while the Issei men’s economic position and patriarchal authority were permanently eroded, their wives were for the first time in their lives freed from their traditional domestic responsibilities and thus found time to associate with each other, study, pursue hobbies, and focus attention on themselves.22 114

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These are examples of some of the important work being done by Asian American women scholars whose project is to challenge the ideological assumptions to which Strangers from a Different Shore is committed. I am not calling for another compensatory history that tucks in and tacks on Asian American women. What we need instead is to rupture and break free from that script, not to correct and add to it. Much care needs to be exercised if we are not to reduce the heterogeneity of Asian American identities to a monolithic block that allows for neither the valences of gender nor the multi-layered multiplicity of Asian American voices that express themselves in our literature. By constructing binary oppositions between history and literature, fact and fiction, truth and imagination, men and women, canonized Anglo writers and marginalized Asian American writers, Strangers from a Different Shore flattens the voices that it purports to liberate. Mediation exists everywhere in our interpretive lives. A historian needs to acknowledge his own historiography, for he too is just one subject and one voice coming out of a particular viewpoint, a particular ideological apparatus. We need to ask what the ever-present ‘‘I’’ of the historian’s hidden voice liberates the ‘‘objects’’ of history into. The question is, does the approach in Strangers from a Different Shore really grant subject status to ‘‘objects of history,’’ or does it simply change the nature of those ‘‘objects’’ by containing the ‘‘voices’’ in a cage of the storyteller’s making, moving them around like blocks to build the historian’s pseudoobjective and pre-scripted idea of what US history is, according to his own dream of hypostatized pluralism? What we need now is to disrupt, dehierarchize, and subvert, if our aim is to be more, much more than claiming the Master’s house for some of us.

Notes I am deeply indebted to the many insightful suggestions offered by the Furibundistos, a supportive and inspiring informal study group at UC Berkeley’s Department of Ethnic Studies – Norma Alarcon, Marilyn Alquizola, Guilia Fabi, Barbara Hiura, Carridad Souza, and Shelley Wong. I am also grateful to Sucheng Chan and Sau-ling Wong for their very helpful comments and criticisms. The lapses and flaws, of course, are mine. 1 Hayden White, ‘‘The Historical Text as Literary Artifact,’’ in Robert H. Canary and Henry Kozicki, eds., The Writing of History: Literary Form and Historical Understanding (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1978), 41–62. 2 Hayden White, ‘‘ ‘Figuring the Nature of the Times Deceased’ – Literary Theory and Historical Writing,’’ in The Future Literary Theory, ed. Ralph Cohen (New York: Routledge, 1989), 19–44, 38. 3 Shirley Geok-lin Lim, ‘‘The Tradition of Chinese-American Women’s Life-stories: Thematics of Race and Gender in Jade Snow Wong’s Fifth Chinese Daughter and Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior,’’ in American Women’s Autobiography (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992).

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Elaine H. Kim 4 Marilyn Alquizola, ‘‘The Fictive Narrator of America Is in the Heart,’’ in Frontiers of Asian American Studies, ed. Gail Nomura et al. (Pullman, WA: Washington State University Press, 1989), 211–17. 5 See discussion of Bulosan’s work and Norman Jayo’s interviews of Bulosan’s contemporaries in Elaine H. Kim, Asian American Literature: An Introduction to the Writings and Their Social Context (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1982), 47–8. 6 Personal conversation. 7 Gerda Lerner, The Majority Finds Its Past: Placing Women in History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), 150. 8 See Annette Kolodny, The Lay of the Land: Metaphors as Experience and History in American Life and Letters (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1975). 9 Emma Gee, ‘‘Issei Women,’’ in Counterpoint: Perspectives on Asian America (Los Angeles: UCLA Asian American Studies Center, 1976), 359–64. 10 Sonia Sunoo, Korea Kaleidoscope, Oral Histories Volume One: Early Korean Pioneers in USA, 1903–1905 (Davis, California: Korean Oral History Project Series No. 1, Sierra Mission Area, United Methodist Church, 1982). 11 Alice Yun Chai, ‘‘Freed from the Elders but Locked into Labor: Korean Immigrant Women in Hawaii,’’ Women’s Studies 13:3 (1987): 223–34. 12 Marlon K. Hom, Songs of Gold Mountain: Cantonese Rhymes from San Francisco Chinatown (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1987), 63–6. 13 Personal conversation. 14 Alice Chai, ‘‘Korean Women in Hawaii, 1903–1945,’’ in Women in New Worlds, ed. Hilah F. Thomas and Rosemary S. Keller (Nashville, TN: Abington Press, 1981), 328–44. 15 Mary Paik Lee, Quiet Odyssey: A Pioneer Korean Woman in America (Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 1990). 16 Judy Yung, ‘‘Unbinding the Feet, Unbinding Their Lives: Social Change for Chinese Women in San Francisco, 1902–1945.’’ PhD dissertation, UC Berkeley, Department of Ethnic Studies, 1990. 17 Mei Nakano, Japanese American Women: Three Generations 1890–1990 (Berkeley, CA: Mina Press Publishing, 1990). 18 Evelyn Nakano Glenn, ‘‘Split Household, Small Producer, and Dual Wage Earner: An Analysis of Chinese-American Family Strategies,’’ Journal of Marriage and the Family 45:1 (February 1983): 35–46. 19 Evelyn Nakano Glenn, Issei, Nisei, War Bride (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1986). 20 Dana Y. Takagi, ‘‘Personality and History: Hostile Nisei Women,’’ in Reflections on Shattered Windows: Promises and Prospects for Asian American Studies, ed. Gary Okihiro et. al. (Pullman, WA: Washington State University Press, 1988), 184–92. 21 Nazli Kibria, ‘‘Power, Patriarchy, and Gender Confict in the Vietnamese Immigrant Community,’’ Gender and Society 4:4 (March 1990): 9–24. 22 Valerie Matsumoto, ‘‘Japanese American Women During World War II,’’ Frontiers 8:1 (1984): 6–14.

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CHAPTER

SEVEN

A Response to Ling-chi Wang, Elaine Kim, and Sucheng Chan* Ronald Takaki

Let me begin by contextualizing the three papers by Ling-chi Wang, Elaine Kim, and Sucheng Chan. The papers were presented at a panel on my book at the Asian American Studies Conference at Santa Barbara on May 19, 1990. Wang claims that ‘‘Prof. Takaki was informed of this panel late last year and invited to be a respondent.’’ This was not the case. In December of 1989, in a meeting where Wang, Chairperson of the Ethnic Studies Department, and I, chairperson of the Asian American Studies Personnel Committee, were discussing the hiring of part-time faculty for next year, Wang mentioned something about organizing some kind of forum on my book to be held at Berkeley or Santa Barbara. Wang said we would have some extra funding in the program which could be used for such a forum if it were to take place on our campus. I indicated that I might be interested in some kind of event like that, but I left the meeting thinking that it was a very tentative idea. When the Asian American Studies faculty met in January to discuss what we would do with the extra funding, Wang did not bring up the idea of a forum. So I thought it was not going to happen. However, in March, I was suddenly shown a draft of the program for the Asian American Studies Association Meeting in Santa Barbara by a colleague who was working on the program. I was surprised to see a panel on my book, and I was concerned that Sucheng Chan had been invited to be a presenter since it was well known that Chan has had negative feelings toward me for years and it would be unlikely that she would be able to give my book an objective or fair evaluation. There were also other possibilities that could and should have been *Ronald Takaki ‘‘A Response to Ling-chi Wang, Elaine Kim, and Sucheng Chan.’’ Amerasia Journal 16 (2) (1990): 113–31. Reprinted by permission of Asian American Studies Center Press.

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considered – Don Nakanishi and Yuji Ichioka of UCLA, both prominent scholars in the field of Asian American Studies. This was the first time I had learned that there would actually be a panel on my book. I was never formally or directly invited to be a member of the panel as a respondent. In fact the official program did not list my name as a respondent. At the Santa Barbara conference, arriving at the room for the session on my book, I was about to sit in the audience when Wang pointed to a fourth chair on the panel. Apparently it was for me, and then I asked Wang about the format: ‘‘There will be two papers presented, and then discussion.’’ He responded: ‘‘Three papers. I’m presenting a paper, too.’’ Thus, I did not know until only minutes before the beginning of the panel that Wang would not only be the facilitator but also a presenter. I have, on many occasions, presented papers or served as a discussant at meetings of academic professional organizations such as the American Historical Association. It is extremely unusual for a facilitator to be also one of the presenters: this is to ensure balance of judgment and avoid conflict of interest. Moreover, the standard procedure is for scholars to receive formal or written invitations, and papers are usually sent to panelists ahead of time. Such guidelines were applied to the Santa Barbara conference. The call for papers and subsequent announcements on the program had asked presenters to send their papers to each other and to discussants before the conference. I understand that Professor Sucheng Chan, the conference organizer and host, did call presenters for the other panels, insisting they send in their papers ahead of time. However, I do not know whether the presenters for the panel on my book were asked to send me their papers, and I never did receive any papers. Therefore, my response to the papers at the meeting had to be spontaneous, and now I welcome this opportunity to give a more measured and detailed assessment of them. The book, I believe, is capable of defending itself which will be readily apparent to readers. Meanwhile, however, I feel compelled to address the three papers. Let me begin with Ling-chi Wang. Looking back in time, I wish he had given me some of his comments before the book was published. I did share with Wang about 300 pages of the manuscript, in the spring of 1988, long before the publication date, but did not receive any feedback from my colleague. At the time, both of us were actively involved in efforts to establish Berkeley’s American cultural diversity requirement, and it is possible things like manuscripts were placed on the back shelf. Now my study is in published form and certainly on the front shelf, and Wang has given it his attention. In his paper, Wang states that the jury that has delivered the unanimous verdict to date is problematic. First, the jury is almost all white which, in the early years of ethnic studies, would have been rejected as biased, thus illegitimate. For myself, I have never subscribed to such skepticism based on skin color. 118

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But then, I wonder, why even point out the complexion of the reviewers? Wang continues: ‘‘However, what disturbs me most, (and I hope the Association will share my sentiment), is the fact that none of the jurors are known for their research and teaching in the field of Asian American studies.’’ When Wang uses the term ‘‘most,’’ he is implicitly agreeing to his ‘‘first’’ point: this ‘‘disturbs’’ him ‘‘most’’ or more than his objection to the ‘‘almost all white’’ jury. While Lawrence Levine and Bob Blauner are not specialists in the field of Asian American studies, they are very competent to judge my book in terms of their very deep and extensive knowledge of the history of American race relations and sociology. Moreover, it is simply not a ‘‘fact’’ that ‘‘none’’ of the jurors are known for their research and teaching in the field of Asian American studies. Two of the white jurors are known for their research in the field of Asian American studies. Professor Herbert Hill of the University of Wisconsin, who has written about the anti-Chinese racism of the white labor movement, stated: The great issues of race and ethnicity in American life are transformed by Takaki into an evocative historical narrative. This book is a landmark work, a weaving of the social with the personal that is much more than a remarkable history of Asian Americans. It reminds us that the human condition is deeply affected by racial ideology and that ideas have powerful and often terrible consequences.

Alexander Saxton, professor of history at UCLA and author of The Indispensable Enemy: Labor and the Anti-Chinese Movement in California, wrote for my book’s publication announcement which was distributed at the 1989 Asian American Studies Association Meeting in New York: ‘‘This is an illuminating and beautifully experienced book. For students and general readers, Strangers From a Different Shore will be a starting point and a summation.’’ The jurors have also included Asian Americans who are Asian American studies scholars. In fact, the earliest review to be published was written by Scott Wong in the Detroit Free Press, July 30, 1989. ‘‘Takaki has written the most complete overview of Asian-American communities in the United States to date,’’ Wong observed. He ‘‘creates a rich story of the journeys to America’s shores by Asian men and women. . . . ’’ ‘‘Takaki has given us a substantial contribution to Asian-American studies and to the field of American history.’’ Other Asian American scholars have made similar judgments, which were also included in the announcement for the book’s publication. ‘‘At last, an integrated history of all major Asian American communities in the United States. Ron Takaki masterfully describes the historical role of Asians in American history,’’ wrote Professor Shirley Hune, 1989 President of the Asian American Studies Association. Similarly, Director of Asian American Studies at Cornell University, Professor Lee C. Lee stated: ‘‘This book will fill a great need in the field of Asian American Studies. It is the first book to give a historical review of why, where and when Asians came to America.’’ 119

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In a pre-publication evaluation of the book, Professor Peter Kwong of the State University of New York, author of The New Chinatown, wrote: Professor Takaki has written a passionate and captivating book on the history of Asians in America. His ability to present an enormous amount of original material in the genuine voices of this extremely diverse group of immigrants is breathtaking. Yet throughout, he has maintained a lucid narrative anchored by a penetrating analytical framework. Professor Takaki has set a new standard of excellence in the literature of Asian American studies.

In the front cover review of the Los Angeles Times Book Review, September 24, 1989, nationally recognized Asian American writer Professor Bharati Mukherjee, professor of literature at the University of California, Berkeley, wrote: Takaki’s aim is to correct the Euro-centric tilt favored by the majority of American social historians, to render visible Asians’ contributions to the making of America, and to firmly establish the pluralism of American culture. His scope is vast: He chronicles the very distinctive immigration odysseys of the Chinese, the Japanese, the Koreans, the Filipinos, the Asian Indians, the Vietnamese, the Hmong. And his method is extraordinary, seaming together meticulous scholarship, impassioned analysis. . . . Strangers is an important book. . . . this book should be required reading on campuses.

The ‘‘jury,’’ for me, also includes people in the Asian American communities, and here I would like to report that the responses from them have been enormously encouraging. Hundreds of individuals – Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, Asian Indian, Korean, Vietnamese, Hmong – have directly thanked and congratulated me for writing ‘‘their,’’ ‘‘our’’ book. They live in many states – Hawaii, Arizona, Washington, Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, New York, Massachusetts, California, Illinois, Connecticut, and Florida. They have stopped me on the streets and in supermarkets, talked to me at community meetings, written me letters (some of them long ones), and left messages on my answering machine. They say the study accurately and richly resonates their lives, their histories. ‘‘I am so glad you included us in your history of Asian Americans,’’ exclaimed the editor of India Abroad in a phone call from New York. ‘‘I am a former student of yours and am currently reading your most recent book, Strangers From A Different Shore,’’ wrote a young Sansei woman in a letter. ‘‘I could not stop thinking about the affect you still have on my life, your book is wonderful. . . . Thank you Ron for helping me understand myself and my past.’’ ‘‘You told the naked truth,’’ an old Nisei exclaimed to me in Honolulu as he held my book in his hands referring to its description of the racism the Japanese had experienced. Many Asian Americans tell me that they are not readers of books but that this is one they actually read. Strangers from a Different Shore, Wang himself acknowledges, ‘‘skillfully assembles existing knowledge of each of the Asian American subgroups and 120

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attempts to integrate them into American history, much like a composer borrowing musical themes, motifs, and idioms. . . . ’’ But then comparing my study to Victor and Brett de Bary Nee’s Longtime Californ’, Wang points out that I did not collect the voices myself. However, my study is a very different one than the Nee’s [sic]. Theirs studied only one ethnic group and only one geographical community – San Francisco Chinatown. Mine is comparative and also far more comprehensive: it studies the Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, Filipinos, Asian Indians, Vietnamese, Hmong, Mien, Laotians, and Cambodians; and it also examines Asian Americans in different regions of the country, including Hawaii, California, Mississippi, and Massachusetts. Thus, given the tremendous scope of my study, I had to collect most of the voices from indirect sources such as the Ethnic Studies Oral History Project, the Survey of Race Relations Collection, and the James Earl Wood Collection in the Bancroft Library, and I acknowledged them throughout the study. The Survey of Race Relations Collection contained interviews conducted in the 1920s, and was cited in Eliot G. Mears, Resident Orientals on the American Pacific Coast: Their Legal and Economic Status (New York, 1927) and William C. Smith, The Second Generation Oriental in America (Honolulu, 1927). The James Earl Wood Collection was cited in a footnote in H. Brett Melendy, in his chapter on Filiipinos, in Asians in America: Filipinos, Koreans, and East Indians (Boston, 1977). But I also directly interviewed people. One of them, Touly Xiong, a Hmong refugee now living in Wisconsin, told me: ‘‘We hope you will include our stories in your book. Americans need to understand us and what we have gone through.’’ He said that he had fought for the US in Laos and that his brother had been killed by North Vietnamese soldiers. But in Wisconsin the Hmong were called ‘‘Chinks’’ and told to ‘‘go back to your country.’’ I also interviewed many of my relatives. One of the meaningful things I discovered and I hope other Asian American scholars will learn is that our family histories are tied to the histories of our communities. We, as scholars, are members of communities, and our aunts, uncles, and cousins have stories and voices that belong to Asian American history. So I interviewed my cousin, Minoru Takaki, for example, because he was a vital and direct source for understanding the experiences of Japanese plantation laborers on the Puunene Plantation. To determine whether they were ‘‘representative,’’ I corroborated their information with other sources such as other oral histories, plantation records, newspapers, and travelers’ reports. But what about Wang’s claim that I ‘‘failed’’ to ‘‘adequately’’ treat the postWorld War II period? I wish I had given more attention to the 1950s, but I felt that the book was already an enormously long one and also that I wanted to focus more on the post-1965 period. And here it is not accurate to describe my book as a history of Asians in the US up to World War II. The last two chapters (out of a total of twelve chapters) are devoted to exactly this time period. As any reader will see, they are not ‘‘chapters of anecdotal events . . . tacked on as an epilogue,’’ as Wang claims. Rather they are designed to relate the early period to the more 121

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recent history in a substantive way. They present an analysis of post-World War II developments – the Immigration Act of 1965 and how it was a consequence of the African-American Civil Rights Movement; the second wave of Asian immigrations and how they differed in terms of class, gender, and purpose from the first wave; the refugees from Southeast Asia and how theirs was an entirely different experience from the immigrants; the myth of the Asian-American ‘‘model minority’’; the recent rise of anti-Asian racism and violence such as the murder of Vincent Chin; the contemporary struggle of Asian Americans to define themselves. These certainly are not ‘‘anecdotal events.’’ In terms of pages, these two chapters represent 85 pages out of a total of 491 pages – seventeen percent of the book’s text. As for the Asian American movements, Wang cites among his examples Vincent Chin and redress and reparations. Actually my book does analyze and highlight the movement for justice for Vincent Chin and also the movement for redress and reparations. The final chapter is entitled, ‘‘Breaking Silences,’’ as a tribute to contemporary Asian American movements. Professor Elaine Kim’s critique is of a different nature than Wang’s. A literary scholar, Kim ventures into the field of history by referring to Hayden White’s view of historiography. The problem with Kim’s reliance on White is that she does not realize that many, probably most historians, do not agree with White. We do not consider our works to be ‘‘verbal fictions.’’ Historian Sucheng Chan, for example, would not so characterize her book, This Bitter-Sweet Soil: The Chinese in California Agriculture, 1860–1910. I think that the historian, unlike the writer of fiction, does have an obligation to seek facts and to represent the past to the best extent possible. To be sure, in the course of writing history, the historian does engage in interpretation. But no one would dispute this. As an historian, I quoted from the voices of actual people. Contrary to Kim’s claim, Asian Americans in my study were not used as ‘‘props and objects’’; rather I listened to them and let them speak for themselves. I did not want to present a collection of oral histories; rather I wanted to write a narrative history and contextualize their stories, relating their experiences to the economic, cultural, and social developments of their communities and American society. I wanted to show how their stories, their experiences branched into the history of this country, for I believe this allows them to claim America. But Kim argues that my ‘‘strategy in fact takes away the voices of those Asian Americans who spoke, disempowering their constructions while giving voice only to himself as master storyteller and orchestrator of elements into a kind of Asian American metahistory.’’ Significantly, her claim is contradicted by her colleague, Ling-chi Wang. Commenting on the ‘‘densely orchestrated ‘voices’ ’’ in my book, Wang observes: ‘‘So powerful are those anguished, defiant voices, that they transcend the book’s narrative, like soaring coloraturas.’’ As for my use of literary sources, I am not a literary critic, and literary criticism was not my purpose. I used novels in a particular way. For example, 122

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I explicitly identified Younghill Kang’s book as a ‘‘novel,’’ and said that the ‘‘character’’ ‘‘epitomizes’’ experiences of Korean immigrants. Here it is not true that I did not address the ‘‘global contexts in which Korea was situated at that particular point in time.’’ In fact, the chapter on Korean immigrants is entitled ‘‘Struggling Against Colonialism,’’ and focuses on Japanese ‘‘colonialism’’ in Korea. Kang’s East Goes West, I noted, graphically illuminated the turmoils of that struggle. My use of another novel, All I Asking For Is My Body, was intended to illustrate historical developments such as labor strikes and housing patterns on the plantation. I regarded Milton Murayama as a reliable source, for he himself was born and grew up on a plantation and he was writing about the plantation experience. I was not interested in applying literary criticism to his ‘‘novel.’’ Rather my purpose was to avoid placing myself and a literary interpretation between the text and the reader, which is what literary critics often do. The same is true for my use of Monica Sone’s Nisei Daughter, however in a different way. I considered this book an autobiography. Of course, it can be debated as to what constitues fiction or art and autobiography or history. But this debate for me as well as for many others has not been resolved and likely will not be. In the meantime, however, I have chosen to believe that autobiography seeks to tell what happened in life from the perspective of the author. And as a historian, I contextualized Sone’s choice between East and West as ‘‘culturally scripted’’ in terms of the racism the Nisei generation faced as children of ‘‘strangers from a different shore.’’ Jade Snow Wong, too, in my view, had written an autobiography. Here I found in her writing and her life two themes – racism and Chinese patriarchy, and I did point out both of them. Jade Snow’s ethnic identity was also framed . . . she discovered when her brother was born, by her gender. Forgiveness from Heaven had been preceded by six girls, and his birth was the occasion for festive celebration in the Wong family. Jade Snow realized that Forgiveness from Heaven was more important to her parents because he was a boy and that she was ‘unalterably less significant’ than the new son. . . . He was also entitled to special support from his parents. Later they encouraged and sent him to college but required Jade Snow to pay for her own college education. Her father explained the reasons for denying her request for help to meet college expenses. Sons perpetuated a family’s ancestral heritage, and thus it was necessary that they have priority over daughters. Wong sons made pilgrimages to ancestral graves, while Wong daughters left home at marriage and joined their husband’s families. But by then, Jade Snow was no longer the ‘dutiful daughter.’

I tried to do justice to Wong, letting her describe for herself the constraints she felt and also rebelled against as a Chinese and a woman in Chinese and American cultures. Carlos Bulosan’s America Is in the Heart does not clearly or cleanly fit the category of autobiography. Thus I wrote in my preface to my discussion on 123

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Bulosan that he ‘‘gave Filipinos their voices, allowing himself and his compatriots to describe their experiences and feelings and to make their claim on America. In this narrative, subtitled ‘‘A Personal History,’’ Bulosan drew deeply from his own experiences and those of the Filipinos around him to create a moving and powerful story, a work of imagination and detail, a representation of the reality of Filipino America.’’ With this caveat, Bulosan was invited to tell his own story. But what about my treatment of women? Kim’s insists that we cannot ‘‘accept women’s history as refracted through a male lens.’’ Our understanding of the history of women has certainly been deepended and rendered more accurate by scholarship written from a female ‘‘lens.’’ But Kim’s argument seems to press beyond this. Hers is a deterministic view of scholarship based on one’s gender and also race: only women can write about women, only men about men, only Asian women about Asian women, only whites about whites. Does this then invalidate automatically scholarship that does not meet Kim’s standard? Does this then mean that Kim herself is gender-bound and that we need to question Kim’s capacity to study Asian male writers like John Okada, Toshio Mori, Milton Murayama, and Frank Chin? Her argument, taken to its logical conclusion, is one of epistemological nihilism. In my book, I included the study of women, and it is true that women are ‘‘folded’’ into the narrative. There have been studies of Asian American women where they have been indeed central, and there will be more of them. But this was not the book I was writing. My book is a study of Asian Americans, and I viewed women in relation to the history of Asian Americans, seeking to show how their lives and thoughts intersected with immigration, agriculture, urbanization, labor, exclusion, racism, wars, internment, family, and settling a new country. Actually in my study women are given extensive attention. One need only look at the index to see how many pages study women: for example, Chinese women, pp. 10, 31, 32, 35, 39–42, 47, 48, 49, 50, 65, 72, 115–116, 121–126, 131, 231–235, 243, 250, 254, 260–265, 266, 276, 417, 422, 427, 428– 429. Pages can also be found for Japanese women, Asian Indian women, Filipino women, Korean women, Vietnamese women. One of the main themes of chapter two, ‘‘Overblown with Hope: The First Wave of Asian Immigration,’’ focuses on women: why, for example, did proportionately more Japanese women than Chinese women emigrate? In my examination of the second generation, I gave biographical treatment specifically to women – Jean Park, Monica Sone, Jade Snow Wong – and tried to understand their lives in relation not only to race but also to gender. Contrary to Kim’s claim, there is a ‘‘female lens’’ in the book, for it is filled with the voices of women and it allows them to tell us how they saw the world from their perspective. ‘‘We worked from morning till night, blackened by the sun,’’ an Issei woman said. ‘‘My husband was a Meiji man; he didn’t even glance at the house work or child care. No matter how busy I was, he would never change a diaper.’’ Another Japanese immigrant captured in poetry the feeling of numbing exhaustion many Issei sisters experienced: 124

A Response to Wang, Kim, and Chan Vexed beyond my strength, I wept. And then the wind came Drying up all tears.

Many Japanese women came as picture brides, but they had their own voices, and many had their own visions, their own reasons for coming to America. ‘‘I wanted to see foreign countries and besides I had consented to marriage with Papa because I had the dream of seeing America,’’ Michiko Tanaka revealed to her daughter many years later. Not all Japanese women were picture brides, and this point was noted in my book: my own grandmother, Katsu Okawa, came here as a single woman and a contract laborer. Women were workers, and they organized strikes on the plantations of Hawaii such as the 1900 strike of Japanese and Portuguese women laborers on the Kilauea Plantation, and in the garment factories of San Francisco and New York Chinatowns such as the 1937 Chinese Ladies Garment Workers strike in San Francisco and the 1982 strike in New York involving 20,000 Chinese garment workers. Kim wants to know ‘‘not only about the faithful wives in China fingering old yellowing photographs of their distant husbands but also if there were women who resented being left behind with their husbands’ families.’’ Yes, as the book shows, there were women who resented the separation. One of them was the wife of Lung On described in my chapter on ‘‘The Emergence of Urban Chinese America.’’ Lung On had come to America in the 1880s, working first as a wage earner and then operating a merchandise store. Many years passed and his wife complained about his absence. In a letter to her husband Lung On, she wrote: I have been expecting your return day after day. . . . But, alas, I don’t know what kind of substance your heart is made of. . . . Your daughter is now at the age of betrothal and it is your responsibility to arrange her marriage.

Her appeal must have moved her husband, for Lung On wrote to his cousin Liang Kwang-jin on March 2, 1905: ‘‘We are fine here, thank you. Tell my family that I will go back as soon as I accumulate enough money to pay the fare.’’ But a few weeks later, Lung On learned from a letter written by his cousin, dated March 4, that certain events in the life history of his family in China had already passed him by: ‘‘Two years ago your mother died. Last year your daughter married. Your aged father is immobile. He will pass away any time now. Your wife feels left out and hurt. . . . Come back as soon as you receive this message.’’ This is a human story of a relationship of a woman and a man, and I tried to capture it as best I could in their own words. While Lung On’s wife did not come to America, other Chinese women did, by force and by choice, and they tell their stories about their experiences in the new land in the pages of my book. Professor Sucheng Chan’s paper is very different from Kim’s paper in tone and content. She is, I understand, writing a general history of Asian Americans, and this may have stirred special interest in my book. 125

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Given the broad and comparative scope and breadth of my study, I depended on existing research, and the footnotes indicate my sources for all of my quotations. The sources extensively listed by Chan are all in my footnotes. But while Chan notes that ‘‘the author relies very heavily on other people’s findings,’’ she overlooks the primary research that I did. As the footnotes indicate, for example, I examined directly the William Hooper collection in the archives of the University of Hawaii, the plantation records at the Grove Farm Plantation on the island of Kauai, newspapers, diaries, magazines, government reports, Congressional debates, strike pamphlets, the Henry George Papers in the New York Public Library, the letters of Theodore Roosevelt, Bret Harte’s writings and letters, correspondence of the labor leaders of the ILWU in the Anne Rand Library of San Francisco, the Kam Wah Chung Company Papers, John Day, Oregon (the Lung On family letters). I also interviewed forty individuals (Chan’s count) and Carol Takaki interviewed two. According to Chan, they represent at most ‘‘one-sixth’’ of the life stories cited in the book. When I conducted the interviews, I was not thinking in such quantitative terms, and I am somewhat surprised that my own direct interviews constituted so much of such a big book. To introduce her discussion on my interviews, Chan writes: ‘‘A comment made by Takaki to Susan Yim, who wrote a review of the book in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin and Advertiser, is revealing: ‘It’s different from Pau Hana in that . . . most of my documents are living people . . . I had to go out to talk to people, become a listener.’ ’’ Unfortunately, most readers of this debate will not have access to the Honolulu Star-Bulletin and Advertiser, August 20, 1989. Chan’s description of Yim’s article is seriously inaccurate. Yim did not write a ‘‘review.’’ Hers was a feature article about me and the book. In fact, Yim is that newspaper’s ‘‘features editor.’’ More disturbingly, Chan took my comment completely out of context. In my interview with Yim, I was talking about the interviews, conversations I had with living people such as the Hmong refugees in Wisconsin, and the Korean American and Vietnamese American students taking classes from me at Berkeley. All of this is clearly and explicitly stated by me in extensive quotes immediately following my comment about living people. But how do we define ‘‘voices’’ and ‘‘listening’’? Here both Ling-chi Wang and Chan are defining them literally. They are thinking of actually and physically listening to voices. My definition is broader, figurative. Most of the people I studied could not be directly interviewed because they had passed away a long time ago. But their ‘‘voices’’ are still here. As I clearly explained in chapter one of my book: We must not study Asian Americans primarily in terms of statistics and what was done to them. They are entitled to be viewed as subjects – as men and women with minds, wills, and voices. By ‘‘voices’’ we mean their own words and stories as told in their oral histories, conversations, speeches, soliloquies, and songs, as well as in their own writings – diaries, letters, newspapers, magazines, pamphlets, placards, posters, flyers, court petitions, autobiographies, short stories, novels, and poems. 126

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That is my definition of ‘‘voices.’’ Thus I considered myself a ‘‘listener’’ when I came across the Western Union telegrams that lonely Chinese men in California had sent to each other in the 1870s and ‘‘heard’’ Fook Sing talk about his hope to find a wife. I became a ‘‘listener’’ when I discovered the 1910 plantation work song, ‘‘The Five O’Clock Whistle,’’ in the plantation records of the Kohala Plantation, and heard the ‘‘voices’’ of the laborers and also my mother who had lived there at that time waking up in the morning to the shrieks of the plantation siren. I ‘‘listened’’ when I came across in the University of Hawaii archives the 1920 strike pamphlet and heard the strikers declare: ‘‘When we first came to Hawaii, these islands were covered with ohia forests, guava fields and areas of wild grass. Day and night did we work, cutting trees and burning grass, clearing lands and cultivating fields until we made the plantations what they are today.’’ I wish I had written a bibliographical essay, and had described the sources that were particularly useful and important. But I had decided at the time not to do this because most broad histories for general readers do not have bibliographies and my book was already enormously bulky. But the footnotes contain titles for studies of Chinese, Japanese, Filipinos, Koreans, Asian Indians, and Southeast Asians; together they constitute a comprehensive and comparative bibliography. The footnotes in my book amounted to literally thousands of citations and sixty pages (small print) – more than one tenth of the book itself. The task of footnoting the book, which amounted to 1000 pages in manuscript, was a massive one. There are some places where footnotes for statistics and other information were missed. I certainly did not want to overlook the works of researchers, and I have made addenda in a new printing. As for the use of the omnibus style of footnoting, in which several sources for information contained in a paragraph are cited together in serial order, this is widely practiced and accepted by many publishers, including the University of California Press and Harvard University Press. I used the omnibus footnote style in Iron Cages: Race and Culture in 19th Century America, published by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., and no objections or concerns were raised then. The omnibus footnote style can also be found in places in Chan’s This Bitter-Sweet Soil and Kim’s Asian American Literature. In Strangers From a Different Shore, in every instance where several citations are placed in a single footnote, I have tried to make certain that the citations are in the order of the materials presented in the paragraph. For example, on page 204, I have several quotes from different sources in one paragraph. The last quote is the Japanese farmers’ response: ‘‘Keep California green.’’ Contrary to a claim Chan has been making, she was not the source of this quote. A glance at the footnote for this paragraph, number 52 on page 520, would show as its last citation that the quote came from ‘‘How to Survive Racism in America’s Free Society,’’ a lecture by Togo Tanaka, April 3, 1973, published in Arthur A. Hansen and Betty E. Mitson (eds.), Voices Long Silent: An Oral Inquiry into the Japanese American Evacuation (Fullerton, 1974), p. 85. 127

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Specific and special acknowledgement was given in my book – for examples, to Roger Daniels for urging the study of the excluded as well as the excluders, Joy Kogawa for one of her phrases, Sau-ling Wong for her brilliant pairing of Maxine Hong Kingston’s terms ‘‘necessity’’ and ‘‘extravagance,’’ Judy Yung for sharing with me her father’s phrase ‘‘jo lui jai,’’ Frank Megino for telling me about Filipino songs, Franklin Ng and Stanford Lyman for their suggestive discussions on Georg Simmel. In my note of appreciation, Amado Cabezas, Franklin Odo, Him Mark Lai, Judy Yung, Edward Chang, Jane Singh, Jerry Takahashi, Chuong Chun, and Hyung-chan Kim were personally thanked for providing feedback on chapters of my manuscript. Chan’s critique of my analysis of Chinese and Japanese women attempts to engage me on a substantive scholarly issue. Her discussion, which inadvertently but implicitly contradicts Kim’s claim that the book minimizes the importance of women, shows that my chapter on immigration was organized to a large extent around women. By examining what happened to women, I believe, we can learn much about what occurred in Asian American history. Chan challenges me on the industrial labor force participation of Japanese women. My field of specialization is American history, and here I had to depend on scholarship in Japanese studies. As the footnote clearly indicates, I obtained my information from Thomas C. Smith, Nakahara: Family Farming and Population in a Japanese Village, 1717–1830 (Stanford, 1977); Sheila Matsumoto, ‘‘Women in Factories,’’ in Joyce Lebra, et. al., Women in Changing Japan (Boulder, Colorado, 1976); Sharon L. Sievers, Flowers in Salt: The Beginnings of Feminist Consciousness in Modern Japan (Stanford, 1983); Yukiko Hanawa, ‘‘The Several Worlds of Issei Women,’’ unpublished MA Thesis, California State University, Long Beach, 1982; Yasuo Wakatsuki, ‘‘Japanese Emigration to the United States, 1886–1924,’’ in Perspectives in American History, vol. 12 (1979); and Robert A. Wilson and Bill Hosokawa, East to America: A History of the Japanese in the United States (New York, 1980). But what about the specific question raised by Chan regarding my statement that ‘‘women composed 60 percent of Japan’s industrial workers’’? Interestingly, Chan’s own statistics of Japanese women representing 83 percent of all textile workers in 1909 and 53 percent of all factory workers in 1920 actually support and reinforce my argument that a large number of women in Japan had become industrial wage earners. Regardless of whether women were industrial workers or factory workers, the difference between 60 percent and 53 percent is not significant: both are sizeable percentages. Even her 47 percent of all industrial workers shows that women composed a very huge proportion. ‘‘Are we refering [sic] to textile workers, or factory workers, or all industrial workers?’’ asks Chan. What Chan does not point out is that my book specifically discusses the different occupations of women – inns and grogshops, tea processing, papermaking, construction, mining, and textiles. Chan says that approximately 90 percent of the textile laborers were female but she does not acknowledge that I give a figure of 80 percent. The broader point of my analysis 128

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is that there was in Japan the practice of dekasegi rodo, where workers, including women, were employed as wage-earners away from home, and this opened the way to thinking about and also becoming overseas dekasegi in Hawaii and California. Chan continues by claiming that my ‘‘contrast with China is also misleading.’’ She refers to a study by Jean Chesneaux on the development of textile factory production in China, and she concludes ‘‘thus, Chinese women were also being ‘proletarianized.’ ’’ But Chan gives no statistics to support her claim; neither does she indicate what specific time period or what particular region of China Chesneaux is studying. Consequently, we do not know whether this development occurred during the years of Chinese immigration, 1850–1882, or after. If it happened after 1882, then the matter becomes irrelevant. Although Chan does not specify the time period in her text, she does give the title of Chesneaux’s study in her footnote, number 18: The Chinese Labor Movement, 1919–1927. Thus actually Chesneaux himself is studying the period long after the exclusionary laws against Chinese women. This lack of attention to specific time periods is evident in Chan’s discussion on education. She correctly represents my argument that ‘‘Japanese women were also more receptive to the idea of traveling overseas than Chinese women’’ because they were more educated. I did not say, however, that many Japanese girls were going to public schools in Japan by the early twentieth century. Actually I noted strongly that they were already doing so in the late nineteenth century due to the Meiji Restoration’s emphasis on education. In fact I wrote: ‘‘The Meiji government required the education of female children, stipulating in the Chakushu junjo (Procedures for Commencement) of 1872 that ‘girls should be educated . . . alongside boys.’ The Emperor Meiji himself promoted female education. ‘My country is now undergoing a complete change from old to new ideas, which I completely desire,’ stated the emperor. Japanese youth, ‘boys as well as girls,’ should learn about foreign countries and become ‘enlightened as to ideas of the world.’ ’’ Such an emphasis on education for women did not exist in China, and Chan presents no evidence that it did. But what Chan does is to switch time periods, and to argue that ‘‘by that time [the early twentieth century], some girls in China were also receiving an education. . . . ’’ Note Chan uses the vague term ‘‘some’’ girls. But more importantly, she is selecting as her time the period after the exclusion of Chinese men and women from America. So it really does not matter much whether at that point in history ‘‘some’’ Chinese girls were attending school. Later Chan states: ‘‘At no time did the influx of Chinese women stop completely.’’ But she provides no statistics on exactly how many of them did come. In 1880, two years before Chinese exclusion, the total female Chinese population in the US was 4,779; in 1910 it was only 4,675. Ten years later, it was only 7,748 out of a total population of 61,639, or only 13 percent. The increase of women in the Chinese population in the US between 1880 and 1920 was less than 3,000 total. On the other hand, due to the Gentlemen’s Agreement, Japanese women continued to enter the US in 129

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large numbers in the early twentieth century. In comparison to Chinese women, Japanese women constituted 45,706 of a total of 120,317 Japanese immigrants between 1909 and 1923, or 38 percent. Chan needs to be more meticulous in dealing with different periods of time: she should have presented evidence of the education of Chinese women during the time when they were legally able to enter the US, or 1849–1882. Thus Chan commits the very sin she accuses me of – ‘‘loose treatment of time.’’ But what about the charge that I neglected historical changes that occurred over time? ‘‘There is a possibility that improvements in ocean travel may account in part for the divergent rates of Chinese and Japanese female emigration,’’ Chan speculates. Chinese women came earlier, and ocean travel was unsafe and long, whereas Japanese women made the crossing later when transPacific travel was safer and faster. This is an interesting ‘‘possibility’’ to consider, but it is hypothetical or what historians would call an ‘‘iffy question’’: what if more modern transportation had been available, would more Chinese women have emigrated? It is impossible for us to know since history did not happen that way. But it may have indeed happened that way, for, as Chan herself notes, the ships of the Pacific Mail Steamship Company began scheduled runs between ports in Asia and those in North America in 1866. If this is true, then, this refutes Chan’s very contention that difficult ocean travel conditions discouraged Chinese women from emigrating. Chinese women were legally permitted to enter the US in the 1860s and 1870s, and they could have come here on scheduled runs of the Pacific Mail Steamship Company. Why then did they not come in larger numbers? I think historians need to examine what occurred not only precisely when but also where, and here it is important to note that actually a greater proportion of Chinese women emigrated to Hawaii than to the US mainland – 14 percent compared to only 5 percent. This evidence would suggest that the difficulties of ocean travel must not have been a significant factor. While admittedly the voyage to California was longer than the one to Hawaii, still either trip was uncomfortable and hard. Other factors were far more important than the conditions of travel – the fact that whites (constituting only 5 percent of the total population, compared to over 80 percent in California) in Hawaii did not view the islands as a ‘‘white man’s country’’ and consequently did not feel threatened by the presence of Chinese immigrant families, that planters and the government there actually promoted the immigration of Chinese women because they considered women to be a stabilizing force for the men and also wanted to use them as workers, that plantation laborers lived in permanent camps and were needed on a year long basis unlike their migratory counterparts in California agriculture and railroad building, and that the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act and the anti-prostitution Page Law of 1975 which was used to keep Chinese women out of the United States did not apply to Hawaii, an independent kingdom. 130

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‘‘In discussing the impact of government policies on female emigration, we cannot look only at U.S. and Hawaiian policies, as Strangers has done. I believe the policies of the Chinese and Japanese governments must be taken into account as well,’’ Chan argues. Here I must emphatically say that I, too, believe they should be taken into account. Chan’s charge is hardly an example of ‘‘meticulous scholarship.’’ Chan either has not read my book or has not read it carefully, or is deliberately misrepresenting my book. In fact, the 1868 Burlingame Treaty is discussed in my study, and it should be noted that this treaty allowed both Chinese men and women to emigrate. While Chan points out that ‘‘Chinese statutes prohibiting emigration were not removed from the books until the turn of the century,’’ she also knows that the Chinese government had difficulty enforcing its laws. Moreover, the laws of China applied to all emigrants, and Chan does not explain why so few women came. But why did so many Japanese women come? The answer includes Japanese government policy and, contrary to Chan’s claim, this factor is discussed in my book: The Japanese migrants were a select group, more so than the Chinese. Unlike China, Japan was ruled by a strong central government. The Meiji Restoration had unified the country, and the new state was able to regulate emigration. . . . The Japanese government had received reports on the conditions of the Chinese in America and was determined to monitor carefully the quality of its emigrants. . . . Seeking to avoid the problems of prostitution, gambling, and drunkenness generated by an itinerant bachelor society and to bring greater stability to immigrant communities here, the Japanese government promoted the emigration of women.

In the 1907 Gentlemen’s Agreement, Japan restricted the emigration of Japanese ‘‘laborers,’’ but strategically retained a loophole: the Japanese government had the power to define ‘‘laborer’’ and it decided that women would be allowed to emigrate. (This discussion is on page 46, directly opposite page 47, from which Chan quotes me regarding the 60 percent female composition of Japan’s industrial workers.) This ‘‘agreement’’ was very different from the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, which was a US law. The American government, not the Chinese government, determined the definition of ‘‘laborer.’’ In 1884 the US government in In Re Ah Moy, on Habeas Corpus decided that the category of ‘‘laborer’’ applied to Chinese women and excluded them. All of this is in the book. Let me conclude by endorsing Chan’s call for more in-depth research on Asian American history. My book is certainly not definitive, and I have not made such a claim. What I tried to write was a general history intended for readers both in our communities and society at large – to help all of us understand that Asian Americans have been here for over 150 years and that their history is part and parcel of the history of America itself. The study covers a wide span of time, from the first Chinese laborers on the Koloa Plantation to the killing of Vincent Chin and the movement for redress and reparations, and comparing the 131

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immigrants of the first wave and the second wave (post–1965). Asian Americans understand why their stories need to be shared, and I wanted to let them to speak through the book. ‘‘I hope this survey do a lot of good for Chinese people,’’ a Chinese man told an interviewer from Stanford University in the 1920s. ‘‘Make people realize that Chinese people are humans. I think very few American people really know anything about Chinese.’’ Indeed, I wanted to write a book that would challenge and possibly change the ways we as Asian Americans have been and are viewed and treated as ‘‘strangers’’ in this society. Finally, I thank my three colleagues for assuring me that the book may have partly achieved my purpose. Strangers from a Different Shore, concludes Ling-chi Wang, ‘‘represents a major step forward in making the white reading public and Asian Americans unfamiliar with our past more aware of who we are,’’ ‘‘an excellent introduction to the history and diversity of Asian experiences in the U.S.’’ The book is ‘‘important,’’ observes Elaine Kim. ‘‘In a sense, it has become our face to the society at large, placing Asian Americans in the American cultural portrait. Written in lively prose and animated by a sympathetic spirit, it is highly readable and accessible to those to whom we have been unfamiliar: it introduces us to the American person-in-the street in a way that few other books by Asian Americans have done heretofore.’’ And Sucheng Chan notes in her last page: ‘‘Strangers is an excellent candidate for awards because it paints a panoramic vista, speaks with an epic voice, and is easy to read.’’ As Chan reports, the book received the California Commonwealth Club’s 1990 gold medal award for nonfiction. I do not know whether its members realized that their organization had once been a leader in the anti-Asian movement. But they can now read about this sad history of their Club in my book, and their award acknowledges America’s diversity. Surely, there will be other studies of the history of Asian Americans, and together we will all be creating our community of memory in the telling and retelling of our stories and seeking to claim America.

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CHAPTER

EIGHT

Come All Ye Asian American Writers of the Real and the Fake* Frank Chin

San Francisco. Chinatown–North Beach. Night. About half past dead. Nineteen sixty. Temperature’s in the sixties too, three days and three nights into a strange summer inversion over town. Hot night for Frisco. On a roof, listen . . . a Chinaman is playing flamenco guitar. The Chinaman looks twelve years old trying to look older. Thousands of tuned cats screech before they die in three-quarter and six-eight time, crash on the walls of two-story Chinatown buildings across the street and fade. ‘‘I know I don’t look Spanish gypsy,’’ the Chinaman says. ‘‘I’ve been sick.’’ He gets a laugh. Has all this been an elaborate racial joke? Does the authenticity of the music the Chinaman plays make a difference in judging this a racist joke? What if I say this is no joke, but my personal experience? What if I tell you a story about me living with gypsies that rings true? What if the story is true and the flamenco guitar is fake? In the fifties our Chinaman knows Charlie Chan Fu Manchu banging Bijou on his brain is making the Chinese uglier and uglier to him by the second. On the ground level, under the apartments full of Chinese, are flamenco nightclubs and restaurants. Carmen Amaya brings her troupe to the Sinaloa on Stockton. The guitarist Mariano Cordoba owns the Patio Andaluz on the corner of Stockton and Vallejo. Juan Serrano plays at Barnaby Conrad’s El Matador, on Broadway. Down Broadway on the corner of Kearny is the Casa Madrid, where Cruz Luna and Rosa Montoya dance and Carlos Ramos plays the guitar. On Green near Grant, at the Old Spaghetti Factory, is a flamenco club called Los Flamencos de las Cuevas. *Frank Chin ‘‘Come All Ye Asian American Writers of the Real and the Fake’’ (excerpt). In Jeffery Paul Chan et al. (eds.), The Big Aiiieeeee!: An Anthology of Chinese American and Japanese American Literature (New York: Meridian, 1991), 1–28.

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The Chinn brothers, Connie Hwang, born in rooms over Orangeland in Chinatown, Chester Chan, Chester Yuen, and a number of Chinatown and suburban yellows were attracted to the music and hung out with the Spaniards. Everyone who played flamenco knew the history and affected the part of a player saving the soul of flamenco from showbiz extinction, of making the difference between the real and the fake in dangerous times. Why were Chinatown kids attracted to flamenco? It was the music of a pariah people, like the Chinese before Charlie Chan, like the Japanese Americans during World War II. Yet flamenco was not about the white racism of Spain. Not racist hate, not racist love, neither the nightmare of oppression nor the dream of being assimilated by the host defines their songs. The gypsies didn’t need white Spaniards to be gypsies. If all the white Spaniards were to disappear off the face of Spain right now, the gypsies and flamenco would not lose anything that holds them together. The gypsies would still be gypsy, and the flamenco would be flamenco. The only difference would be that they would have more room to grow. Asian Americans born here between 1882 and at least 1966 cannot say the same. What if all the whites were to vanish from the American hemisphere, right now? No more whites to push us around, or to be afraid of, or to try to impress, or to prove ourselves to. What do we Asian Americans, Chinese Americans, Japanese Americans, IndoChinese, and Korean Americans have to hold us together? What is ‘‘Asian America,’’ ‘‘Chinese America,’’ and ‘‘Japanese America’’? For, no matter how white we dress, speak, and behave, we will never be white. No matter how well we speak Spanish, or sing, dance, and play flamenco, we will never be Spanish gypsies. What seems to hold Asian American literature together is the popularity among whites of Maxine Hong Kingston’s Woman Warrior (450,000 copies sold since 1976); David Henry Hwang’s F.O.B. (Obie, best off-Broadway play) and M. Butterfly (Tony, best Broadway play); and Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club. These works are held up before us as icons of our pride, symbols of our freedom from the icky-gooey evil of a Chinese culture where the written word for ‘‘woman’’ and ‘‘slave’’ are the same word (Kingston) and Chinese brutally tattoo messages on the backs of women (Kingston and Hwang). Amy Tan opens her Joy Luck Club with a fake Chinese fairy tale about a duck that wants to be a swan and a mother who dreams of her daughter being born in America, where she’ll grow up speaking perfect English and no one will laugh at her and where a ‘‘woman’s worth is [not] measured by the loudness of her husband’s belch.’’ The fairy tale is not Chinese but white racist. It is not informed by any Chinese intelligence. This is Confucian culture as seen through the interchangeable Chinese/Japanese/Korean/Vietnamese mix (depending on which is the yellow enemy of the moment) of Hollywood. ‘‘They sell their daughters at thirteen years old into marriage or worse. . . . They know nothing of the love we have for our women,’’ says Cary Grant in Destination Tokyo. 134

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Ducks in the barnyard are not the subject of Chinese fairy tales, except as food. Swans are not the symbols of physical female beauty, vanity, and promiscuity that they are in the West. Chinese admire the fact that swans mate for life; they represent romantic love and familial bliss. There is nothing in Chinese fairy tales to justify characterizing the Chinese as measuring a woman’s worth by the loudness of her husband’s belch. In The Woman Warrior, Kingston takes a childhood chant, ‘‘The Ballad of Mulan,’’ which is as popular today as ‘‘London Bridge Is Falling Down,’’ and rewrites the heroine, Fa Mulan, to the specs of the stereotype of the Chinese woman as a pathological white supremacist victimized and trapped in a hideous Chinese civilization. The tattoos Kingston gives Fa Mulan, to dramatize cruelty to women, actually belong to the hero Yue Fei, a man whose tomb is now a tourist attraction at West Lake, in Hanzhou city. Fake work breeds fake work. David Henry Hwang repeats Kingston’s revision of Fa Mulan and Yue Fei, and goes on to impoverish and slaughter Fa Mulan’s family to further dramatize the cruelty of the Chinese. Kingston, Hwang, and Tan are the first writers of any race, and certainly the first writers of Asian ancestry, to so boldly fake the best-known works from the most universally known body of Asian literature and lore in history. And, to legitimize their faking, they have to fake all of Asian American history and literature, and argue that the immigrants who settled and established Chinese America lost touch with Chinese culture, and that a faulty memory combined with new experience produced new versions of these traditional stories. This version of history is their contribution to the stereotype. The lie of their version of history is easily proven by one simple fact: Chinese America was never illiterate. Losing touch with China did not result in Chinese Americans losing touch with ‘‘The Ballad of Mulan.’’ It was and is still chanted by children in Chinatowns around the Western hemisphere. Losing touch with England did not result in English whites losing touch with the texts of the Magna Carta or Shakespeare. Their elaboration of this version of history, in both autobiography and autobiographical fiction, is simply a device for destroying history and literature. They describe it as a natural process. However, the shape, content, and moral values preached in the Holy Bible have not gone through this natural process between the languages and nations of Europe. Whites, settled in America for hundreds of years, have not lost track of the plots, the characters, or the authors of the most cherished fairy tales and adventures told in Western childhood. The values of Chinese fairy tales, the form and ethics of the classics of the heroic tradition, the names of the heroes, and the works themselves are written into the bylaws of the tongs and associations that run Chinatowns to this day. The characters of the fairy tale and the heroic tradition are found in figurines, statues, and calendar art. Their stories are told through toys, on flash cards, and in comic and coloring books throughout the country, in Chinese American homes and in Chinatowns – in the restaurants, on the walls, in the windows 135

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. . . At no time in Chinese American history was the real Fa Mulan obscure or inaccessible to a Chinese American girl or boy. The real Fa Mulan is a chant that describes the oldest daughter of an aged father too decrepit to answer the Khan’s call for him to mount and lead his estate’s army into a great war, the perfect Confucian individual: a self-sufficient soldier. We are not here to offer an opinion of Fa Mulan, derived from our personal experience, but to answer the opinion of Kingston and Hwang. Here, we offer the best proof, the corroborative fact of the ballad itself, in Chinese, and in English translation:

The Ballad of Mulan Anonymous Sniffle sniffle, sigh sniffle sniffle. Fa Mulan sniffles like her loom. Do not ask how the shuttle shifts. Do ask why a girl cries herself sick. Ask her: does she pine. Ask her: does she yearn. No, this girl does not pine. 136

Asian Americans: Real and Fake No, this girl does not yearn. Last night I saw the battle rolls For the Khan’s great army. The Roll Book runs twelve rolls. Roll after roll lists my father’s name. Father has no grown sons. Mulan has no older brother. So, I’ll buy a horse and saddle And ride for the family in father’s place. East Market: buy a good horse. West Market: buy a saddle and blanket. South Market: buy bridles and reins. North Market: buy a long whip. Dawn: So long Dad and Mom. Sundown: Camp by the Yellow River. Don’t ask this girl to hear Dad and Mom calling her name. Do ask her to hear the coursing Yellow River gush and tinkle. Dawn: Leave the Yellow River. Sunset: The peaks of the Black Mountains. Don’t ask her to hear her parents wailing her name. Do ask her to hear the Tartar horses whinny On Swallow Mountain and blow chuff chuff. Thousands of miles of war; battles all the way. Over borders and mountains like birds we fly. Tight northern air drums the watch. The gaze of winter dawn flashes on chain mail. My generals of a hundred battles: dead. My soldiers, after ten years of war, hit the road home. On the road home: An audience with the Emperor. The Son of Heaven sits in his Hall of Light. ‘‘Your valor fills twelve books. Your reward amounts to a hundred thousand cash. Now what does the girl want for herself?’’ ‘‘Muklan has no use for any high court post. Loan me the famous Thousand Li Camel to carry me home.’’ Dad and Mom hear I’m coming. They meet me outside the walls and escort me onto our estate. Big Sister hears I’m coming. By the door, she rouges her face. Big Little Brother hears I’m home. He grinds his knife sharp sharp to go for a pig and a sheep. Open my east chamber door. Sit on my west chamber bed. Off with the battledress of recent times. On with the gowns of old times. By the window fix my hair in ‘‘cloudy tresses.’’ Gaze in the mirror and fix the combs. 137

Frank Chin Outside there’s my ally in battle.* My ally is agog. Shoulder to shoulder through twelve years of war . . . He never knew I was a girl. The he rabbit tucks his feet under to sit. The she rabbit dims her shiny eyes. Two rabbits running side by side. Who can see which is the he and which the she?

This chant is the source of all subsequent novels and storybook versions of Fa Mulan. In none is there any instance of ethical male domination or misogynistic cruelty being inflicted on Mulan. She is not tattooed. She returns home to her realm and family and a banquet, not to some wicked Hwangian warlord who can’t stand the idea of a woman general. The poem ends with the Confucian ideal of marriage. In Confucianism, all of us – men and women – are born soldiers. The soldier is the universal individual. No matter what you do for a living – doctor, lawyer, fisherman, thief – you are a fighter. Life is war. The war is to maintain personal integrity in a world that demands betrayal and corruption. All behavior is strategy and tactics. All relationships are martial. Marriages are military alliances. Fa Mulan and her captains were allies, fighting shoulder to shoulder in war for twelve years. (One full cycle around the lunar zodiac – a lifetime in microcosm.) There is no sexual dominance in this childhood peek at romance. If any Chinese fairy tale taught male dominance and the inferiority of women as a moral universal, it would be, as in the Bible, the marriage story. The symbol of the marriage vows throughout Asia is the Chinese fairy tale ‘‘Bright Pearl,’’ or ‘‘The Dragon and the Phoenix.’’ Every large Chinese restaurant in America seems to have the dragon and the phoenix flying on a back wall, with the word for ‘‘marriage’’ between them, usually rendered round like a ball. The ball is the bright pearl of the title. Jade Dragon and Golden Phoenix are supreme in their respective heavenly realms of the River of the Milky Way to the west and Magic Mountain to the east. For hundreds of years, they pass each other every day, as they patrol their territories. One day, they both happen to stop at Fairy Island and meet for the first time. They fly around the island together and blurp! a huge crystal such as never has been seen before in heaven or earth pokes up through the island and flashes in their eyes. To keep it from being taken from them, they decide to put their *

Ally, faw boon, is both singular and plural. Novelizations of ‘‘The Ballad of Mulan’’ name two officers who partnered with her in twelve years of war and who, with confusion and excitement, see that she’s a woman. To better approximate the flow of the chant into the closing image of Confucian romantic love, we have translated faw boon in the singular. Those who can hear singular and at the same time know the plural get a giggle wondering which of the brothers in the fire is the he rabbit, and anticipate both Muklan’s sexual awakening and the romantic drama found between the lines.

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signature on it by carving this crystal into a perfect sphere: a ‘‘bright pearl.’’ Both the dragon and the phoenix bloody their beaks and claws working on the crystal. Hundreds of years of carving. Hundreds of years of polishing and finishing. Finally, the pearl is finished. They turn human. The dragon becomes a handsome young man. The phoenix, a lovely young maid. They live on the island, love each other, and love their pearl. Then it’s stolen by the keeper of the celestial jewels, the Queen Mother of the Western Paradise. The Queen Mother hides it away in a gold box locked inside of nine rooms, behind nine doors, to which she has the only set of nine keys. But she can’t resist showing off the pearl at a gathering of the gods come to celebrate her birthday, and the light from the pearl reaches the lovers. They fly up to the highest heaven, crash the party of the gods, and, in the struggle for the pearl, the gleaming gem rolls and falls off highest heaven toward earth. Dragon says he cannot live without the pearl and dives after it, transforming back into Jade Dragon as he flies. Phoenix says she cannot live without their pearl and dives after it, returning to her bird form. Between them, they cushion the pearl’s fall, but fall it does, crash, into China, and with it the dragon and the phoenix. The pearl becomes West Lake; the dragon becomes Dragon Mountain to the east; and the phoenix becomes Phoenix Mountain to the west of the lake. The telling of the story closes with a folk song still sung around West Lake, in Hanshou city: A bright pearl falls from heaven And become West Lake. Dragon and Phoenix love their pearl, And now they are mountains by West Lake’s waters.

There is no natural or imposed male domination of women in this fairy tale. Jade Dragon is supreme in his domain of the Milky Way, as is Golden Phoenix in hers of Magic Mountain. Man and woman become allies. Love emerges out of the labor of making the pearl and maintaining the alliance, though the forces of heaven and earth are arrayed against them and their pearl. There is no delimiting of male or female behavior, work, or morality here.

2 The works of Kingston, Hwang, and Tan are not consistent with Chinese fairy tales and childhood literature. But how do we account for their consistency with each other and with that of the other Chinese American publishing sensations of the past, from the first book ever published in English, in America, by a Chinese American – My Life in China and America by Yung Wing, 1909 – to Jade Snow Wong’s Fifth Chinese Daughter, which was the immediate predecessor of Kingston’s work and influenced it? That’s easy: (1) all the authors are Christian, (2) the only form of literature written by Chinese Americans that major 139

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publishers will publish (other than the cookbook) is autobiography, an exclusively Christian form; and (3) they all write to the specifications of the Christian stereotype of Asia being as opposite morally from the West as it is geographically. The social Darwinists of the turn of the century regowned this stereotype in social scientific jargon, and white writers – from Jack London to Robert Heinlein – made art of the stereotype. The stereotype, and its corroboration in science and art, sharpened the racist laws against Chinese and Japanese, from Congress to city hall. The stereotype – as moral, scientific, artistic, entertaining, and legal fact – taught, inspired, and haunted the first American-born, Englishspeaking generations of Chinese Americans and Japanese Americans who would become the first authors of Asian American works in English. The stereotype they were taught in school and church clashed with the reality of their Chinatown and Li’l Tokyo experiences. Those who were to be published simply blanked out all experience that didn’t gibe with the stereotype. The American-born generations and the colonial middle-class immigrants – likewise indoctrinated in white supremacy, in Singapore, Hong Kong, and Christian Taiwan – talk of their art as being above the history and people it portrays. They speak of recasting the Christian social Darwinist heroines of Chinese culture as both victims and destroyers of that culture, as being morally superior to the real works and the culture they characterize. We expect Asian American writers, portraying Asia and Asians, to have a knowledge of the difference between the real and the fake. This is a knowledge they have admitted they not only do not possess but also have no interest in ever possessing. They are, thus, reflexive creatures of the stereotype. They talk about the agony of the stereotype but, when pressed, have no idea how to describe it. This is the stereotype of Asia, Asians, and Asian Americans: The first yellows came to America with no intention of settling. They were sojourners. They intended to stay in America just long enough to make a fortune, then return to China or Japan to live high on the hog. Chinese and Japanese culture are so misogynistic they don’t deserve to survive. The men are intelligent, brilliant and perverse – either pervertedly good, like Charlie Chan the good Christian convert, or pervertedly evil, like Fu Manchu, whose strange idea of torturing white men is to send them to bed with his beautiful nympho daughter. Even the bad yellows are, thus, subcutaneous white supremacists. Asian culture is anti-individualistic, mystic, passive, collective, and morally and ethically opposite to Western culture. All of that is false. The yellows were not sojourners. The proof: tongs. Chinese and Japanese culture are not more misogynistic than Western culture. The proof: Chinese and Japanese childhood literature, and history. Asian culture is more, not less, individualistic than Western culture. The proof: Asian childhood literature and history. If Asian childhood literature and history and Asian American institutions established by the immigrants belie the stereotype, why does it endure, and where did this monster come from? It came, as it still comes, 140

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from pure white racist fantasy and wishful thinking born of white racial selfcontempt. We can follow the grain through white writing, back into white history to Marco Polo and the pope in Rome. Marco Polo has just dropped by the Vatican to pay his respects after getting back from Cathay loaded down with gold, precious silks, and an amazing concoction called gunpowder, an inventory of teas, spices, and all manner of precious finished products. The pope is moved to compliment young Marco on his plunder. This stuff is not booty, not won by conquest or superior craft. This whole caravan and astounding technology and wealth are free samples. China wants to do business. Marco is to be the Chinese Fuller Brush man. All this stuff is the Chinese version of the little free bottle of perfume. The pope doesn’t want to hear this and throws Marco Polo in jail to get China out of his system. The pope suddenly has a big problem. There is, according to the current interpretation of scripture, no civilization other than Christendom, the only civilization made with Godliness. So, by definition, any civilization east of God would be non-Godly, and founded on false and opposite morality. This moral oppositeness white writers express in queer behavior they call Chinese, and in the sexually repugnant, comically effeminate yellow men and yellow women who will become, in the words of the Baptist missionary Charles Shepherd, ‘‘choice souls’’ ripe for salvation. The highest and lowest minds of the nineteenth and early twentieth century described Asian culture as being stagnant, morally inferior, irrelevant, or nonexistent. ‘‘In the East,’’ writes Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, ‘‘ . . . conscience does not exist, nor does individual morality. Everything is simply in a state of nature, which allows the noblest to exist as it does the worst. The conclusion to be derived from this is that no philosophic knowledge can be found here.’’ For Hegel, a darling of the Marxists, ‘‘The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.’’ The trouble with the yellow people of the East is, as the pope said in the thirteenth century, the Asians are not Christian. ‘‘The Eastern form must therefore be excluded from the history of philosophy. . . . Philosophy proper commences in the West.’’ So says Hegel, in The Philosophy of History. And the much revered nineteenth-century historian Houston Stewart Chamberlain, writing philosophically in his Foundations of the Nineteenth Century (1910), states the stereotype as truth, as fact: The peoples that have not yet adopted Christianity – the Chinese, the Indians, the Turks and others – have all so far no true history; all they have is, on the one hand, a chronicle of ruling dynasties, butcheries and the like; on the other, the uneventful humble existence of countless millions living a life of bestial happiness, who disappear in the night of ages leaving no traces beyond . . . their culture, their art, their religion, in short their condition may interest us, achievements of their intellect, of their industry may even have become valuable parts of their own life, as is exemplified by Indian thought, Babylonian science and Chinese methods; their history, however, purely as such, lacks moral greatness, in other 141

Frank Chin words, that force which rouses the individual man to consciousness of his individuality in contrast to the surrounding world and then – like the ebb and flow of the tide – makes him employ the world, which he has discovered in his own breast, to shape that which is without it. . . . No more has . . . the Chinaman – the unique representative of Positivism and Collectivism; what our historical works record as his ‘‘history’’ is nothing more than an enumeration of the various robber bands, by which the patient, shrewd and soulless people, without sacrificing an iota of its individuality, has allowed itself to be ruled: such enumerations are simply ‘‘criminal statistics,’’ not history, at least not for us: we cannot really judge actions which awaken no echo in our breast.

The stereotype was passed to American-born yellows as an article of faith by missionaries and laws that allowed only Christian Chinese to marry and only 105 Chinese to enter the United States per year. A traditional tool of Christian conversion, the autobiography became the sole Chinese American form of writing, with Yung Wing’s mission-schoolboymakes-good Gunga Din licking up white fantasy in the first Chinese American autobiography, My Life in China and America. Every Chinese American autobiography and work of autobiographical fiction since Yung Wing, from Leong Gor Yun and Jade Snow Wong to Maxine Hong Kingston and Amy Tan, has been written by Christian Chinese perpetuating and advancing the stereotype of a Chinese culture so foul, so cruel to women, so perverse, that good Chinese are driven by the moral imperative to kill it. Christian salvation demands the destruction of all Chinese history: that’s the Second Commandment, children. The autobiography is not a Chinese form. Dr. Sun Yat Sen’s revolutionaries of 1911 wanted more than an end to the Manchu Empire, more than an end to dynastic imperial government. They wanted to Europeanize China. The literary leaders wanted even more than that. They wanted to Christianize China through new Chinese writing. Hu Shih wrote that the Chinese had to develop biography and autobiography for their inspirational moral effect. In his own Autobiography of a Man at Thirty, Hu Shih stated, ‘‘Writing my autobiography makes me feel very Christian.’’ It should: autobiography is a Christian form, descended from confession and, Hu Shih believed, from testimony. St. Augustine’s The Confessions is generally acknowledged as the first autobiography; Hu Shih said the Gospels of the New Testament – the books of Matthew, Luke, and John – were the first autobiographies. To the Chinese, the autobiography is definitely a Christian form. To this day, among the Chinese, only Christians write autobiographies. All authenticate the stereotype through the author’s yellow voice and experience. From 1909 to the present, only the work of three Christian (perhaps two Christian and one semilapsed Christian) writers is Christian, autobiographical, and not white racist in form or content. The main differences between their writing and that of most Christian Chinese are literary, historical, and sexual. 142

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Unlike the pack of Chinese Americans, Sui Sin Far (Edith Eaton), Diana Chang, and Dr. Han Suyin write knowledgeably and authentically of Chinese fairy tales, heroic tradition, and history. Their greatest departure from all the Chinese American autobiographies and autobiographical fictions is in their description of Chinese men. Read them, and this fact jumps out of their books: the only Chinese men who are not emasculated and sexually repellent in Chinese American writing are found in the books and essays of Sui Sin Far, Diana Chang, and Dr. Han Suyin. These three women are unique unto themselves, for they are Eurasians. Diana Chang and Dr. Han are the daughters of Chinese men. Sui Sin Far was the daughter of a Chinese mother and British father. Diana Chang and Dr. Han both spent a significant part of their childhoods and youth in China. Sui Sin Far was born in England and grew up on the road and at sea, moving around the world, with her father, painting. At the turn of the century Edith Eaton, using the pen name Sui Sin Far, which translates from the Cantonese as ‘‘Water Lily,’’ was sickly and physically small. A lone champion of the Chinese American real, she fought the rampant stereotype and antiyellow racism that were encouraging the passage of exclusion laws. Literary critic S. E. Solberg reminds us of the fact that Sui Sin Far’s short fiction and autobiographical essays are the only knowing and sympathetic writing on Chinese America of the time, and the only contemporary portraits of Chinatowns from Toronto to Seattle by a single sensibility. In her own time, the Chinese considered Edith Eaton a heroine, a champion of Chinese integrity in America. She knew the stereotype and in ‘‘Leaves from the Mental Portfolio of an Eurasian’’ movingly confronted its effect on people’s perception of her and on her own perception of the Chinese. Diana Chang’s autobiographical 1956 novel, The Frontiers of Love, criticizes Chinese culture and history knowledgeably. The real is real in her work, and the women are as real as the men. No straw-man China. No stereotype. These three Christian Chinese Eurasians were not born and raised in America, where the stereotype came out of the laws, out of the schools, out of the white literary lights of the time, out of the science, out of the comics, movies, and radio night and day toward World War II. The Christian Chinese Americans coined the term Chinese American to distinguish themselves from heathen Chinamen. The autobiographies of the pseudonymous Leong Gor Yun (1936), of Pardee Lowe (1943), Calvin Lee (1965), and Jade Snow Wong (1950) plead with whites to make the distinction between the Chinese American and the Chinaman of the Fu Manchu stereotype. Chinese Americans were Christian, accepted the scientific white racism of social Darwinists, and developed the form of their autobiographies as an argument against the social Darwinist nightmare of a morally inferior, despicable yellow race conquering the white race and driving it to extinction in America. Chinese or Japanese, it made no difference. They were perverse in their behavior, no matter how much it resembled white Christian behavior. Their ability to mimic exactly was itself threatening. Such was the social science of America before World War II, former US Senator from California S. I. Hayakawa contended 143

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before the Bernstein Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians in 1981. White racism did not have the stigma (of being either unsavory or immoral) that it has today. Hayakawa specifically mentioned two books that were influential: Madison Grant’s Passing of the Great Race, or Racial Basis of European History (1916) and Lothrop Stoddard’s The Rising Tide of Color (1920). The Stoddard book opens with the nightmare: In the preface to an historical monograph . . . written shortly before the Great War, I stated: ‘‘The world-wide struggle between the primary races of mankind – the ‘conflict of color,’ as it has been happily termed – bids fair to be the fundamental problem of the twentieth century. . . . ’’ Before the war I had hoped that the readjustments rendered inevitable by the renascence of the brown and yellow peoples of Asia would be gradual, and in the main a pacific process, kept within evolutionary bounds by the white world’s inherent strength and fundamental solidarity. The frightful weakening of the white world during the war opened up revolutionary, even cataclysmic, possibilities. In saying this I do not refer solely to military ‘‘perils.’’ The subjugation of white lands by colored armies may, of course, occur, especially if the white world continues to rend itself with internecine wars. However, such colored triumphs of arms are less to be dreaded than more enduring conquests like migrations white would swamp whole populations and turn countries now white into colored man’s lands irretrievably lost to the white world. Of course, these ominous possibilities existed even before 1914, but the war has rendered them much more probable.

In Parabellum’s 1908 novel, Banzai!, the ominous colored race is Japanese: So it was after the terrible night of Port Arthur and so it was now. It was of course as yet impossible to figure out in detail how the Japanese had managed to take possession of the Pacific States within twenty-four hours. . . . A hundred thousand Japanese had established the line of an eastern advance-guard long before the Pacific States had any idea of what was up. During Sunday after the capture of San Francisco, the occupation of Seattle, San Diego and the other fortified towns on the coast, the landing of the second detachment of the Japanese army began, and by Monday evening the Pacific States were in the grip of no less than one hundred and seventy thousand men.

In P. W. Dooner’s The Last Days of the Republic (1880), the invading army is Chinese: The very name of the United States of America was thus blotted from the record of nations and peoples, as unworthy the poor boon of existence. Where once the proud domain of forty States, besides the millions of miles of unorganized territory, cultivated the arts of peace and gave to the world its brightest gems of literature, art and scientific discovery, the Temple of Liberty had crumbled; and above its ruins was reared the colossal fabric of barbaric splendor known as the 144

Asian Americans: Real and Fake Western Empire of his August Majesty the Emperor of China and Ruler of all lands. . . .

In Jack London’s ‘‘Unparalleled Invasion’’ (1914), the loathsome invading and conquering race is Chinese, and it is quick reproduction and overpopulation that conquers the whites. To some, the end of America as a white man’s land would come from the loins, not the muzzles, of the yellow peril. The Chinese American ‘‘identity crisis,’’ the Japanese American ‘‘dual personality,’’ the yellow/white either/or that distinguishes Christian Chinese American autobiography from the work of the Chinese American writers included in [The Big Aiiieeeee! ] is the product of the Christian missionaries who dominated Chinatown history before the war, and their self-serving imaginative biographies, autobiographies, and novels. In the autobiography and fiction of Baptist missionary Charles Shepherd, we at last find the Chinatown of the Chinese American autobiographies. And in his novel The Ways of Ah-Sin (1923), we find the prototype of the heroines of Jade Snow Wong, Maxine Hong Kingston, and Amy Tan – a girl named Ah Mae, a kind of Cantonese Cinderella in Chinatown: ‘‘as soon her tiny hands and body were able to perform service, she had become the family drudge. . . . But hers was one of those rare spirits, one of those hearts undaunted, which rise serenely above environment, as the beautiful lotus lily stands erect and with queenly dignity above the muddy waters beneath in which it has its roots and from which it has drained its life. Her little body, frail and often stooped by reason of much toil, had about it a grace that was indefinable. Her face wore ever the suggestion of a smile needing but slight incentive to awaken it to full radiance. Her deep brown – almost black – eyes, even when filled with tears provoked by ill-temperament, shone with a luster which convinced one that somewhere back of them was the dwelling place of a choice soul. It is not often that one discovers such a personality in the midst of such ignorance and oppression. But there are such; and at times God permits us to discover such a one. . . . ’’

The Chinese who refused to convert, the Chinese men, to Charles Shepherd’s Christianity are all kin to Bret Harte’s wily Chinese gambler, Ah-Sin, the ‘‘Heathen Chinee’’ of the poem ‘‘Plain Language from Truthful James’’ (1870); thus the title of Shepherd’s novel: The Ways of Ah-Sin. Ah-Sin is the tongs, Ah-Sin is the non-Christians, the unsaved: The wily Ah-Sin does not represent the children of the Middle Kingdom at their best, the intelligent, industrious, high-minded group which are a credit to their native land and an asset to the land of their adoption. He represents rather, what might be called the unregenerate Chinese – we use the term advisedly. He and his tribe still exist. They have increased in number. They have waxed fat, prosperous 145

Frank Chin and powerful; and in addition to their own native wiles and cunning, have adopted many of the ideas and vices of the lower strata of American society. They constitute today the greatest single menace to peace, prosperity, and social progress in every Chinese community in the United States; and perhaps Bret Harte did not after all so greatly err speaking of them as ‘‘heathen’’ and as perpetrators of ‘‘ways that are dark and tricks that are vain.’’

The missionary casts himself as the hero of a melodrama and the champion of the good but cowardly Christian Chinese who cannot fight for themselves: If this story should fall into the hands of my many Chinese friends, as more than likely it will, they will understand why I have written these things; for they have suffered much and long at the hands of Ah-Sin. They would like to say to my readers what I have said in the following pages; but as they value their lives, they dare not. This being the case I have undertaken to speak for them, as well as for my American friends and colleagues. If, on the other hand, this story should be brought to the attention of any of the tribes of Ah-Sin, I shall have no apology to make to them for setting forth this narrative of things as they are.

Shepherd dedicated his novel to another missionary, Donaldina Cameron, celebrated in Christian Chinatown history as ‘‘Chinatown’s Avenging Angel.’’ Cameron had a house for Chinese girls she ‘‘saved’’ from prostitution. She was, however, very picky. She only picked on prostitutes and whorehouses serving Chinese men. Whorehouses full of Chinese women serving a white-only clientele, like the one next door to her Cameron House, were blessed. The aim of this Presbyterian missionary was to brainwash the Chinese girls against sexual relations with Chinese men and to send them back to China to spread the Gospel and discourage Chinese migration to America. The bars on the windows of Cameron House’s girls’ dormitories were not to keep Chinese men out, but to keep the Chinese women from escaping. The history of Chinatown, San Francisco, is told in the myth of the good missionaries, Donaldina Cameron of Cameron House and Charles Shepherd of the Chung Mei Baptist Home for Chinese Boys. Only now is their contribution to the creation and perpetuation of the dark side of the stereotype of the Chinese male as moral, behavioral, and sexual pervert coming to light. Cameron House was a factory for turning Chinese boys into the fulfillment of white homosexual fantasy. The San Francisco Chronicle of April 22, 1989, gingerly reported what Chinatown had been talking about for as long as Cameron House had existed: A Presbyterian minister resigned his ordination after being accused of molesting several teenagers while he was director of youth programs for a large Chinatown religious association, presbytery officials say. 146

Asian Americans: Real and Fake Dick Wichman was accused of molesting at least 19 male teenagers under his charge in incidents that allegedly occurred 20 years ago at Cameron House, one of the oldest and best known religious organizations in Chinatown. But Wichman cannot be prosecuted because the statute of limitations covering the alleged incidents has expired, presbytery officials say.

Oh, yes. And the good Christian Americanized Chinese American of white fantasy is Charlie Chan, an acceptable pervert, as opposed to Fu Manchu, the unacceptable pervert. Charles Shepherd wanted to be just like Donaldina Cameron. In 1923 he founded the Chung Mei Baptist Home for Chinese Boys, across the Bay from San Francisco. In the autobiographical The Story of Chung Mei (1938), Shepherd, as in The Ways of Ah-Sin, time and again reinvents, retreads, retools the stereotype, huffing and puffing to give it some literary depth, some critical dramatic urgency and inspirational heartbeat to make themselves, their moral superiority, and their personality the reality of Chinese American history: All who have read Charles Dickens’s immortal novel Oliver Twist are familiar with the so-called ‘‘merry old gentleman’’ of London Town, one Fagin, whose practice it was to encourage small boys to steal and to bring to him the fruits of their depravations. In San Francisco’s Chinatown, in 1923, there was actually such a man who was responsible for the delinquency of numerous small boys whom he encouraged to rob cigar stores and bring back to him quantities of cigars and cigarettes. For their plunder he paid these boys a small fraction of the real sellingprice. Caught red-handed one night, five such boys were arrested and turned over to the Juvenile Probation Officer. Three of the group had already gone so far along the pathway of crime that there seemed but one course to be followed: they were sent to a reform school. The other two, however, were exceedingly young and had been more or less dragged into the affair by their older associates. They were not really delinquent, but were the victims of bad company. Surely they did not belong in a reform school. Yet, had there been no such places as Chung Mei Home, the Probation Officer would have had to choose between sending them away with the others or turning them loose to become the victims of other potential Fagins who might be lurking in the community. Chung Mei offered them a chance. . . .

I was born in the forties; I was old enough to have been one of the last of what Chinatown called ‘‘Chung Mei boys.’’ My Uncle Paul was one of the first Chung Mei boys and like most was American-born, a United States citizen. In Shepherd’s world, Uncle Paul was something else: Oh, yes we know where they come from, when and where they were born, who their fathers and mothers are or were – in fact, we know their past history quite completely; yet we don’t really know who they are. . . . You see, while today they are just a bunch of Chinese boys – some of them very small boys – tomorrow they 147

Frank Chin may be something quite different. For all we know, when we stand before them in an assembly we may be looking into the faces of, and giving advice to, big business men, social and religious leaders, educators and statesmen of the future. It would, then, be a serious matter if we should give the wrong kind of advice. . . . The boy who wants to build something may some day become a famous inventor. The one who repeatedly asks if we have found him a Saturday job will not unlikely become a prominent figure in China’s industrial world. The boy to whom we assign extra work in the garden become a monarch in business – if we can get him to overcome a life of ease. And then, of course, the one whom we so reluctantly punish for a misdemeanor may some day become the president of China.

Charles Shepherd and the missionaries and the missionary groupie writers are the answer to Will Irwin’s 1908 ‘‘hope that some one will arise, before this generation is passed, to record that conquest of affection by which the California Chinese transformed themselves from our race adversaries to our dear subject people.’’

3 Christian conversion is cultural extinction and behavior modification. The social scientists call it ‘‘acculturation.’’ Acculturation is not a natural process. Charles Shepherd, the novelist, the missionary, the director of Chung Mei Home strutting before his corps of Chinese boys in a military uniform complete with leather Sam Browne belt, shows us how unnatural and humiliating a process it is, as he describes the creation of the first Chinese American English-language theater, established out of a need to raise money for the home: ‘‘There are two things we must do,’’ I went on to explain. ‘‘We must pray. We must ask God to put it into the hearts of folks who have money to give some of it to us. Then we must go to work and do everything we can to raise some money ourselves. God helps those who are willing to do their part. Anyhow, we would feel much better about asking others to help us if we had first done everything we could to help ourselves.’’ Twenty-five pairs of expectant, mystified eyes looked into mine. They seemed to say, ‘‘What can we do to earn any money?’’ And then I unloaded on them the idea that led to the formation of the first Chinese blackfaced minstrel troupe in the history of civilization. Most of them had never before heard of such a thing as black-faced minstrels; and none of them had any experience in entertaining the public; but from the moment I finished explaining they were all for it.

My Uncle Paul was a Chung Mei Minstrel. His picture is in Shepherd’s book, in costume and blackface, between pages 124 and 125. I can’t bring myself to look for Uncle Paul’s face. On the photo facing 125, a Chinese boy in blackface, big white lips, a tooth blacked out, wears a wig and a dress, and sits back-to-back with a blond girl about eleven years old, with no apparent makeup on. Under the 148

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kinky spindly pigtails tied in little bows, through the blackface, the eyes could be . . . and Uncle Paul, seventy-five this year, won’t look.

4 In the early twenties, all the ingredients of the stereotype were in place – in mainstream white philosophy, history, social science, literature, and religion. The young Chinese American Christians bought into the stereotype when they held their first Lake Tahoe conference, in the summer of 1925, and pondered the burning question ‘‘Does my future lie in China or America?’’ They asked the same question again and again, right up until World War II without once confronting the white supremacist phoniness of the question. The question was, of course, a phrasing of the either/or Chinese American dual personality identity crisis. It took Charlie Chan – the venerable detective sensation introduced by Earl Derr Biggers in 1925 – to reshape the exclusion of Chinese from history, from philosophy, from literature, and from morality into the perfect image of the Chinese American as a self-destructive Ping-Pong game the Christian Chinese American autobiographers would embody as the ‘‘identity crisis.’’ In The Chinese Parrot (1926), Chan has an unpleasant meeting with a Chinese tong man working a menial job in Reno, Nevada: ‘‘It overwhelms me with sadness to admit it,’’ Charlie answered, ‘‘for he is of my own origin, my own race, as you know. But when I look into his eyes, I discover that a gulf like the heaving Pacific lies between us. Why? Because he, though among Caucasians many more years than I, still remains Chinese. As Chinese today as in the first moon of his existence. While – I bear the brand, the label, Americanized.’’ Chan bowed his head. ‘‘I traveled with the current,’’ he said softly. ‘‘I was ambitious. I sought success. For what I have won, I paid the price. Am I then an American? No. Am I, then, a Chinese? Not in the eyes of Ah-Sing.’’ He paused for a moment, then continued: ‘‘But I have chosen my path, and I must follow it.’’

The fact that this encounter with Ah-Sing is actually a schizoid internal dialogue is made obvious by Jon L. Breen in his writing about Charlie Chan’s attraction to mystery fans: It is the conflict of Eastern and Western values that makes Charlie Chan an interesting character. He criticizes ambition, the curiosity, the lack of tranquility of the Caucasian, but he sees more and more of these unworthy attributes in himself and is worried by it. Proud of his own vocabulary and command of the English language, he is upset by his offspring’s use of slang. Listening to the pidgin English of a Chinese servant, he is torn between shame at the indignity of the man’s condition and the feeling that somehow he has retained a basic Chinese identity that Chan has lost . . . proud that his children are American citizens, he is ambivalent about his own nationality. 149

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Chinese Americans and Japanese Americans read portrayals of each other in white social science and fiction, out of self-defense, as white manuals on how good yellows and bad yellows behave. The two most influential and effective Nisei (American-born Japanese) thinkers in prewar Japanese American writing were the reporters/editors/publishers Lawrence Tanyoshi Tajiri and James Matsumoto Omura. They nurtured the Nisei writers. In America, the Nisei were the first generation of Nikkei, people of Japanese ancestry, to achieve fluency in the English language. Tajiri and Omura published the Nisei in Japanese American English-language newspapers and magazines, and love it or hate it, the Nisei wrote of and from the real world, not the stereotype. With the war, Tajiri and Omura became bitter enemies. Tajiri labeled Omura seditious and a traitor. Omura accused Tajiri of betrayal and worse. Both were for racial assimilation. Before the war, both thought of assimilation as a natural and inevitable sociological process. Both wrote about the portrayal of the Chinese and Japanese in the movies and popular novels. Two novels both wrote about as soon as they read them – and continued to mention during and even after the war – were Gene Stratton Porter’s Her Father’s Daughter (1921) and Peter B. Kyne’s The Pride of Palomar (1921). Tajiri and Omura were morbidly disturbed by this genre of the novel’s artfully presented intent to effect the writing of racist immigration, education, tax, and land laws. The white novels that both the Chinese and Japanese Americans read for prescriptive and proscribed behavior were uniformly level-headed and romantic in their contempt for the Japanese. The all-American behavior and the excelling in school that might have won praise for a Chinese American, or so the autobiographies hoped, were cause for only more white contempt of Japanese Americans in Porter’s Her Father’s Daughter: ‘‘If every home in Lilac Valley had at least six sturdy boys and girls growing up in it with the proper love of country and the proper realization of the white man’s right to supremacy, and if the world now occupied by white men could make an equal record, where would be the talk of the yellow peril? There wouldn’t be any yellow peril. You see what I mean?’’ Linda lifted her frank eyes to Peter Morrison. ‘‘Yes, you woman,’’ said Peter gravely, ‘‘I see what you mean, but this is the first time I ever heard a high school kid propound such ideas. Where did you get them?’’ ‘‘Got them in Multiflores Canyon from my father to start with,’’ said Linda, ‘‘but recently I have been thinking, because there is a boy in High School who is making a great fight for a better scholarship record than a Jap in his class. I brood over it every spare minute, day or night, and when I say my prayers I implore high Heaven to send him an idea or to send me one that can pass on to him, that will help him to beat that Jap.’’

And in Peter B. Kyne’s The Pride of Palomar, what might be seen as behavior giving the lie to the Chinese as sojourners and offering proof of their commercial 150

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adjustment and settling is, when applied to Japanese Americans, the Nikkei, cause for whites to redouble their contempt: ‘‘Thousands of patriotic Californians have sold their farms to Japanese without knowing it. The law provides that a Japanese cannot lease land longer than three years, so when their leases expire they conform to our foolish law by merely shifting the tenants from one farm to another. Eventually so many Japs settled in the valley that the white farmers, unable to secure white labor, unable to trust Japanese labor, unable to endure Japanese neighbors or to enter into Japanese social life, weary of paying taxes to support schools for the education of Japanese children, weary of daily contact with irritable, unreliable and unassimilable aliens, sold or leased their farms in order to escape into a white neighborhood. . . . ’’

For all the hostility leveled at them in the bookstores, magazine racks, and public libraries of their West Coast hometowns, the older Nisei writer Toshio Mori wrote a collection of short stories modeled on Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio. He was Buddhist, not Christian. His stories can be read as autobiographical, but his intentions are clearly more ambitious. And none of his characters in Yokohama, California, written before the war, suffer the schizoid agony of being torn apart by the conflicting parties of the dual personality or identity crisis. The white racists hated everything Japanese because of Japan, the nation. Japan had defeated a white nation in a modern war, was embarked on imperialist adventures on the Asian continent, and demanded space in the same international compounds as did the European colonial compounds. The Nisei were optimistic, fired up with the responsibility of being the first American-born generation, certain that they would eventually distinguish themselves and their American integrity from the Japanese of Japan, and confident that Americans would recognize them as fellow Americans. The first Nisei writers did something the Chinese did not do. They adopted writers and works to emulate. Toshio Mori emulated William Saroyan and Sherwood Anderson. Toyo Suyemoto modeled her poetry on that of Katherine Mansfield. Writing with Saroyan, Anderson, or Mansfield in mind as a mentor did not hinder these writers’ efforts to portray Japanese, non-Christian characters, including men, with accuracy, insight, delight, and not a hint of stereotype or identity crisis. The white racists hated everything Chinese because of what they and the Christian missionaries perceived as a more immediate threat to white supremacy than China: tongs. Sax Rohmer’s arch-Chinese villain, Fu Manchu, slinks out of the twenties from novel to novel, king of the tongs and bent on a genocidal revenge on the white race for the Opium War. Bret Harte’s Ah-Sin is a tong. Ah-Sing, the unredeemed Chinese in Charlie Chan’s Chinese American identity crisis, is a tong. To the generations of American-born, the tongs have become the symbol of all Chinese heathen evil. These same Chinese Americans believe 151

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in the stereotype of the Chinese immigrant as a sojourner who came with no intention of settling. They do not know that the evil the tongs represented to the law, the Christians, and the white racists was permanence. The tongs were permanent institutions. And they had built permanent institutions, including two opera houses, by 1883, when Tavenier and Frenzany wrote, drew scenes, and made notes of their visit to San Francisco’s Chinatown for Harper’s Weekly. For the Chinese Americans, the tongs were something to avoid, reject, denounce, and fear in order to prove their Americanness. The novels of Charles Shepherd showed them how. Shepherd’s ‘‘tribe of Ah-Sin’’ is the tongs. Leong Gor Yun’s Chinatown Inside Out (1936) hypes the new generation of Chinese Americans’ efforts to wipe out the ‘‘Fu Manchu face’’ and describes the self-destructive Chinese American internal war of identities as a hopeless war of young Chinese American Christians against the tongs. For the first time in history a good many innovations are taking place in the lives of the Chinese in America. The industrialization of China is calling home all but the young for the same reasons that their coolie ancestors came here to help conquer the West. Statistics show in the last five years more Chinese have left this country than have come. The proportion is about one arrival to two departures. This combined with the severe immigration restrictions (which will be even more strict a decade hence) and the economic instability, means one thing: a rapid depopulation of Chinatown. The Golden Mountain has turned to lead; it is time to go home – even to till the rice-fields. If one is going to be poor, it is better to be poor at home. But besides depopulation an active force is at work tearing up the roots of Chinatown. It is not too soon to predict that the younger generation, though it may live unto itself in or outside a Chinatown, will not live under the might of the Benevolent Charitable Association and its supporting cast – the Tongs, family and territorial organizations. The young have been gaining voice in civic affairs; they have already defied the mighty with the Laundry Alliance, and there is every reason to believe that they will go on. Spiritually and mentally they are as far from Americans. But the circle will never be complete: they will be Americanized, never American.

Pardee Lowe’s autobiography, Father and Glorious Descendent (1943), is the story of a young Chinese American Christian who despises the tongs and the Japanese who had invaded China; he badgers his tongman father into converting to Christianity, and the story closes with his acceptance by whites in the form of his marriage to a white woman. Jade Snow Wong seeks refuge from Chinatown in the Chinatown YWCA in her autobiography, Fifth Chinese Daughter (1953), and she sharpens the misogynistic edge of the Christian stereotype by closing her book with a recollection of her father, an ordained Christian minister and sewing contractor, apologizing to her for all the Chinese ill treatment and humiliation of women: 152

Asian Americans: Real and Fake Then one afternoon, driving home, he sat beside her, lost in reverie. When they were parked in front of their house, he told her a story: ‘‘I told you once that your grandfather would have been glad to see that you have learned a handicraft. I can add now that he would have been happier to see that you have established your own business alone, even though you must begin modestly for lack of capital.’’

The narrative, unusual in nature and length, continued: When I first came to America, my cousin wrote me from China and asked me to return. That was before I can even tell you where you were. But I still have the carbon copy of the letter I wrote him in reply. I said, ‘‘You do not realize the shameful and degraded position into which the Chinese culture has pushed its women. Here in America, the Christian concept allows women their freedom and individuality. I wish my daughters to have this Christian opportunity. I am hoping someday I may be able to claim that by my stand I have washed away the former disgraces suffered by the women of our family.’’

Jade Snow Wong lovingly paints her father as an ordained minister of white supremacy, fulfilling white fantasies. Rampant Chinese misogyny is a bum rap, a product of white Christian imagination, not history. What is interesting about this passage is that it takes the form of the Christian Chinese autobiography, reduces it to a paragraph, and stylizes the essential cliche´s of the Charlie Chan good Chinese American honorary white into a portrait of an emasculated, impotent, morally grotesque father. He’s Gunga Din carrying the white man’s rifle and leading the white charge against his own people and history. Leong Gor Yun says the old heathens of the tongs, of the Fu Manchu face, will die, leaving the Christian, the progressive, the Americanized forever short of assimilation, as long as they survive as a race. Pardee Lowe kills the bad Chinaman and serves Christianity by converting his father; and, named after a California governor, a good Christian son of a Christian, enemy of the Japanese enemies of America, he’s as honorary a white as he can be and marries white into white acceptance. Pardee Lowe, the Christian sociologist, condemns Chinatown for speaking a language that is neither the Chinese of China nor correct English. Rather than identify it as a language that is neither correct Chinese nor correct English, he declares it a perversion of language, no language at all, and one more indication of the imminent dying off of the tongs (old-time, non-Christian Chinese whose repulsiveness has tainted the white perception of the eager-tobe-accepted American-born, English-speaking, educated, and ambitious Chinese Americans coming of age). Even William Hoy, writing a history of the tongs for publication by the tong of tongs, the Chung Wah Wooey Goon, listed in the phone book as the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association, better known as the Chinese Six Companies, promises the extinction of the tongs, the takeover of Chinatown by the American-born Christian Chinese Americans, the extinction of Chinatown, racial extinction and assimilation. The conflict between 153

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the heathen and Christian, the Chinaman and the honorary white, the despicable pariah and the acceptable pariah, the either/or dual personality and identity crisis feeds and flashes on the self-hatred of the mutually repugnant halves of the self in a kind of perpetual motion. All the Christian Chinese American autobiographies, like all Chinese and Japanese American social sciences, promise and demand Asian racial extinction. Jade Snow Wong is the first to stylistically accomplish it by rewriting Charles Shepherd’s novel, The Ways of Ah-Sin, as the autobiography of his ‘‘choice soul’’ ripe for salvation, Ah Mae. All the men in Fifth Chinese Daughter are louts, like Harte’s Ah-Sin and Charlie Chan’s alter ego AhSing – especially her father; even though he’s an ordained minister and a friend of Donaldina Cameron’s, he’s unredeemably Chinese. Repentance only makes him pitiful and impotent. As Pop sinks, she soars, and vice versa. The Chinese culture in the book is a mix of Chinatown detail and Christian boogey-man fantasy. It’s a rigged universe in Wong’s Christian autobiography. Yellow men don’t stand a chance. The all-evil, all-powerful tongs are replaced by all of Chinese manhood. Misogyny is the only unifying moral imperative in this Christian vision of Chinese civilization. All women are victims. America and Christianity represent freedom from Chinese civilization. In the Christian yin/yang of the dual personality/identity crisis, Chinese evil and perversity is male. And the Americanized honorary white Chinese American is female. With Kingston’s autobiographical Woman Warrior, we have given up even the pretense of reporting from the real world. Chinese culture is so cruel and she is so helpless against its overwhelming cruelty that she lives entirely in her imagination. It is an imagination informed only by the stereotype communicated to her through the Christian Chinese American autobiography. ‘‘Jade Snow Wong gave me strength,’’ she has said many times. The missionary novels, autobiographies, and biographies are forgotten. The social Darwinist works of science and fiction are forgotten. All that is left is the sensibility they produced, the racist mind from which comes the voice of Maxine Hong Kingston. Helping her along, giving her a strong scientific, and entertaining, foundation are Chinese and Japanese sociology and Hollywood. By the 1970s, the racist stereotype – of despicable Chinese men propelling a sadistically misogynistic culture that had no moral right to survive, and of victimized Chinese women seeking rescue and moral superiority in American and Western values – had so completely displaced history that it didn’t need to be argued; it didn’t even need to be asserted. In Betty Lee Sung’s 1972 rendering of the stereotype through scientific rhetoric, Mountain of Gold, the morality of the extinction of the yellow race in America is a foregone conclusion. The only Chinese are the Charlie Chan Americanized Chinese, and no one expects them to be offended by the contempt for the Chinese or the racial self-contempt blatantly displayed in passages such as: 154

Asian Americans: Real and Fake Much to their credit, the Chinese view prejudice with a very healthy attitude. They were never overly bitter. They have gone into occupations which command respect and which lessen conflict from competition. The Chinese are not concentrated entirely in one section of the country. More dispersion away from the vortexes of San Francisco and New York should be encouraged. This ought to be a long range goal of the Chinese because distribution reduces the degree of visibility.

Where Jade Snow Wong and Betty Lee Sung authenticate their Chinese-ness with recipes for the perfect Chinese rice and Chinese long beans, Kingston, with a stroke of white racist genius, attacks Chinese civilization, Confucianism itself, and where its life begins: the fairy tale. She, the victim of Chinese misogyny, says that ‘‘The Ballad of Mulan,’’ the children’s game chant, a fairy tale playing on the sounds of weaving, is the source of the misogynistic emphasis of Chinese ethics. She takes Fa Mulan, turns her into a champion of Chinese feminism and an inspiration to Chinese American girls to dump the Chinese race and make for white universality. American publishers went crazy for Chinese women dumping on Chinese men. In the October 1978 issue of Cosmopolitan, Lily Chang wrote, in ‘‘What It’s Like to Be a Chinese American Girl’’: Once we have broken away from the restaurants of Chinatown, we prefer lovers distinguished by a freer, more emotionally flamboyant style. In short, Caucasians.

Joyce Howe oozed white fantasy onto the pages of the Village Voice in a little autobiographical essay, ‘‘A Nice Lo Fang Boy,’’ in 1983: Lisa, who’s just joined a business association for Asian American professionals, in order to meet more Chinese men, is still confounded by them. She says, ‘‘I don’t know how they see me, or what they really want. Do they want me to be an independent American woman? Or, do they want what their fathers wanted? Chinese American men haven’t yet dealt with their own conflicts.’’ When she confesses to not having found many Asian men sexually attractive, others nod.

Chinese American women are not going to deal with Chinese American men until the men resolve their own conflicts? This is an extreme expression of the identity crisis. See how it incapacitates the race. The women and men of this sensibility are not – and, by their reckoning, never were – a people. The Association of Asian American/Pacific Performing Artists (AAPPA) was founded by Christian Chinese American activist, sociologist, and actress Beulah Quo, the movie Charlie Chan’s Number One Son, Keye Luke, and Charlie Chan’s Number Three Son of the black-and-white TV series, James Hong. The Hollywood yellows are the closest Asian American approximation of celebrities that Asian America has. But Asian America did not produce either the roles they played or the works they performed. The Hollywood yellows have become well known doing white work with a white message. The reality of the yellows is of 155

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no import, for as Keye Luke said, ‘‘This is white man’s theater, not Oriental theater, and we have to cater to that.’’ They look on themselves as the symbols, the measure of the kind and degree of white acceptance, absorption, and assimilation. They wooed Maxine Kingston and were instrumental in the failed attempts to bring Woman Warrior to the stage. After flexing her ancient and spurious master’s thesis in sociology, Beulah Quo served as historical consultant in the making of the two-part ‘‘China Doll’’ episode of ABC-TV’s How the West Was Won (1979). She and other AAPPA members – among them Robert Ito, Keye Luke, James Hong, and Rosalind Chao – filled the large and small roles of Chinese characters. Quo and the AAPPA encouraged producer John Mantley to exploit the stereotype of despicable men and victim women found in Kingston’s Woman Warrior and Hwang’s ‘‘FOB,’’ and to create a brand-new vicious stereotype for the Chinese to live down. Three times ‘‘Chinese’’ say – and three times ‘‘China Doll’’ shows – Chinese men selling Chinese women, naked and in chains, in the streets of San Francisco’s Chinatown. Chinese men never sold Chinese women, either naked in the streets or in chains. Never. The most rabid and imaginative race-baiting whites out in the streets of the time never saw it; not even in their nightmare fiction of foul heathens wiping out the white race with all manner of moral perversions did they dream of Chinese men selling women chained up and naked in the streets. No. If, no, even then, they were dreaming of the coming of Chinese women like Ah Mae, the choice soul ripe for salvation: a Jade Snow Wong and a Maxine Hong Kingston to renounce Chinese men and Chinese civilization, and to sing the praises of white supremacy and the one God; a Beulah Quo to declare ‘‘China Doll’’ ‘‘the most accurate portrayal of Chinese American history in American film.’’ Actor Robert Ito – a ‘‘guest star’’ in ‘‘China Doll’’ and, because of his role in the NBC-TV series Quincy, one of the better known members of AAPPA – was not at all disturbed by the reviews. In fact, he invented a new stereotype; he defended the departure from fact as being necessary to depict the ‘‘fact’’ that ‘‘there were abuses of women.’’ He unabashedly referred to a racial stereotype to defend racial stereotyping, and nobody in the audience of Asian Americans flinched. Portraying Chinese culture as despicable, bashing the men, pitying and freeing the women, have become ends in themselves. To white America, we are nothing more than actors playing the parts of Chinese in a Charlie Chan movie. That’s how far the Christian Chinese American autobiography and the stereotype have brought us from the real.

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NINE

The Woman Warrior versus The Chinaman Pacific: Must a Chinese American Critic Choose between Feminism and Heroism?* King-Kok Cheung

The title of the anthology [Conflicts in Feminism] notwithstanding, I will primarily be speaking not about topics that divide feminists but about conflicting politics of gender, as reflected in the literary arena, between Chinese American women and men.1 There are several reasons for my choice. First, I share the frustrations of many women of color that while we wish to engage in a dialogue with ‘‘mainstream’’ scholars, most of our potential readers are still unfamiliar with the historical and cultural contexts of various ethnic ‘‘minorities.’’ Furthermore, whenever I encounter words such as ‘‘conflicts,’’ ‘‘common differences,’’ or ‘‘divisive issues’’ in feminist studies, the authors more often than not are addressing the divergences either between French and Anglo-American theorists or, more recently, between white and nonwhite women. Both tendencies have the effect of re-centering white feminism. In some instances, women of color are invited to participate chiefly because they take issue with white feminists and not because what they have to say is of inherent interest to the audience. Finally, I believe that in order to understand conflicts among diverse groups of women, we must look at the relations between women and men, especially where the problems of race and gender are closely intertwined. *King-Kok Cheung ‘‘The Woman Warrior versus The Chinaman Pacific: Must a Chinese American Critic Choose between Feminism and Heroism?’’. In Marianne Hirsch and Evelyn Fox-Keller, eds., Conflicts in Feminism (New York: Routledge, 1990), 234–51. Reproduced by permission of Routledge/Taylor & Francis Books, Inc.

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It is impossible, for example, to tackle the gender issues in the Chinese American cultural terrain without delving into the historically enforced ‘‘feminization’’ of Chinese American men, without confronting the dialectics of racial stereotypes and nationalist reactions or, above all, without wrestling with diehard notions of masculinity and femininity in both Asian and Western cultures. It is partly because these issues touch many sensitive nerves that the writings of Maxine Hong Kingston have generated such heated debates among Chinese American intellectuals. As a way into these intricate issues, I will structure my discussion around Kingston’s work and the responses it has elicited from her Chinese American male critics, especially those who have themselves been influential in redefining both literary history and Asian American manhood. Attempts at cultural reconstruction, whether in terms of ‘‘manhood’’ and ‘‘womanhood,’’ or of ‘‘mainstream’’ versus ‘‘minority’’ heritage, are often inseparable from a wish for self-empowerment. Yet many writers and critics who have challenged the monolithic authority of white male literary historians remain in thrall to the norms and arguments of the dominant patriarchal culture, unwittingly upholding the criteria of those whom they assail. As a female immigrant of Cantonese descent, with the attendant sympathies and biases, I will survey and analyze what I construe to be the ‘‘feminist’’ and ‘‘heroic’’ impulses which have invigorated Chinese American literature but at the same time divided its authors and critics.

I Sexual politics in Chinese America reflect complex cultural and historical legacies. The paramount importance of patrilineage in traditional Chinese culture predisposes many Chinese Americans of the older generations to favor male over female offspring (a preference even more overt than that which still underlies much of white America). At the same time Chinese American men, too, have been confronted with a history of inequality and of painful ‘‘emasculation.’’ The fact that 90 percent of early Chinese immigrants were male, combined with anti-miscegenation laws and laws prohibiting Chinese laborers’ wives from entering the US, forced these immigrants to congregate in the bachelor communities of various Chinatowns, unable to father a subsequent generation. While many built railroads, mined gold, and cultivated plantations, their strenuous activities and contributions in these areas were often overlooked by white historians. Chinamen were better known to the American public as restaurant cooks, laundry workers, and waiters, jobs traditionally considered ‘‘women’s work.’’2 The same forms of social and economic oppression of Chinese American women and men, in conjunction with a longstanding Orientalist tradition that casts the Asian in the role of the silent and passive Other,3 have in turn provided material for degrading sexual representations of the Chinese in American popular 158

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culture. Elaine H. Kim notes, for instance, that the stereotype of Asian women as submissive and dainty sex objects has given rise to an ‘‘enormous demand for X-rated films featuring Asian women and the emphasis on bondage in pornographic materials about Asian women,’’ and that ‘‘the popular image of alluring and exotic ‘dream girls of the mysterious East’ has created a demand for ‘Oriental’ bath house workers in American cities as well as a booming business in mail order marriages.’’4 No less insidious are the inscriptions of Chinese men in popular culture. Frank Chin, a well-known writer and one of the most outspoken revisionists of Asian American history, describes how the American silver screen casts doubts on Chinese American virility: The movies were teachers. In no uncertain terms they taught America that we were lovable for being a race of sissies . . . living to accommodate the whitemen. Unlike the white stereotype of the evil black stud, Indian rapist, Mexican macho, the evil of the evil Dr. Fu Manchu was not sexual, but homosexual. . . . Dr. Fu, a man wearing a long dress, batting his eyelashes, surrounded by muscular black servants in loin clothes, and with his bad habit of caressingly touching white men on the leg, wrist, and face with his long fingernails is not so much a threat as he is a frivolous offense to white manhood. [Charlie] Chan’s gestures are the same, except that he doesn’t touch, and instead of being graceful like Fu in flowing robes, he is awkward in a baggy suit and clumsy. His sexuality is the source of a joke running through all of the forty-seven Chan films. The large family of the bovine detective isn’t the product of sex, but animal husbandry. . . . He never gets into violent things [my emphasis].5

According to Chin and Jeffery Paul Chan, also a writer, ‘‘Each racial stereotype comes in two models, the acceptable model and the unacceptable model. . . . The unacceptable model is unacceptable because he cannot be controlled by whites. The acceptable model is acceptable because he is tractable. There is racist hate and racist love.’’6 Chin and Chan believe that while the ‘‘masculine’’ stereotypes of blacks, Indians, and Mexicans are generated by ‘‘racist hate,’’ ‘‘racist love’’ has been lavished on Chinese Americans, targets of ‘‘effeminate’’ stereotypes: The Chinese, in the parlance of the Bible, were raw material for the ‘‘flock,’’ pathological sheep for the shepherd. The adjectives applied to the Chinese ring with scriptural imagery. We are meek, timid, passive, docile, industrious. We have the patience of Job. We are humble. A race without sinful manhood, born to mortify our flesh. . . . The difference between [other minority groups] and the Chinese was that the Christians, taking Chinese hospitality for timidity and docility, weren’t afraid of us as they were of other races. They loved us, protected us. Love conquered.7

If ‘‘racist love’’ denies ‘‘manhood’’ to Asian men, it endows Asian women with an excess of ‘‘womanhood.’’ Elaine Kim argues that because ‘‘the characterization of Asian men is a reflection of a white male perspective that defines the white man’s 159

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virility, it is possible for Asian men to be viewed as asexual and the Asian woman as only sexual, imbued with an innate understanding of how to please and serve.’’ The putative gender difference among Asian Americans – exaggerated out of all proportion in the popular imagination – has, according to Kim, created ‘‘resentment and tensions’’ between the sexes within the ethnic community.8 Although both the Asian American and the feminist movements of the late sixties have attempted to counter extant stereotypes, the conflicts between Asian American men and women have been all the more pronounced in the wake of the two movements. In the last two decades many Chinese American men – especially such writers and editors as Chin and Chan – have begun to correct the distorted images of Asian males projected by the dominant culture. Astute, eloquent, and incisive as they are in debunking racist myths, they are often blind to the biases resulting from their own acceptance of the patriarchal construct of masculinity. In Chin’s discussion of Fu Manchu and Charlie Chan and in the perceptive contrast he draws between the stock images of Asian men and those of other men of color, one can detect not only homophobia but perhaps also a sexist preference for stereotypes that imply predatory violence against women to ‘‘effeminate’’ ones. Granted that the position taken by Chin may be little more than a polemicist stance designed to combat white patronage, it is disturbing that he should lend credence to the conventional association of physical aggression with manly valor. The hold of patriarchal conventions becomes even more evident in the following passage: The white stereotype of the Asian is unique in that it is the only racial stereotype completely devoid of manhood. Our nobility is that of an efficient housewife. At our worst we are contemptible because we are womanly, effeminate, devoid of all the traditionally masculine qualities of originality, daring, physical courage, creativity. We’re neither straight talkin’ or straight shootin’. The mere fact that four of the five American-born Chinese-American writers are women reinforces this aspect of the stereotype.9

In taking whites to task for demeaning Asians, these writers seem nevertheless to be buttressing patriarchy by invoking gender stereotypes, by disparaging domestic efficiency as ‘‘feminine,’’ and by slotting desirable traits such as originality, daring, physical courage, and creativity under the rubric of masculinity.10 The impetus to reassert manhood also underlies the ongoing attempt by Chin, Chan, Lawson Inada, and Shawn Wong to reconstruct Asian American literary history. In their groundbreaking work Aiiieeeee! An Anthology of Asian-American Writers, these writers and co-editors deplored ‘‘the lack of a recognized style of Asian-American manhood.’’ In a forthcoming sequel entitled The Big Aiiieeeee! An Anthology of Asian American Writers, they attempt to revive an Asian heroic tradition, celebrating Chinese and Japanese classics such as The Art of War, Water Margin, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Journey to the West, and Chushingura, and honoring the renowned heroes and outlaws featured therein.11 160

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The editors seem to be working in a opposite direction from that of an increasing number of feminists. While these Asian American spokesmen are recuperating a heroic tradition of their own, many women writers and scholars, building on existentialist and modernist insights, are reassessing the entire Western code of heroism. While feminists question such traditional values as competitive individualism and martial valor, the editors seize on selected maxims, purportedly derived from Chinese epics and war manuals, such as ‘‘I am the law,’’ ‘‘life is war,’’ ‘‘personal integrity and honor is the highest value,’’ and affirm the ‘‘ethic of private revenge.’’12 The Aiiieeeee! editors and feminist critics also differ on the question of genre. According to Chin, the literary genre that is most antithetical to the heroic tradition is autobiography, which he categorically denounces as a form of Christian confession: the fighter writer uses literary forms as weapons of war, not the expression of ego alone, and does not [waste] time with dandyish expressions of feeling and psychological attitudinizing. . . . A Chinese Christian is like a Nazi Jew. Confession and autobiography celebrate the process of conversion from an object of contempt to an object of acceptance. You love the personal experience of it, the oozings of viscous putrescence and luminous radiant guilt. . . . It’s the quality of submission, not assertion that counts, in the confession and the autobiography. The autobiography combines the thrills and guilt of masturbation and the porno movie.13

Feminist critics, many of whom are skeptical of either/or dichotomies (in this instance fighting vs. feeling) and are impatient with normative definitions of genre (not that Chin’s criteria are normative), believe that women have always appropriated autobiography as a vehicle for asserting, however tentatively, their subjectivity. Celeste Schenck writes: the poetics of women’s autobiography issues from its concern with constituting a female subject – a precarious operation, which . . . requires working on two fronts at once, both occupying a kind of center, assuming a subjectivity long denied, and maintaining the vigilant, disruptive stance that speaking from the postmodern margin provides – the autobiographical genre may be paradigmatic of all women’s writing.14

Given these divergent views, the stage is set for a confrontation between ‘‘heroism’’ and ‘‘feminism’’ in Chinese American letters.

II The advent of feminism, far from checking Asian American chauvinism, has in a sense fueled gender antagonism, at least in the literary realm. Nowhere is this antagonism reflected more clearly than in the controversy that has erupted over 161

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Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior. Classified as autobiography, the work describes the protagonist’s struggle for self-definition amid Cantonese sayings such as ‘‘Girls are maggots in the rice,’’ ‘‘It is more profitable to raise geese than daughters,’’ ‘‘Feeding girls is feeding cowbirds’’ (51, 54). While the book has received popular acclaim, especially among feminist critics, it has been censured by several Chinese American critics – mostly male but also some female – who tax Kingston for misrepresenting Chinese and Chinese American culture, and for passing fiction for autobiography. Chin (whose revulsion against autobiography we already know) wrote a satirical parody of The Woman Warrior; he casts aspersions on its historical status and places Kingston in the same company as the authors of Fu Manchu and Charlie Chan for confirming ‘‘the white fantasy that everything sick and sickening about the white self-image is really Chinese.’’15 Jeffery Paul Chan castigates Knopf for publishing the book as ‘‘biography rather than fiction (which it obviously is)’’ and insinuates that a white female reviewer praises the book indiscriminately because it expresses ‘‘female anger.’’16 Benjamin Tong openly calls it a ‘‘fashionably feminist work written with white acceptance in mind.’’17 As Sau-ling Wong points out, ‘‘According to Kingston’s critics, the most pernicious of the stereotypes which might be supported by The Woman Warrior is that of Chinese American men as sexist,’’ and yet some Chinese American women ‘‘think highly of The Woman Warrior because it confirms their personal experiences with sexism.’’18 In sum, Kingston is accused of falsifying culture and of reinforcing stereotype in the name of feminism. At first glance the claim that Kingston should not have taken the liberty to infuse autobiography with fiction may seem to be merely a generic, genderneutral criticism, but as Susan Stanford Friedman has pointed out, genre is all too often gendered.19 Feminist scholars of autobiography have suggested that women writers often shy away from ‘‘objective’’ autobiography and prefer to use the form to reflect a private world, a subjective vision, and the life of the imagination. The Woman Warrior, though it departs from most ‘‘public’’ selfrepresentations by men, is quite in line with such an autobiographical tradition. Yet for a ‘‘minority’’ author to exercise such artistic freedom is perilous business because white critics and reviewers persist in seeing creative expressions by her as no more than cultural history.20 Members from the ethnic community are in turn upset if they feel that they have been ‘‘misrepresented’’ by one of their own. Thus where Kingston insists on shuttling between the world of facts and the world of fantasy, on giving multiple versions of ‘‘truth’’ as subjectively perceived, her Chinese American detractors demand generic purity and historical accuracy. Perhaps precisely because this author is female, writing amid discouraging realities, she can only forge a viable and expansive identity by refashioning patriarchal myths and invoking imaginative possibilities.21 Kingston’s autobiographical act, far from betokening submission, as Chin believes, turns the self into a ‘‘heroine’’ and is in a sense an act of ‘‘revenge’’ (a word represented in Chinese by two ideographs which Kingston loosely translates as ‘‘report a 162

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crime’’) against both the Chinese and the white cultures that undermine her self-esteem. Discrediting her for taking poetic licence is reminiscent of those white reviewers who reduce works of art by ethnic authors to sociohistorical documentary. The second charge concerning stereotype is more overtly gender-based. It is hardly coincidental that the most unrelenting critics (whose grievance is not only against Kingston but also against feminists in general) have also been the most ardent champions of Chinese American ‘‘manhood.’’ Their response is understandable. Asian American men have suffered deeply from racial oppression. When Asian American women seek to expose anti-female prejudices in their own ethnic community, the men are likely to feel betrayed.22 Yet it is also undeniable that sexism still lingers as part of the Asian legacy in Chinese America and that many American-born daughters still feel its sting. Chinese American women may be at once sympathetic and angry toward the men in their ethnic community: sensitive to the marginality of these men but resentful of their male privilege.

III Kingston herself seems to be in the grips of these conflicting emotions. The opening legend of China Men captures through myth some of the baffling intersections of gender and ethnicity in Chinese America and reveals the author’s own double allegiance. The legend is borrowed and adapted from an eighteenth-century Chinese novel entitled Flowers in the Mirror, itself a fascinating work and probably one of the first ‘‘feminist’’ novels written by a man.23 The male protagonist of this novel is Tang Ao, who in Kingston’s version is captured in the Land of Women, where he is forced to have his feet bound, his ears pierced, his facial hair plucked, his cheeks and lips painted red – in short, to be transformed into an Oriental courtesan. Since Kingston explicity points out at the end of her legend that the Land of Women was in North America, critics familiar with Chinese American history will readily see that the ignominy suffered by Tang Ao in a foreign land symbolizes the emasculation of Chinamen by the dominant culture. Men of Chinese descent have encountered racial violence in the US, both in the past and even recently.24 Kingston’s myth is indeed intimating that the physical torment in their peculiar case is often tied to an affront to their manhood. But in making women the captors of Tang Ao and in deliberately reversing masculine and feminine roles, Kingston also foregrounds constructions of gender. I cannot but see this legend as double-edged, pointing not only to the mortification of Chinese men in the new world but also to the subjugation of women both in old China and in America. Although the tortures suffered by Tang Ao seem palpably cruel, many Chinese women had for centuries been obliged to undergo similar mutilation. By having a man go through these ordeals 163

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instead, Kingston, following the author of Flowers in the Mirror, disrupts the familiar and commonplace acceptance of Chinese women as sexual objects. Her myth deplores on the one hand the racist debasement of Chinese American men and on the other hand the sexist objectification of Chinese women. Although China Men mostly commemorates the founding fathers of Chinese America, this companion volume to The Woman Warrior is also suffused with ‘‘feminist anger.’’ The opening myth suggests that the author objects as strenuously to the patriarchal practices of her ancestral culture as to the racist treatment of her forefathers in their adopted country. Kingston reveals not only the similarities between Chinamen’s and Chinese women’s suffering but also the correlation between these men’s umbrage at racism and their misogynist behavior. In one episode, the narrator’s immigrant father, a laundryman who seldom opens his mouth except to utter obscenities about women, is cheated by a gypsy and harassed by a white policeman: When the gypsy baggage and the police pig left, we were careful not to be bad or noisy so that you [father] would not turn on us. We knew that it was to feed us you had to endure demons and physical labor. You screamed wordless male screams that jolted the house upright . . . Worse than the swearing and the nightly screams were your silences when you punished us by not talking. You rendered us invisible, gone. (8)

Even as the daughter deplores the father’s ‘‘male screams’’ and brooding silences, she attributes his bad temper to his sense of frustration and emasculation in a white society. As in analogous situations of Cholly Breedlove in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye and Grange Copeland in Alice Walker’s The Third Life of Grange Copeland, what seems to be male tyranny must be viewed within the context of racial inequality. Men of color who have been abused in a white society are likely to attempt to restore their sense of masculinity by venting their anger at those who are even more powerless – the women and children in their families. Kingston’s attempt to write about the opposite sex in China Men is perhaps a tacit call for mutual empathy between Chinese American men and women. In an interview, the author likens herself to Tang Ao: just as Tang Ao enters the Land of Women and is made to feel what it means to be of the other gender, so Kingston, in writing China Men, enters the realm of men and, in her own words, becomes ‘‘the kind of woman who loves men and who can tell their stories.’’ Perhaps, to extend the analogy further, she is trying to prompt her male readers to participate in and empathize with the experiences of women.25 Where Tang Ao is made to feel what his female contemporaries felt, Chinese American men are urged to see parallels between their plight and that of Chinese American women. If Asian men have been emasculated in America, as the aforementioned male critics have themselves argued, they can best attest to the oppression of women who have long been denied male privilege. 164

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IV An ongoing effort to revamp Chinese American literary history will surely be more compelling if it is informed by mutual empathy between men and women. To return to an earlier point, I am of two minds about the ambitious attempt of the Aiiieeeee! editors to restore and espouse an Asian American heroic tradition. Born and raised in Hong Kong, I grew up reading many of the Chinese heroic epics – along with works of less heroic modes – and can appreciate the rigorous effort of the editors to introduce them to Asian American and non-Asian readers alike.26 But the literary values they assign to the heroic canon also function as ideology. Having spoken out against the emasculation of Asian Americans in their introduction to Aiiieeeee!, they seem determined to show further that Chinese and Japanese Americans have a heroic – which is to say militant – heritage. Their propagation of the epic tradition appears inseparable from their earlier attempt to eradicate effeminate stereotypes and to emblazon Asian American manhood.27 In this light, the special appeal held by the war heroes for the editors becomes rather obvious. Take, for example, Kwan Kung, in Romance of the Three Kingdoms: loud, passionate, and vengeful, this ‘‘heroic embodiment of martial self-sufficiency’’ is antithetical in every way to the image of the quiet, passive, and subservient Oriental houseboy. Perhaps the editors hope that the icon of this imposing Chinese hero will dispel myths about Chinese American tractability. While acquaintance with some of the Chinese folk heroes may induce the American public to acknowledge that Chinese culture too has its Robin Hood and John Wayne, I remain uneasy about the masculist orientation of the heroic tradition, especially as expounded by the editors who see loyalty, revenge, and individual honor as the overriding ethos which should be inculcated in (if not already absorbed by) Chinese Americans. If white media have chosen to highlight and applaud the submissive and nonthreatening characteristics of Asians, the Asian American editors are equally tendentious in underscoring the militant strain of their Asian literary heritage.28 The refutation of effeminate stereotypes through the glorification of machismo merely perpetuates patriarchal terms and assumptions. Is it not possible for Chinese American men to recover a cultural space without denigrating or erasing ‘‘the feminine’’? Chin contends that ‘‘use of the heroic tradition in Chinese literature as the source of Chinese American moral, ethical and esthetic universals is not literary rhetoric and smartass cute tricks, not wishful thinking, not theory, not demagoguery and prescription, but simple history.’’29 However, even history, which is also a form of social construct, is not exempt from critical scrutiny. The Asian heroic tradition, like its Western counterpart, must be re-evaluated so that both its strengths and limits can surface. The intellectual excitement and the emotional appeal of the tradition is indisputable: the strategic brilliance of characters such as Chou Yu and Chuko Liang in Romance of the Three Kingdoms rivals that of Odysseus, and the fraternal 165

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bond between the three sworn brothers – Liu Pei, Chang Fei, and Kuan Yu (Kwan Kung) – is no less moving than that between Achilles and Patrocles. But just as I no longer believe that Homer speaks for humanity (or even all mankind), I hesitate to subscribe wholeheartedly to the Aiiieeeee! editors’ claim that the Asian heroic canon (composed entirely of work written by men though it contains a handful of heroines) encompasses ‘‘Asian universals.’’ Nor do I concur with the editors that a truculent mentality pervades the Chinese heroic tradition, which generally places a higher premium on benevolence than on force and stresses the primacy of kinship and friendship over personal power. By way of illustration I will turn to the prototype for Kingston’s ‘‘woman warrior’’ – Fa Mu Lan (also known as Hua Mulan and Fa Muk Lan). According to the original ‘‘Ballad of Mulan’’ (which most Chinese children, including myself, had to learn by heart) the heroine in joining the army is prompted neither by revenge nor by personal honor but by filial piety. She enlists under male disguise to take the place of her aged father. Instead of celebrating the glory of war, the poem describes the bleakness of the battlefield and the loneliness of the daughter (who sorely misses her parents). The use of understatement in such lines as ‘‘the general was killed after hundreds of combats’’ and ‘‘the warriors returned in ten years’’ (my translation) connotes the cost and duration of battles. The ‘‘Ballad of Mulan,’’ though it commits the filial and courageous daughter to public memory, also contains a pacifist subtext – much in the way that the Iliad conceals an antiwar message beneath its martial trappings. A re-examination of the Asian heroic tradition may actually reveal that it is richer and more sophisticated than the Aiiieeeee! editors, bent on finding belligerent models, would allow.30 Kingston’s adaptation of the legend in The Woman Warrior is equally multivalent. Fa Mu Lan as re-created in the protagonist’s fantasy does excel in martial arts, but her power is derived as much from the words carved on her back as from her military skills. And the transformed heroine still proves problematic as a model since she can only exercise her power when in male armor. As I have argued elsewhere, her military distinction, insofar as it valorizes the ability to be ruthless and violent – ‘‘to fight like a man’’ – affirms rather than subverts patriarchal mores.31 In fact, Kingston discloses in an interview that the publisher is the one who entitled the book ‘‘The Woman Warrior’’ while she herself (who is a pacifist) resists complete identification with the war heroine: I don’t really like warriors. I wish I had not had a metaphor of a warrior, a person who uses weapons and goes to war. I guess I always have in my style a doubt about wars as a way of solving things.32

Aside from the fantasy connected with Fa Mu Lan the book has little to do with actual fighting. The real battle that runs through the work is one against silence and invisibility. Forbidden by her mother to tell a secret, unable to read aloud in English while first attending American school, and later fired for protesting 166

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against racism, the protagonist eventually speaks with a vengeance through writing – through a heroic act of self-expression. At the end of the book her tutelary genius has changed from Fa Mu Lan to Ts’ai Yen – from warrior to poet. Kingston’s commitment to pacifism – through re-visioning and recontextualizing ancient ‘‘heroic’’ material – is even more evident in her most recent book, Tripmaster Monkey. As though anticipating the editors of The Big Aiiieeeee!, the author alludes recurrently to the Chinese heroic tradition, but always with a feminist twist. The protagonist of this novel, Wittman Ah Sing, is a playwright who loves Romance of the Three Kingdoms (one of the aforementioned epics espoused by Chin). Kingston’s novel culminates with Wittman directing a marathon show which he has written based on the Romance. At the end of the show he has a rather surprising illumination: He had made up his mind: he will not go to Viet Nam or to any war. He had staged the War of the Three Kingdoms as heroically as he could, which made him start to understand: The three brothers and Cho Cho were masters of the war; they had worked out strategies and justifications for war so brilliantly that their policies and their tactics are used today, even by governments with nuclearpowered weapons. And they lost. The clanging and banging fooled us, but now we know – they lost. Studying the mightiest war epic of all time, Wittman changed – beeen! – into a pacifist. Dear American monkey, don’t be afraid. Here, let us tweak your ear, and kiss your other ear.33

The seemingly easy transformation of Wittman – who is curiously evocative of Chin in speech and manner – is achieved through the pacifist author’s sleight of hand. Nevertheless, the novel does show that it is possible to celebrate the ingenious strategies of the ancient warriors without embracing, wholesale, the heroic code that motivates their behavior and without endorsing violence as a positive expression of masculinity.34 Unfortunately, the ability to perform violent acts implied in the concepts of warrior and epic hero is still all too often mistaken for manly courage; and men who have been historically subjugated are all the more tempted to adopt a militant stance to manifest their masculinity. In the notorious Moynihan report on the black family, ‘‘military service for Negroes’’ was recommended as a means to potency: Given the strains of the disorganized and matrifocal family life in which so many Negro youth come of age, the Armed Forces are a dramatic and desperately needed change: a world away from women, a world run by strong men of unquestioned authority.35

Moynihan believed that placing black men in an ‘‘utterly masculine world’’ will strengthen them. The black men in the sixties who worshipped figures that exploited and brutalized women likewise conflated might and masculinity. Toni Cade, who cautions against ‘‘equating black liberation with black men gaining 167

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access to male privilege,’’ offers an alternative to patriarchal prescriptions for manhood: Perhaps we need to let go of all notions of manhood and femininity and concentrate on Blackhood. . . . It perhaps takes less heart to pick up the gun than to face the task of creating a new identity, a self, perhaps an androgynous self. . . . 36

If Chinese American men use the Asian heroic dispensation to promote male aggression, they may risk remaking themselves in the image of their oppressors – albeit under the guise of Asian panoply. Precisely because the racist treatment of Asians has taken the peculiar form of sexism – insofar as the indignities suffered by men of Chinese descent are analogous to those traditionally suffered by women – we must refrain from seeking antifeminist solutions to racism. To do otherwise reinforces not only patriarchy but also white supremacy. Well worth heeding is Althusser’s caveat that when a dominant ideology is integrated as common sense into the consciousness of the dominated, the dominant class will continue to prevail.37 Instead of tailoring ourselves to white ideals, Asian Americans may insist on alternative habits and ways of seeing. Instead of drumming up support for Asian American ‘‘manhood,’’ we may consider demystifying popular stereotypes while reappropriating what Stanford Lyman calls the ‘‘kernels of truth’’ in them that are indeed part of our ethnic heritage. For instance, we need not accept the Western association of Asian self-restraint with passivity and femininity. I, for one, believe that the respectful demeanor of many an Asian and Asian American indicates, among other things, a willingness to listen to others and to resolve conflict rationally or tactfully.38 Such a collaborative disposition – be it Asian or non-Asian, feminine or masculine – is surely no less valid and viable than one that is vociferous and confrontational.

V Although I have thus far concentrated on the gender issues in the Chinese American cultural domina, they do have provocative implications for feminist theory and criticism. As Elizabeth Spelman points out, ‘‘It is not easy to think about gender, race, and class in ways that don’t obscure or underplay their effects on one another.’’39 Still, the task is to develop paradigms that can admit these crosscurrents and that can reach out to women of color and perhaps also to men. Women who value familial and ethnic solidarity may find it especially difficult to rally to the feminist cause without feeling divided or without being accused of betrayal, especially when the men in their ethnic groups also face social iniquities. Kingston, for instance, has tried throughout her work to mediate between affirming her ethnic heritage and undermining patriarchy. But she feels that identification with Asian men at times inhibits an equally strong feminist 168

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impulse. Such split loyalties apparently prompted her to publish The Woman Warrior and China Men separately, though they were conceived and written together as an ‘‘interlocking story.’’ Lest the men’s stories ‘‘undercut the feminist viewpoint,’’ she separated the female and the male stories into two books. She says, ‘‘I care about men . . . as much as I care about women. . . . Given the present state of affairs, perhaps men’s and women’s experiences have to be dealth with separately for now, until more auspicious times are with us.’’40 Yet such separation has its dangers, particularly if it means that men and women will continue to work in opposing directions, as reflected in the divergences between the proponents of the Asian heroic tradition and Asian American feminists. Feminist ideas have made little inroad in the writing of the Aiiieeeee! editors, who continue to operate within patriarchal grids. White feminists, on the other hand, are often oblivious to the fact that there are other groups besides women who have been ‘‘feminized’’ and puzzled when women of color do not readily rally to their camp. The recent shift from feminist studies to gender studies suggests that the time has come to look at women and men together. I hope that the shift will also entice both men and women to do the looking and, by so doing, strengthen the alliance between gender studies and ethnic studies. Lest feminist criticism remain in the wilderness, white scholars must reckon with race and class as integral experiences for both men and women, and acknowledge that not only female voices but the voices of many men of color have been historically silenced or dismissed. Expanding the feminist frame of reference will allow certain existing theories to be interrogated or reformulated.41 Asian American men need to be wary of certain pitfalls in using what Foucault calls ‘‘reverse discourse,’’ in demanding legitimacy ‘‘in the same vocabulary, using the same categories by which [they were] disqualified.’’42 The ones who can be recruited into the field of gender studies may someday see feminists as allies rather than adversaries, and proceed to dismantle not just white but also male supremacy. Women of color should not have to undergo a self-division resulting from having to choose between female and ethnic identities. Chinese American women writers may find a way to negotiate the tangle of sexual and racial politics in all its intricacies, not just out of a desire for ‘‘revenge’’ but also out of a sense of ‘‘loyalty.’’ If we ask them to write with a vigilant eye against possible misappropriation by white readers or against possible offense to ‘‘Asian American manhood,’’ however, we will end up implicitly sustaining racial and sexual hierarchies. All of us need to be conscious of our ‘‘complicity with the gender ideologies’’ of patriarchy, whatever its origins, and to work toward notions of gender and ethnicity that are nonhierarchical, nonbinary, and nonprescriptive; that can embrace tensions rather than perpetuate divisions.43 To reclaim cultural traditions without getting bogged down in the mire of traditional constraints, to attack stereotypes without falling prey to their binary opposites, to chart new topographies for manliness and womanliness, will surely demand genuine heroism. 169

King-Kok Cheung Notes 1 Research for this essay is funded in part by an Academic Senate grant and a grant from the Institute of American Cultures and the Asian American Studies Center, UCLA. I wish to thank the many whose help, criticism, and encouragement have sustained me through the mentally embattled period of writing this essay: Kim Crenshaw, Donald Goellnicht, Marianne Hirsch, Evelyn Fox Keller, Elaine Kim, Elizabeth Kim, Ken Lincoln, Gerard Mare´, Rosalind Melis, Jeff Spielberg, Sau-ling Wong, Richard Yarborough, and Stan Yogi. A version of this article was delivered at the 1989 MLA Convention in Washington, DC. My title alludes not only to Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior and China Men but also Frank Chin’s The Chickencoop Chinaman and The Chinaman Pacific & Frisco R. R. Co. The term ‘‘Chinamen’’ has acquired divers connotations through time: ‘‘In the early days of Chinese American history, men called themselves ‘Chinamen’ just as other newcomers called themselves ‘Englishmen’ or ‘Frenchmen’: the term distinguished them from the ‘Chinese’ who remained citizens of China, and also showed that they were not recognized as Americans. Later, of course, it became an insult. Young Chinese Americans today are reclaiming the word because of its political and historical precision, and are demanding that it be said with dignity and not for name-calling’’ (Kingston, ‘‘San Francisco’s Chinatown: A View from the Other Side of Arnold Genthe’s Camera,’’ American Heritage [December 1978]: 37). In my article the term refers exclusively to men. 2 The devaluation of daughters is a theme explored in The Woman Warrior (1976; New York: Vintage, 1977); as this book suggests, this aspect of patriarchy is upheld no less by women than by men. The ‘‘emasculation’’ of Chinese American men is addressed in China Men (1980; New York: Ballantine, 1981), in which Kingston attempts to reclaim the founders of Chinese America. Subsequent page references to these two books will appear in the text. Detailed accounts of early Chinese immigrant history can be found in Victor G. Nee and Brett De Bary Nee, Longtime Californ’: A Documentary Study of an American Chinatown (1973; New York: Pantheon, 1981); and Ronald Takaki, Strangers from a Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans (Boston: Little, Brown, 1989), 79–131. 3 See Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage, 1979). Although Said focuses on French and British representations of the Middle East, many of his insights also apply to American perceptions of the Far East. 4 ‘‘Asian American Writers: A Bibliographical Review,’’ American Studies International 22(2) (October 1984): 64. 5 ‘‘Confessions of the Chinatown Cowboy,’’ Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars 4(3) (1972): 66. 6 ‘‘Racist Love,’’ Seeing through Shuck, ed. Richard Kostelanetz (New York: Ballantine, 1972), 65, 79. Although the cinematic image of Bruce Lee as a Kung-fu master might have somewhat countered the feminine representations of Chinese American men, his role in the only one Hollywood film in which he appeared before he died was, in Elaine Kim’s words, ‘‘less a human being than a fighting machine’’ (‘‘Asian Americans and American Popular Culture,’’ Dictionary of Asian American History, ed. Hyung-Chan Kim [New York: Greenwood Press, 1986], 107). 7 ‘‘Racist Love,’’ 69. 8 ‘‘Asian American Writers: A Bibliographical Review,’’ 64. 9 ‘‘Racist Love,’’ 68. The five writers under discussion are Pardee Lowe, Jade Snow Wong, Virginia Lee, Betty Lee Sung, and Diana Chang. 10 Similar objections to the passage have been raised by Merle Woo in ‘‘Letter to Ma,’’ This Bridge Called my Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color, ed. Cherrı´e Moraga and Gloria Anzaldu´a (1981; New York: Kitchen Table, 1983), 145; and Elaine Kim in Asian American Literature: An Introduction to the Writings and Their Social Context (Philadelphia: Temple

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11

12

13 14

15

16 17 18

University Press, 1982), 189. Richard Yarborough delineates a somewhat parallel conundrum about manhood faced by African American writers in the nineteenth century and which, I believe, persists to some extent to this day; see ‘‘Race, Violence, and Manhood: The Masculine Ideal in Frederick Douglass’s ‘Heroic Slave,’ ’’ forthcoming in Frederick Douglass: New Literary and Historical Essays, ed. Eric J. Sundquist (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 1991). There is, however, an important difference between the dilemma faced by the African American men and that faced by Asian American men. While writers such as William Wells Brown and Frederick Douglass tried to reconcile the white inscription of the militant and sensual Negro and the white ideal of heroic manhood, several Chinese American male writers are trying to disprove the white stereotype of the passive and effeminate Asian by invoking its binary opposite. Aiiieeeee! An Anthology of Asian-American Writers (1974; Washington: Howard University Press, 1983), xxxviii; The Big Aiiieeeee! An Anthology of Asian American Writers (New York: New American Library, 1991). All the Asian classics cited are available in English translations: Sun Tzu, The Art of War, trans. Samuel B. Griffith (London: Oxford University Press, 1963); Shi Nai’an and Luo Guanzhong, Outlaws of the Marsh [The Water Margin], trans. Sidney Shapiro (jointly published by Beijing: Foreign Language Press and Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1981); Luo Guan-Zhong, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, trans. C. H. Brewitt-Taylor (Singapore: Graham Brash, 1986), 2 vols.; Wu Ch’eng-en, Journey to the West, trans. Anthony Yu (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), 4 vols.; Takeda Izumo, Miyoshi Shoraku, and Namiki Senryu, Chushingura (The Treasury of Loyal Retainers), trans. Donald Keene (New York: Columbia University Press, 1971). I would like to thank Frank Chin for allowing me to see an early draft of The Big Aiiieeeee!. For a foretaste of his exposition of the Chinese heroic tradition, see ‘‘This is Not an Autobiography,’’ Genre 18 (1985): 109–30. The feminist works that come to mind include Paula Gunn Allen, The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions (Boston: Beacon: 1986); Nina Auerbach, Communities of Women: An Idea in Fiction (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1978); Zillah R. Eisenstein, The Radical Future of Liberal Feminism (New York: Longman, 1981); Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982); Christa Wolf, Cassandra: A Novel and Four Essays, trans. Jan van Heurck (New York: Farrar, 1984). The Chinese maxims appear in the introduction to The Big Aiiieeeee! (draft) and are quoted with the editors’ permission. The same maxims are cited in Frank Chin, ‘‘This Is Not an Autobiography.’’ Chin, ‘‘This Is Not An Autobiography,’’ 112, 122, 130. ‘‘All of a Piece: Women’s Poetry and Autobiography,’’ Life/Lines: Theorizing Women’s Autobiography, ed. Bella Brodzki and Celeste Schenck (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988), 286. See also Estelle Jelinek, ed., Women’s Autobiography: Essays in Criticism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980); Donna Stanton, The Female Autograph (New York: New York Literary Forum, 1984); Sidonie Smith, Poetics of Women’s Autobiography: Marginality and the Fictions of Self-Representation (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987). ‘‘The Most Popular Book in China,’’ Quilt 4, ed. Ishmael Reed and Al Young (Berkeley: Quilt, 1984), 12. The essay is republished as the ‘‘Afterword’’ in The Chinaman Pacific & Frisco R. R. Co. The literary duel between Chin, a self-styled ‘‘Chinatown Cowboy,’’ and Kingston, an undisguised feminist, closely parallels the paper war between Ishmael Reed and Alice Walker. ‘‘The Mysterious West,’’ New York Review of Books, 28 April 1977: 41. ‘‘Critic of Admirer Sees Dumb Racist,’’ San Francisco Journal, 11 May 1977: 20. ‘‘Autobiography as Guided Chinatown Tour?,’’ American Lives: Essays in Multicultural American Autobiography, ed. James Robert Payne (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1992). See also Deborah Woo, ‘‘The Ethnic Writer and the Burden of ‘Dual Authenticity’: The Dilemma of Maxine Hong Kingston,’’ forthcoming in Amerasia Journal. Reviews

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King-Kok Cheung

19 20

21

22

23 24

25

26

27

28

by Chinese American women who identify strongly with Kingston’s protagonist include Nellie Wong, ‘‘The Woman Warrior,’’ Bridge (Winter 1978): 46–8; and Suzi Wong, review of The Woman Warrior, Amerasia Journal 4.1 (1977): 165–7. ‘‘Gender and Genre Anxiety: Elizabeth Barrett Browning and H. D. as Epic Poets,’’ Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature 5(2) (Fall 1986): 203–28. Furthermore, a work highlighting sexism within an ethnic community is generally more palatable to the reading public than a work that condemns racism. The Woman Warrior addresses both forms of oppression, but critics have focused almost exclusively on its feminist themes. Susanne Juhasz argues that because women have traditionally lived a ‘‘kind of private life, that of the imagination, which has special significance due to the outright conflict between societal possibility and imaginative possibility, [Kingston] makes autobiography from fiction, from fantasy, from forms that have conventionally belonged to the novel’’ (‘‘Towards a Theory of Form in Feminist Autobiography.’’ International Journal of Women’s Studies 2(1) [1979]: 62). Cf. similar critical responses in the African American community provoked by Alice Walker’s The Color Purple and Toni Morrison’s Beloved. Although I limit my discussion to sexual politics in Chinese America, Asian American women are just as vulnerable to white sexism, as the denigrating stereotypes discussed by Kim earlier suggest. Li Ju-Chen, Flowers in the Mirror, trans. and ed. Lin Tai-Yi (London: Peter Owen, 1965). A recent case has been made into a powerful public television documentary: ‘‘Who Killed Vincent Chin?’’ (directed by Renee Tajima and Christine Choy, 1989). Chin, who punched a white auto-worker in Detroit in response to his racial slurs, was subsequently battered to death by the worker and his stepson with a baseball bat. The interview was conducted by Kay Bonetti for the American Audio Prose Library (Columbia, MO, 1986). Jonathan Culler has discussed the various implications, for both sexes, of ‘‘Reading as a Woman’’ (On Deconstruction: Theory and Criticism after Structuralism [Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1982], 43–64); see also Men in Feminism, ed. Alice Jardine and Paul Smith (New York: Methuen, 1987). The other modes are found in works as diverse as T’ao Ch’ien’s poems (pastoral), Ch’u Yuan’s Li sao (elegiac), selected writing by Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu (metaphysical), and P’u Sung-ling’s Liao-Chai Chih I (Gothic). (My thanks to Shu-mei Shih and Adam Schorr for helping me with part of the romanization.) One must bear in mind, however, that Asian and Western generic terms often fail to correspond. For example, what the Aiiieeeee! editors call ‘‘epics’’ are loosely classified as ‘‘novels’’ in Chinese literature. Epic heroes, according C. M. Bowra, are ‘‘the champions of man’s ambitions’’ seeking to ‘‘win as far as possible a self-sufficient manhood’’ (Heroic Poetry [London: Macmillan, 1952], 14). Their Chinese counterparts are no exception. Benjamin R. Tong argues that the uneducated Cantonese peasants who comprised the majority of early Chinese immigrants were not docile but venturesome and rebellious, that putative Chinese traits such as meekness and obedience to authority were in fact ‘‘reactivated’’ in America in response to white racism (‘‘The Ghetto of the Mind,’’ Amerasia Journal 1(3) [1971]: 1–31). Chin, who basically agrees with Tong, also attributes the submissive and ‘‘unheroic’’ traits of Chinese Americans to Christianity (‘‘This Is Not An Autobiography’’). While Tong and Chin are right in distinguishing the Cantonese folk culture of the early immigrants from the classical tradition of the literati, they underestimate the extent to which mainstream Chinese thought infiltrated Cantonese folk imagination, wherein the heroic ethos coexists with Buddhist beliefs and Confucian teachings (which do counsel self-restraint and obedience to parental and state authority). To attribute the ‘‘submissive’’ traits of Chinese Americans entirely to white racism or to Christianity is to discount the complexity and the

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29 30

31

32 33 34

35 36

37 38

39 40 41

rich contradictions of the Cantonese culture and the resourceful flexibility and adaptability of the early immigrants. ‘‘This Is Not an Autobiography,’’ 127. Conflicting attitudes toward Homeric war heroes are discussed in Katherine Callen King, Achilles: Paradigms of the War Hero from Homer to the Middle Ages (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987). Pacifist or at least anti-killing sentiments can be found in the very works deemed ‘‘heroic’’ by Chin and the editors. Romance of the Three Kingdoms not only dramatizes the senseless deaths and the ravages of war but also betrays a wishful longing for peace and unity, impossible under the division of ‘‘three kingdoms.’’ Even The Art of War sets benevolence above violence and discourages actual fighting and killing: ‘‘To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill’’ (77). ‘‘ ‘Don’t Tell’: Imposed Silences in The Color Purple and The Woman Warrior,’’ PMLA (March 1988): 166. I must add, however, that paradoxes about manhood inform Chinese as well as American cultures. The ‘‘contradictions inherent in the bourgeois male ideal’’ is pointed out by Yarborough: ‘‘the use of physical force is, at some levels, antithetical to the middle-class privileging of self-restraint and reason: yet an important component of conventional concepts of male courage is the willingness to use force’’ (‘‘Race, Violence, and Manhood: The Masculine Ideal in Frederick Douglass’s ‘Heroic Slave’ ’’). Similarly, two opposing ideals of manhood coexist in Chinese culture, that of a civil scholar who would never stoop to violence and that of a fearless warrior who would not brook insult or injustice. Popular Cantonese maxims such as ‘‘a superior man would only move his mouth but not his hands’’ (i.e. would never resort to physical combat) and ‘‘he who does not take revenge is not a superior man’’ exemplify the contradictions. Interview conducted by Kay Bonetti. Tripmaster Monkey: His Fake Book (New York: Knopf, 1989), 348. I am aware that a forceful response to oppression is sometimes necessary, that it is much easier for those who have never encountered physical blows and gunshots to maintain faith in nonviolent resistance. My own faith was somewhat shaken while watching the tragedy of Tiananmen on television; on the other hand, the image of the lone Chinese man standing in front of army tanks reinforced my belief that there is another form of heroism that far exceeds brute force. Lee Rainwater and William L. Yancey, The Moynihan Report and the Politics of Controversy (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1967), 88 (p. 42) in the original report by Daniel Patrick Moynihan). ‘‘On the Issue of Roles,’’ The Black Woman: An Anthology, ed. Toni Cade (York, ON: Mentor-NAL, 1970), 103; see also bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism (Boston: South End Press, 1981), 87–117. Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1971), 174–83. Of course, Asians are not all alike, and most generalizations are ultimately misleading. Elaine Kim pointed out to me that ‘‘It’s popularly thought that Japanese strive for peaceful resolution of conflict and achievement of consensus while Koreans – for material as much as metaphysical reasons – seem at times to encourage combativeness in one another’’ (personal correspondence, quoted with permission). Differences within each national group are no less pronounced. Inessential Woman: Problems of Exclusion in Feminist Thought (Boston: Beacon, 1988), 115. I omitted class from my discussion only because it is not at the center of the literary debate. Elaine Kim, Asian American Literature: An Introduction to the Writings and Their Social Context (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1982), 209. Donald Goellnicht, for instance, has argued that a girl from a racial minority ‘‘experiences not a single, but a double subject split; first, when she becomes aware of the gendered position constructed for her by the symbolic language of patriarchy; and second, when she recognizes that discursively and socially constructed positions of racial difference also obtain . . . [that] the ‘fathers’ of her racial and cultural group are silenced and degraded by

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King-Kok Cheung the Laws of the Ruling Fathers’’ (‘‘Father Land and/or Mother Tongue: The Divided Female Subject in The Woman Warrior and Obasan,’’ paper delivered at the MLA Convention, 1988). 42 The History of Sexuality, vol. 1, trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Vintage, 1980), 101. 43 Teresa de Lauretis, Technologies of Gender: Essays on Theory, Film, and Fiction (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987), 11.

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PART TWO

Influential Essays in Asian American Studies

CHAPTER

TEN

Split Household, Small Producer and Dual Wage Earner: An Analysis of Chinese-American Family Strategies* Evelyn Nakano Glenn

Most research on family patterns of black and other urban poor minorities points to the decisive impact of larger institutional structures. Particular attention has been paid to structures that lock certain classes of people into marginal employment and/or chronic unemployment (Drake and Cayton 1962; C. Valentine 1968). It has been argued that many characteristics of family organization – for example, reliance on female-based kinship networks – represent strategies for coping with the chronic poverty brought about by institutional racism (Stack 1974; Valentine 1978). Structural factors are considered sufficiently powerful to outweigh the influence of cultural tradition, especially in the case of blacks.1 Chinese Americans, despite their historical status as an economically exploited minority, have been treated in almost exactly opposite terms. Studies of the Chinese-American family have largely ignored social and economic conditions. They focus on purely cultural determinants, tracing characteristics of family life to Chinese values and traditions. The resulting portrayal of the Chinese-American family has been highly favorable; the family is depicted as stable and problem-free – low in rate of divorce (Huang, 1976), delinquency (Sollenberger 1968), and welfare dependency (Light 1972). These virtues are attributed to the family-centered values of Chinese society. Given this positive assessment, the absence of challenge to the cultural approach is understandable. Still, the case of the Chinese cannot be disengaged *Evelyn Nakano Glenn ‘‘Split Household, Small Producer and Dual Wage Earner: An Analysis of Chinese-American Family Strategies.’’ Journal of Marriage and the Family 45(1): 35–46. Reprinted by permission of Journal of Marriage and the Family.

Evelyn Nakano Glenn

from controversies involving other minority groups. The apparent fortitude of the Chinese has been cited as evidence supporting the view of black and Hispanic families as disorganized. Along with other ‘‘model’’ minorities, notably the Japanese and Cubans, the Chinese seem to have offered proof that some groups possess cultural resources that enable them to resist the demoralizing effects of poverty and discrimination. By implication, the difficulties experienced by blacks and Hispanics are due in some measure to the cultural weaknesses of these groups. On the basis of an historical review and informant interviews,2 this study argues that a purely cultural analysis does not adequately encompass the historical realitities of Chinese-American family life. It argues, furthermore, that a fuller understanding of the Chinese-American family must begin with an examination of the changing constellation of economic, legal, and political constraints that have shaped the Chinese experience in America. When followed by an analysis of the strategies adopted to cope with these constraints, such an examination reveals the many institutionally created problems the Chinese have confronted in forming and maintaining family life, and the variety of strategies they have used to overcome limitations. By positing a more or less passive cultural determinism and a continuity of Chinese culture, the cultural approach used up to now by many writers tends to obscure not only the problems and struggles of Chinese-American families but also their heterogeneity over time.

Cultural vs Institutional Approaches to the Chinese-American Family The cultural approach grows out of the dominant assimilative perspective in the race- and ethnic-relations field (Gordon 1964; Park 1950). This perspective focuses on the initial cultural and social differences among groups and attempts to trace the process of assimilation over time; much literature on Chinese Americans is framed in these terms (Hirata 1976). The rather extreme emphasis on traditional Chinese culture, however, seems to require further explanation. The emphasis may be due in part to the prevailing conception of the Chinese as perpetual foreigners or ‘‘strangers’’ (Wolff 1950). The image of the Chinese as strange, exotic and different seems to have preceded their actual arrival in the United States (Miller 1969). Since arriving their marginal position in the larger society, combined with racist ideology, has served to perpetuate and popularize the image. First, laws excluding the Chinese from citizenship and preventing them from bringing over spouses and children ensured that for over 130 years a large proportion of the Chinese-American population consisted of non-English speaking alien residents. Second, discriminatory laws and practices forced the Chinese to congregate in ethnic ghettos and to concentrate in a narrow range of industries such as laundries, restaurants, and tourist-oriented enterprises (Light and Wong 1975), which simultaneously reinforced and exploited their foreign178

Chinese-American Family Strategies

ness. Moreover, because of distinctive racial features, Americans of Chinese ancestry have been lumped together in the public mind with Chinese foreign nationals and recent immigrants, so that third, fourth or even fifth generation Americans are assumed to be culturally as well as racially Asian. It is not surprising, therefore, to find that until recently studies of Chinese Americans interpreted social and community organizational patterns as products of Chinese culture rather than as responses to economic and social conditions in the United States (Lyman 1974, is an exception; see also Hirata 1976; and Kwong 1979 for related critiques). Studies of family life follow in this same mold. Authors typically begin by examining traditional Chinese family patterns, then attempt to show how these patterns are expressed in a new setting and undergo gradual change through acculturation (e.g., Hsu 1971; Haynor and Reynolds 1937; Kung 1962; Sung 1971; Weiss 1974). The features identified as typical of Chinese-American families and as evidence of cultural continuity are: (a) stable family units as indicated by low rates of divorce and illegitimacy; (b) close ties between generations, as shown by the absence of adolescent rebellion and juvenile delinquency; (c) economic self-sufficiency, demonstrated by avoidance of welfare dependency; and (d) conservatism, expressed by retention of Chinese language and customs in the home. Each of these characteristics is interpreted in terms of specific aspects of Chinese culture. For example, the primacy of the family unit over the individual in Chinese society is credited for the rarity of divorce. Similarly, the principles of Confucianism (filial piety, respect for elders, and reverence for tradition) are cited as the philosophical bases for close control over children by parents and retention of Chinese language and customs in the home; and the family-based production system in the Chinese agricultural village is seen as the precedent for immigrants’ involvement in family enterprise and economic self-sufficiency. An institutional approach starts at a different point, looking not at Chinese society but at conditions in the United States. More specifically, it focuses on the legal and political restrictions imposed on the Chinese, particularly with respect to immigration, citizenship, residential mobility, and economic activity. The Chinese were the first group excluded on racial grounds from legally immigrating, starting in 1882 and continuing until the mid-1950s. When they were allowed entry, it was under severe restrictions which made it difficult for them to form and maintain families in the United States. They also were denied the right to become naturalized citizens, a right withheld until 1943. This meant that for most of their 130-year history in the United States, the Chinese were categorically excluded from political participation and entrance into occupations and professions requiring citizenship for licensing (see Konvitz 1946). In addition, during the latter part of the nineteenth century and the early twentieth, California and other western states in which the Chinese were concentrated imposed head taxes and prohibited Chinese from carrying on certain types of businesses. The Chinese were routinely denied most civil rights, including the 179

Evelyn Nakano Glenn

right to testify in court, so they had no legal recourse against injury or exploitation (Wu 1972; Jacobs and Landau 1971). Having initially worked in railroad building, agriculture, and mining, the Chinese were driven out of smaller towns, rural areas, and mining camps during the late nineteenth century and were forced to congregate in urban ghettos (Lyman 1977). The effect of these various restrictions was to keep the Chinese in the status of alien guests or commuters going back and forth between China and America. In addition, the restrictions led to a population made up disproportionately of male adults, concentrated in Chinatowns, and limited to a few occupations and industries. These circumstances provide an alternative explanation for some of the features previously described as originating in Chinese culture: (a) low divorce rates result when spouses are forced to stay together by the lack of economic options outside of family enterprises; (b) low delinquency rates may reflect the demographic composition of the population which, up to the mid-1950s, contained few adolescents who, therefore, could be more effectively controlled by community sanctions; (c) avoidance of welfare is necessitated by the illegal status of many immigrants and the lack of access to sources outside the community; (d) retention of Chinese language and custom is a logical outcome of ghetto life and denial of permanent membership in American society. Being able to generate plausible explanations does not itself constitute support for one approach over the other. However, in addition to offering alternative interpretations, the two approaches lead to quite different expectations regarding the degree of types of changes which the Chinese-American family has undergone over time. By tracing family patterns to a specific cultural system, the cultural approach implies a continuity in family organization over time, with change occurring gradually and linearly via acculturation. By connecting family patterns to contemporaneous institutional structures, the institutional approach implies that family organization could and probably would undergo dramatic change with alteration in external constraints. A related point is that the cultural approach suggests that Chinese-American family patterns are unique to this group, while the institutional approach suggests that other groups with differing cultural traditions might display similar patterns under parallel conditions. The analysis that follows tests these expectations against the historical evidence by documenting the existence of qualitatively different family forms among Chinese Americans in different historical periods, with occasional reference to similar family forms among other groups in comparable circumstances. Three distinct family types are identified, corresponding to three periods demarcated by shifts in institutional constraints.

The Split-Household Family For the first 70 years of Chinese presence in the United States, from 1850 to 1920, one can hardly speak of family life, since there were so few women or 180

Chinese-American Family Strategies Table 10.1 Chinese population in the United States, by sex, sex ratio, percentage foreign born, and percentage under age 15, 1860–1970

Year

Total

Male

Female

Male/female ratio

1860 1870 1880 1890 1900 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970

34,933 63,199 105,465 107,475 89,863 71,531 61,639 74,954 77,504 117,140 236,084 431,583

33,149 58,633 100,686 103,607 85,341 66,856 53,891 59,802 57,389 76,725 135,430 226,733

1,784 4,566 4,779 3,868 4,522 4,675 7,748 15,152 20,115 40,415 100,654 204,850

18.58 12.84 21.06 26.79 18.87 14.30 6.96 3.95 2.85 1.90 1.35 1.11

Percentage foreign born 99.8 99.0 99.3 90.7 79.3 69.9 58.8 48.1 47.0 39.5 46.9

Percentage aged 14 or under

3.4 a

12.0 20.4 21.2 23.3 33.0 26.6

Source: US Censuses for the years 1872, 1883, 1895, 1902, 1913, 1922, 1933, 1943, 1953, 1963, and 1973. List of specific tables available upon request. a Figures for California, Oregon, and Washington – which together had a somewhat lower male–female ratio (11.33) than the United States as a whole – show 7.0% of the Chinese population to be under age 15 in those states.

children (Lyman 1968; Nee and Nee 1974). As Table 10.1 shows, from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth century, the ratio of males to females ranged from 13:1 to 20:1. In 1900 less than 4% of the Chinese population consisted of children 14 years and under, compared to 37.4% of the population of whites of native parentage (US Census 1902). The first thirty years, from 1850 to 1882, was a period of open immigration, when over 300,000 Chinese left Guangdong Province to work in California and the West (Lyman 1974). Most were able-bodied young men, recruited for labor on the railroads and in agriculture, mining and manufacturing. Although some men of the merchant class came and brought wives or concubines, the vast majority of immigrants were laborers who came alone, not intending to stay; over half left wives behind in China (Coolidge 1909). Many were too impoverished to pay for passage and came on the credit ticket system, which obligated them to work for a fixed term, usually seven years, to pay for transport (Ling 1912). These ‘‘birds of passage’’ labored to send remittances to relatives and to accumulate capital to enable them to acquire land in China. Two-thirds apparently succeeded in returning, as there were never more than 110,000 Chinese in the United States at any one time. It is possible that, like other Asian immigrants, Chinese laborers eventually would have sent for wives, had open immigration continued. The passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 precluded this possibility. The Act barred laborers and their relatives but exempted officials, students, tourists, merchants, 181

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and relatives of merchants and citizens. Renewals of the Act in 1892 and 1902 placed further restrictions on entry and return. Finally, the Immigration Act of 1924 cut off all immigration from Asia (Wu 1972). These acts achieved their aim, which was to prevent the Chinese from settling in the United States. With almost no new immigration and the return of many sojourners to China, the Chinese population dwindled from a high of 107,000 in 1890 to 61,000 in 1920. Chinese men of the laboring class – faced with an unfavorable sex ratio, forbidden as non-citizens from bringing over wives, and prevented by laws in most western states from marrying whites – had three choices: (a) return permanently to China; (b) if single, stay in the United States as bachelors; or (c) if married, remain separated from families except for occasional visits. Faced with these alternatives, the Chinese nevertheless managed to take advantage of openings in the law; if they had not, the Chinese population in the United States would have disappeared. One category for which entry was still allowed was relatives of citizens. Men born in the United States could return to China, marry, and father children, who were then eligible for entry. The 1906 earthquake and fire in San Francisco that destroyed most municipal records proved a boon for the large Chinese population of that area. Henceforth, residents could claim American birth without officials being able to disprove the contention (Sung 1971). It became common practice for American-born Chinese (actual or claimed) to visit China, report the birth of a son, and thereby create an entry slot. Years later the slot could be used by a relative, or the papers could be sold to someone wanting to immigrate. The purchaser, called a ‘‘paper son,’’ simply assumed the name and identity of the alleged son. Using these openings many families adopted a strategy of long-term sojourning. Successive generations of men emigrated as paper sons. To ensure loyalty to kin, young men were married off before leaving. Once in America they were expected to send money to support not only wives and children but also parents, brothers, and other relatives. In some villages overseas remittances constituted the main source of income. It has been estimated that between 1937 and 1940 overseas Chinese remitted more than $2 billion, and that an average of $7 million per annum was sent from the United States in the years between 1938 and 1947 (Lyman 1968; Sung 1971). In one typical family history, recounted by a 21-yearold college student, great-grandfather arrived in the United States in the 1890s as a paper son and worked for about 20 years as a laborer. He then sent for the grandfather, who helped great-grandfather run a small business. Great-grandfather subsequently returned to China, leaving grandfather to carry on the business and forward remittances. In the 1940s grandfather sent for father. Up to this point, none of the wives had left China; finally, in the late 1950s, father returned to China and brought back his wife, so that after nearly 70 years, a child was finally born in the United States. The sojourning strategy led to a distinctive family form, the split-household family. A common sociological definition of a family is a group of people related by blood or marriage, cooperating to perform essential domestic tasks such as 182

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production, consumption, reproduction, and socialization. In the split-household family, production would be separated from other functions and carried out by a member living far away (who, of course, would be responsible for his own consumption needs). The other functions – reproduction, socialization, and the rest of consumption – would be carried out by the wife and other relatives in the home village. The family would remain an interdependent, cooperative unit, thereby fulfilling the definition of a family, despite geographical separation. The split-household form made possible the maximum exploitation of the worker. The labor of prime-age male workers could be bought relatively cheaply, since the cost of reproduction and family maintenance is borne partially by unpaid subsistence work of women and old people in the village. The sojourner’s remittances, though small by US standards, afforded a comfortable standard of living for family members in China. The split household is not unique to the Chinese and, therefore, cannot be explained as a culturally preferred pattern. Sojourning occurs where there are (a) large differences in the level of economic development of receiving vs. sending regions, and (b) legal/administrative barriers to integration of the sending group. Three examples of the phenomenon are guest workers in Western Europe (Castles and Kosack 1973); gold-mine workers in South Africa (Boserup 1970); and Mexican braceros in the American Southwest (Power 1979). In all three cases, prime-age workers from disadvantaged regions are issued limitedduration permits to reside in regions needing low-wage labor but are prevented from bringing relatives or settling permanently. Thus, the host country benefits from the labor of sojourners without having to incorporate them into the society. Although the persistence of sojourning for several generations makes the Chinese somewhat unusual, there is evidence that legal restrictions were critical to maintaining the pattern. Other societies to which the Chinese immigrated did not prohibit intermarriage or limit economic competition – for example, Peru and the Philippines. In these societies a high proportion of the Chinese intermarried with the native population (Wong, 1978; Hunt and Walker, 1974). The life of the Chinese sojourner in the United States has been described in sociological and historical studies (see Nee and Nee 1974; Lyman 1977). Employed as laborers or engaged in small enterprises, the men lived in rented rooms alone or with other ‘‘bachelors.’’ In place of kin ties, they relied on immigrant associations based on fictive clan relationships. As is common in predominantly male societies, many sojourners found outlets in gambling, prostitution, and drugs. Those successful enough or frugal enough to pay for passage returned periodically to China to visit and to father more children. Others, as a result of bad luck or personal disorganization, could never save enough to return. Even with movement back and forth, many sojourners gradually came to feel remote from village ties, and attached to life in the Chinese-American colony. Thus, they ended up staying in the United States more or less by choice (Siu 1952). 183

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The situation of wives and relatives in China has not been documented in the literature. According to informants, wives generally resided with in-laws; and remittances were sent to the husband’s kin, usually a brother or son, to insure that wives remained chaste and subject to the ultimate control of their husbands. Despite the lack of formal authority, most wives had informal influence and were consulted on major decisions. An American-born informant, the daughter of an herbalist and his concubine, was sent as a young girl to be raised by her father’s first wife in China. This first wife never wanted to join her husband, as she lived quite comfortably in the village; with remittances from her husband, she maintained a large house with two servants and oversaw substantial landholdings and investments. The father’s concubine led an arduous life in the United States, raising several children, running the household, and working long hours in the shop. Parent–child relations were inevitably affected by separation. The mother– child tie was strengthened by the absence of the father. The mother’s tie with her eldest son, normally an important source of leverage within an extended-kin household, became particularly close. In contrast, prolonged absence made the father’s relationship with his children more formal and distant. The long periods between visits meant that the children were spaced far apart, and the father was often middle-aged or elderly by the time the youngest child was born. The age gap between fathers and later children added to the formality of the relationship.

The Small-Producer Family Despite obstacles to family formation, the presence of families was evident in the major US Chinatowns by the 1920s. As Table 10.1 shows, the male–female ratio fell, and the proportion of children doubled between 1920 and 1930. These early families were started primarily by small entrepreneurs, former laborers who had accumulated enough capital to start a small business alone or in partnership. Due to occupational restrictions and limited capital, the enterprises were confined to laundries, restaurants, groceries, and other small shops. Once in business they could register as merchants, return to China, and bring over wives and children. There was an economic incentive to bring over families; besides providing companionship and affection, women and children were a source of free labor for the business. The number of families grew steadily, then jumped dramatically during the 1950s due to changes in immigration regulations. The first small opening was created in 1943 with the repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Act. In recognition of China’s position as an ally in World War II, a token quota of 105 entrants per year was granted, and permanent residents were declared eligible for citizenship. A larger opening was created by the ‘‘Brides Act’’ of 1946, which permitted entry to wives and children of citizens and permanent residents, and by the Immigration Act of 1953, which gave preference to relatives of citizens (Lee 184

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1956; Li 1977b). For the first time in over 60 years, sizable legal immigration flowed from China; and for the first time in history, the majority of entrants were women. The women fell into two general categories: wives separated from their husbands for periods ranging up to 30 years or more, and brides of servicemen and other citizens who took advantage of the 1946 and 1953 laws to visit China and get married (Lee 1956). The marriages were usually arranged hastily; Chinese families were eager to have eligible daughters married to Americans, so the men had no problem finding prospects on short-notice. At the same time, parents of American-born men often preferred Chinese-born brides (Lee 1956). An American-born woman explained why; she once had an engagement broken off because her fiance’s parents ojected to the marriage: They thought American girls will be bossy; she’ll steal the son and go out freely. They said, ‘‘She will ruin your life. She’ll be free spending with money.’’ Also, she won’t support the parents the rest of their life. They want a typical Chinese girl who will do what the father wants. [Interview with subject]

At his parent’s urging, the fiance´ later visited China and brought back a wife. During the period from about 1920 to the mid-1960s, the typical immigrant and first-generation family functioned as a productive unit in which all members, including children, worked without wages in a family business. The business was profitable only because it was labor-intensive and members put in extremely long hours. Often, for reasons of thrift, convenience, or lack of options, the family’s living quarters were located above or behind the shop; thus, the workplace and home were physically joined. Some flavor of the close integration of work and family life is seen in this description of the daily routine in a family laundry, provided by a woman who grew up in Boston’s Chinatown during the 1930s and 1940s. The household consisted of the parents and four children. The work day started at 7:00 in the morning and did not end until midnight, six days a week. Except for school and a short nap in the afternoon, the children worked the same hours as the parents, doing their homework between midnight and 2:00 am. Each day’s routine was the same. All items were marked or tagged as they were brought in by customers. A commercial laundry picked up the laundry, washed it, and brought it back wet. The wet laundry was hung to dry in a back room heated by a coal burner. Next, items were taken down, sprinkled, starched, and rolled for ironing. Tasks were allocated by age and sex. Young children of six or seven performed simple tasks such as folding socks and wrapping parcels. At about age ten they started ironing handkerchiefs and underwear. Mother operated the collar and cuff press, while father hand-ironed shirts and uniforms. Only on Sunday did the family relax its hectic regimen to attend church in the morning and relax in the afternoon. This family may have been unusually hard working, but this sort of workcentered family life was common among the generation that grew up between 185

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1920 and 1960. In fact, the close-knit small-business family was portrayed in several popular autobiographies covering this period (Lowe 1943; Wong 1950; Kingston 1976). These accounts describe a life of strict discipline, constant toil, and frugality. Family members constantly interacted, but communication tended to revolve around concrete details of work. Parents directed and admonished the children in Chinese as they worked, so that the American-born Chinese became fluent in Chinese as well as in English, which they learned in school. Education was stressed, so that children’s time was fully occupied by studying, working, and caring for younger siblings. Not so apparent in these accounts was the high incidence of disease, including tuberculosis, due to overcrowding and overwork (Lee et al. 1969). The small-producer family had several distinct characteristics. First was the lack of any clear demarcation between work and family life. Child care, domestic maintenance, and income-producing activities occurred simultaneously in time and in the same location. Second was the self-contained nature of the family as a production and consumption unit. All members contributed to family income and domestic maintenance, including the children. Third was the division of labor by age and gender, with gradations of responsibility according to capacity and experience. Elder siblings were responsible for disciplining and taking care of younger siblings, who in turn were expected to defer to their older brothers and sisters. Finally, there was an emphasis on the collectivity over the individual. With so many individuals working in close quarters for extended periods of time, a high premium was placed on cooperation. Self-expression, which might engender conflict, had to be curbed. While these features are in some way similar to those found in Chinese peasant families, they do not necessarily represent carry-overs of Chinese patterns; they can be attributed equally to the particular material and social conditions arising from the family’s involvement in small enterprise, an involvement dictated by limited economic options. There is evidence that these features are common to small-producer families in various societies and times (see, for example, Demos’s (1970) account of the early Puritan families of the Massachusetts Bay Colony). Moreover, the Chinese-American small-producer family had some features that differed from those of rural Chinese families due to circumstances of life in America. Of great significance was the family’s location in a society whose dominant language and customs differed greatly. Children had the advantage in this regard. Once they started school, children quickly learned to speak and write English, while parents were rarely able to acquire more than rudimentary English. The parents came to depend on their children to act as mediators in relation to the outside society. As a result children gained a great deal of status at an early age, in contrast to the subordinate position of children in China. American-born Chinese report that, starting at age eight or nine, they helped their parents in business and domestic matters by reading documents and contracts, accompanying them to the bank to fill out slips, negotiating with customers, and translating notices in stores. 186

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A second circumstance was the age composition of immigrant communities, which were made up primarily of childbearing-aged men, and, later, women. In the initial period of family formation, therefore, there were no grandparents; and households tended to be nuclear in form. In China the preferred pattern was for sons to live with parents, and wives were required to defer to mothers-in-law. The young immigrant mother, however, did not have to contend with in-laws. As a result of this and the fact that she was an equal producer in the family economy, the wife had more autonomy. Many informants recall their mothers as the discriplinarians and central figures in the household.

The Dual Wage Earner Family Following World War II, particularly after the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, discrimination against Asian Americans eased. College-educated Chinese Americans were able to enter white-collar occupations and industries formerly barred to them and to move into previously restricted neighborhoods. Among these socially mobile families, the parents still shop and visit friends in Chinatown; but their children tend not to have ties there. The lowering of barriers also speeded the integration of the so-called scholar-professional immigrants. Educated in Hong Kong, mainland China or Taiwan, many are Mandarin-speaking, in contrast to the Cantonese-speaking resident population. The older segment of this group arrived as students in the 1940s and 1950s and stayed, while the younger segment entered under the 1965 immigration act, which did away with national quotas and gave preference to relatives of citizens and permanent residents and to those in needed occupations. Employed as professionals, this group tends to live in white neighborhoods and to have little connection with Chinatown. Thus, for the socially mobile American-born and the scholar/ professional immigrants, the trend has been toward assimilation into the mainstream of American society. At the same time, however, there has been a countertrend that has reSinicized the Chinese-American population. The same immigration law that brought in professionals and scholars has brought in an even larger influx of working-class Chinese. Under the liberalized law, over 20,000 Chinese have entered the United States each year since 1965, primarily via Hong Kong (US Department of Justice 1977).3 About half the immigrants can be classified as working class, having been employed as service workers, operatives, craftsmen, or laborers in Hong Kong (Nee and Nee 1974). After arrival, moreover, a significant proportion of professional, managerial and white-collar immigrants experience a drop in occupational status into blue-collar and service jobs because of language and licensing difficulties (US Department of Health, Education and Welfare 1974). Unlike the earlier immigrants who came over as individuals, most new immigrants come over in family groups, typically a husband, wife and unmarried 187

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children (Li 1977a). The families have pulled up stakes in order to gain greater political security, economic opportunity, and educational advantages for their children. Since the law gives preference to relatives, most families use kinship ties with previous immigrants to gain entry. Frequently, the ties are used in a chainlike fashion (Li 1977b). For example, a couple might sponsor the wife’s sister, her husband and children; the sister’s husband in turn sponsors his parents, who later bring over one of their children, and so forth. In this way an extended-kin network is reunited in the United States. Initially, the new immigrants usually settle in or near Chinatown so that they can trade in Chinese-speaking stores, use bilingual services, and find employment. They are repopulating and stimulating growth in Chinatowns at a time when these communities are experiencing the decline due to the mobility of American-born Chinese (Hong 1976). The new immigrants have less dramatic adjustments to make than did earlier immigrants, having lived for some years in an urban society that exposed them to Western goods and lifestyles. In addition, although bilingual social services are frequently inadequate, municipal and country agencies now provide medical care, advice on immigration problems, family counseling, and the like. The immigrants rely on these public services rather than on the clan associations which, thus, have lost their old influence. Despite the easier adjustment and greater opportunities for mobility, problems of language, and discrimination in small trade, construction and craft unions still affect immigrants who are not professionally trained. Having given up property, businesses or jobs, and having exhausted their resources to pay for transportation and settlement, they must quickly find a way to make a living and establish their families in a highly industrialized economy. The strategy most families have adopted is for husband and wife to find employment in the secondary labor market, the labor-intensive, low-capital service and small manufacturing sectors. The wage each earns is low, but by pooling income a husband and wife can earn enough to support a family. The typical constellation is a husband who works as a waiter, cook, janitor, or store helper, and a wife who is employed in a small garment shop (Nee and Nee 1974; Ikels and Shiang 1979; ‘‘Tufts’ lease . . . ’’ 1981; cf. Lamphere, Silva and Sousa 1980 for parallels with Azorean immigrants). Although many women have been employed in Hong Kong, for most it is a new experience to juggle fulltime work outside the home with child care and housework. In Hong Kong mothers could do piecework at home, stitching or assembling plastic flowers during spare hours (Ikels and Shiang 1979). In the United States employment means a long complicated day involving dropping off children at school, going to work in a shop for a few hours, picking up children from school, preparing food, and returning for a few more hours of work in the shop. Another change in many families is that the women’s earnings comprise a greater share of family income in the United States. The pay differential between men and women, which is large in Hong Kong, becomes less or even 188

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reversed because of the downward shift in the husband’s occupation (Hong 1980). Wives and husbands become more or less coequal breadwinners. Perhaps the most striking feature of the dual-worker family is the complete segregation of work and family life. As a result, in contrast to the round-theclock togetherness of the small-producer family, parents and children in the dual-worker family are separated for most of the day. While apart they inhabit totally different worlds. The parents’ lives are regulated by the disciplines of the job, while children lead relatively unstructured and unsupervised lives, often in the company of peers whose parents also work (Nee and Nee 1974). Furthermore, although mothers are usually at home by early evening, the father’s hours may prevent him from seeing the children at all. The most common shift for restaurant workers runs from 2:00 in the afternoon until 11:00 at night. The sons and daughters of restaurant workers reported that they saw their fathers only on their days off. The parents’ fatigue, the long hours of separation, and the lack of common experiences combine to undermine communication. Children complain that their parents are not around much and, when they are, are too tired to talk. One young student notes, ‘‘We can discuss things, but we don’t talk that much. We don’t have that much to say.’’ In addition, many parents suffered serious trauma during World War II and the Chinese Revolution, which they refuse to discuss. This refusal causes blocks to intimacy between parents and children since certain topics become taboo. For their part parents complain that they have lost control over their children. They attribute the loss of influence to the fact that children adjust to American ways and learn English much more quickly than parents. Over a period of years, a language barrier frequently develops. Since parents are not around to direct and speak to children in Chinese, the children of wage-earning parents lose the ability (or willingness) to speak Chinese. When they reach adolescence, moreover, children can find part-time employment, which gives them financial in dependence as well as money to spend on outside recreation. The absence of a close-knit family life among dual-worker families has been blamed for the eruption of youth rebellion, delinquency, and gang violence in Chinatowns during the 1960s and 1970s (Lyman 1974; Nee and Nee 1974). While the change in family patterns undoubtedly has been a factor, other demographic and social changes have contributed to the surfacing of youth problems (Light and Wong 1975). Adolescents make up a higher proportion of the new immigrants than among previous cohorts, and many immigrants arrive as adolescents and encounter difficulties in school because of the language barrier. When they leave school they face unemployment or the prospect of lowwage service jobs. Similar obstacles were faced by the early immigrants, but they take on a new meaning in the present era when expectations are higher and when there is more awareness of institutional racism. In a similar vein, dual-worker families are beset by the chronic difficulties that plagued Chinese-American families in the past – rundown crowded housing, low 189

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income, immigration problems, and language difficulties; but their impact is different now, when the family faces them in a less unified fashion. Social workers employed in Chinatown report that the immigrant family is torn by a multiplicity of problems.4 Ironically, the resilience of the Chinese-American family until recently has retarded efforts at relief. It has taken the visible outbreak of the youth unrest mentioned above to dramatize the fact that the Chinese-American family cannot endure any and all hardships without support. For the first time, social services, housing programs, and other forms of support are being offered to Chinese-American families.

Summary and Conclusions This sociohistorical examination of the Chinese-American immigrant family has emphasized three main points: first, throughout their history in the United States, Chinese Americans have faced a variety of economic, social and political constraints that have had direct effects on family life. Second, Chinese-American families have displayed considerable resourcefulness in devising strategies to overcome structural obstacles and to take advantage of the options open to them. Third, the strategies adopted have varied according to the conditions prevailing during given historical periods, resulting in three distinct family types. The characteristics and differences among the family types, discussed in the previous sections, are summarized in Table 10.2. Each type can be characterized in terms of six major dimensions: the economic strategy, the make-up of the household(s), the nature of the relation between production or work and family life, the division of labor in the household, conjugal roles, and relations between generations. The split-household type, prevalent until 1920, adopted the strategy of sending married men abroad to specialize in income-producing activities. This created two separate households, one in the United States consisting of a primary individual – or in some cases pairs of related males such as a father and son – and another in China, consisting of the relatives of the sojourner – wife, children, parents, brothers and their wives. Production was separated from the rest of family life, with the husband/father engaging in paid work abroad while the other relatives engaged in subsistence activities (e.g., small-scale farming) and carried out other domestic functions. Husband and wife, therefore, led completely separate existences, with the husband’s relation to parents taking precedence over his relation to his wife, and the wife forming her primary attachment with children. The small-producer type succeeded the split-household type around 1920 and became more common after the late 1940s when women were allowed to join their spouses. The economic strategy was to engage in small-scale enterprises which relied on the unpaid labor of husband, wife and children. The nuclear household was the basic unit, with no separation between production and family 190

Chinese-American Family Strategies Table 10.2 Characteristics of three types of Chinese immigrant families Characteristics

Split household

Small producer

Dual wage

Historical period Economic strategy

c. 1882–1920 male sojourning

c. 1920–1965 family business

c. 1965–present individual wage work

Household composition

two households: nuclear (a) in United States – primary individual; (b) in China – extended

a

nuclear

Work and family life separated

fused

separated

Division of labor

husband/ father – paid work; wife/other relatives – unpaid domestic and subsistence work

husband, wife and children – unpaid production work

husband and wife – paid and unpaid work; children – unpaid domestic work

Conjugal roles

segregated

joint or shared

symmetrical

Intergenerational relations

strong mother–child strong parent– child tie tie; weak father–child tie

attenuated parent–child tie

a The occurrence of each type is not exclusive to one period but is more prominent during the designated period.

life, which was focused around work. Close parent–child relations resulted from the enforced togetherness and the constant interaction required to carry on the business. The economic roles of husband and wife were basically parallel, and most daily activities were shared in common. Finally, the dual-wage type, that has predominated among immigrants arriving after 1965, is based on a strategy of individual wage work, with husband and wife engaging in low-wage employment. The pooling of two wages provides sufficient income to support the family. The household is primarily nuclear, with production and family life separate, as is common in industrial society. The clearest division of labor is between parents and children, with parents specializing in income-producing activities while children are economically inactive. The roles of husband and wife are symmetrical; that is, they engage in the same combination of paid and unpaid work but in separate settings (cf. Young and Wilmott 1973). Because parents’ employment schedules often keep them away from home, there is little shared activity. The parent–child tie becomes attenuated, with children involved in a separate world of peers. The existence of three distinctly different family types corresponding to different historical periods calls into question the adequacy of purely cultural 191

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explanations of Chinese-American family patterns. If cultural patterns were the sole or primary determinants, we would expect to find greater continuity in family patterns over time; instead, we find discontinuities associated with shifts in institutional conditions. These discontinuities, thus, underline the importance of the larger political economic structures in which the family is embedded. At the same time, the family needs to be seen as actively striving to survive and maintain ties within the constraints imposed by these structures. The persistence of ties and the variety of strategies adopted by Chinese-American families testify to their resilience and resourcefulness in overcoming obstacles. Further insights into the relationships among and between culture, larger institutional structures, and family strategies might be gained through comparative historical analysis of different racial and ethnic groups.

Notes 1 Although some scholars (e.g., Herskovitz 1958; Levine 1977) have argued for the continuity of African cultural patterns among American blacks, family sociologists have not systematically explored the possible influence of an autonomous black culture with African roots. This is true even for those who depict the black family as strong and resilient (e.g., Billingsley 1968; Hill 1971). Those who characterize it as weak and disorganized (e.g., Frazier 1939; Moynihan 1965) have relied on a particular type of cultural formulation, one that views the culture as degraded, a legacy of past economic and social deprivation. 2 The analysis is based on review of the English-language literature on Chinese Americans and informant interviews of 29 individuals of varying ages, nativity, and family status, mainly residing in the Boston area. Informants were interviewed about family immigration histories, economic activities, household composition, residence and relations among family members. Social and community workers provided broader information on typical tensions and problems for which help was sought. 3 Although the immigrants enter via Hong Kong, they mostly originate from the same region of southern China as the earlier immigrants. They or their parents fled Guangdong during the Sino-Japanese War or during the land reform following the Communist victory. Hence, they tend to have kinship ties with earlier immigrants. 4 According to community workers and government agencies, the most common problems are low, though not poverty-level, family income; substandard and dilapidated housing; language difficulties; legal problems with immigration; and unresolved past traumas, including separation among family members.

References Billingsley, A. Black Families in White America (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1968). Boserup, E. Women’s Role in Economic Development (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1970). Castles, S. and Kosack, G. Immigrant Workers and Class Structure in Western Europe (London: Oxford University Press 1973). Coolidge, Mary Chinese Immigration (New York: Henry Holt, 1909). Demos, John A Little Commonwealth (London: Oxford University Press, 1970).

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Chinese-American Family Strategies Drake, S.C. and Cayton, H.R. Black Metropolis (rev. ed) (New York: Harper and Row, 1962). Frazier, E.F. The Negro Family in the United States (rev. ed) (New York: Macmillan, 1939). Gordon, M.M. Assimilation in American Life: The Role of Race, Religion, and National Origin (New York: Oxford University Press, 1964). Haynor, N.S. and Reynolds, C.N. ‘‘Chinese family life in America.’’ American Sociological Review 2 (1937): 630–7. Herskovitz, M. The Myth of the Negro Past (1937) (Boston: Beacon Press, 1958). Hill, R.A. The Strengths of Black Families (New York: Emerson Hall, 1971). Hirata, L.C. ‘‘The Chinese American in Sociology.’’ In E. Gee (ed.), Counterpoint: Perspectives on Asian Americans (Los Angeles: Asian American Studies Center, University of California, Los Angeles, 1976), 20–6. Hong, L.K. ‘‘Recent Immigrants in the Chinese American Community: Issues of Adaptations and Impacts,’’ International Migration Review 10 (Winter 1976): 509–14. Hong, L.K. Personal communication, 1980. Hsu, F.L.K. The Challenge of the American Dream: The Chinese in the United States (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1971). Huang, L.J. ‘‘The Chinese American family.’’ In C.H. Mindel and R.W. Habenstein (eds), Ethnic Families in America (New York: Elsevier, 1976), 124–47. Hunt, C.I. and Walker, L. ‘‘Marginal trading peoples: Chinese in the Philippines and Indians in Kenya.’’ In Ethnic Dynamics: Patterns of Intergroup Relations in Various Societies (Homewood, IL: Dorsey Press, 1974), ch. 4. Ikels, C. and Shiang, J. ‘‘The Chinese in Greater Boston.’’ Interim Report to the National Institute of Aging, 1979. Jacobs, P. and Landau, S. To Serve the Devil, Volume II: Colonials and Sojourners (New York: Vintage Books, 1971). Kingston, M.H. The Woman Warrior (New York: Knopf, 1976). Konvitz, M.G. The Alien and Asiatic in American Law (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1946). Kung, S.W. Chinese in American Life: Some Aspects of Their History, Status, Problems, and Contributions (Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 1962). Kwong, P. Chinatown, New York: Labor and Politics, 1930–1950 (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1979). Lamphere, L., Silva, F.M. and Sousa, J.P. ‘‘Kin Networks and Family Strategies; Working Class Portuguese Families In New England.’’ In L.S. Cordell and S. Beckerman (eds), The Versatility of Kinships (New York: Academic Press, 1980), 219–45. Lee, L.P., Lim, A. and Wong, H.K. Report of the San Francisco Chinese Community Citizen’s Survey and Fact Finding Committee (abridged edn). San Francisco: Chinese Community Citizen’s Survey and Fact Finding Committee, 1969). Lee, R.H. ‘‘The Recent Immigrant Chinese Families of the San Francisco-Oakland Area’’ Marriage and Family Living 18 (February 1956): 14–24. Levine, L.W. Black Culture and Black Consciousness (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977). Li, P.S. ‘‘Occupational Achievement and Kinship Assistance among Chinese Immigrants in Chicago,’’ Sociological Quarterly 18(4) (1977a): 478–89. Li, P.S. ‘‘Fictive Kinship, Conjugal Tie and Kinship Claim among Chinese Immigrants in the United States,’’ Journal of Comparative Family Studies 8(1) (1977b): 47–64. Light, I. Ethnic Enterprise in America (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1972). Light, I. and Wong, C.C. ‘‘Protest or Work: Dilemmas of the Tourist Industry in American Chinatowns,’’ American Journal of Sociology 80 (1975): 1342–68. Ling, P. ‘‘The Causes of Chinese Immigration,’’ Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences 39 (January 1912): 74–82. Lowe, P. Father and Glorious Descendant (Boston: Little, Brown, 1943).

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Evelyn Nakano Glenn Lyman, S.M. ‘‘Marriage and the Family Among Chinese Immigrants to America, 1850–1960,’’ Phylon 29(4) (1968): 321–30. Lyman, S.M. Chinese Americans (1968) (New York:Random House, 1974). Lyman, S.M. ‘‘Strangers in the City: the Chinese in the Urban Frontier.’’ In The Asians in North America (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC Clio Press, 1977). Miller, S.C. The Unwelcome Immigrant: The American Image of the Chinese, 1785–1882 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969). Moynihan, D.P. The Negro Family: The Case for National Action (Washington DC: US Department of Labor, Office of Planning and Research). (Reprinted in Lee Rainwater and William Yancey, The Moynihan Report and the Politics of Controversy [Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1967].) Nee, V.G. and Nee, B. Longtime Californ’ (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1974). Park, R.E. Race and Culture (Glencoe, IL: The Free Press, 1950). Power, J. Migrant Workers in Western Europe and the United States (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1979). Siu, P.C.T. ‘‘The Sojourners,’’ American Journal of Sociology 8 (July 1952): 32–44. Sollenberger, R.T. ‘‘Chinese American Childbearing Practices and Juvenile Delinquency,’’ Journal of Social Psychology 74 (February 1952): 13–23. Stack, C.B. All Our Kin: Strategies for Survival in a Black Community (New York: Harper and Row, 1974). Sung, B.L. The Story of the Chinese in America (New York: Collier Books, 1971). ‘‘Tufts’ Lease on Two Kneeland Street Buildings Threatens over 600 jobs in Chinatown,’’ Sampan (May 1981). US Bureau of the Census Ninth Census. Vol. I: The Statistics of the Population of the United States (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1872). US Bureau of the Census Tenth Census. Statistics of the Population of the United States (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1883). US Bureau of the Census Eleventh Census. Report on Population of the United States, Part I (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1895). US Bureau of the Census Twelfth Census of the United States Taken in the Year 1900. Census Reports, Vol. II: Population, Part II (Washington, DC: United States Census Office, 1902). US Bureau of the Census Thirteenth Census of the United States Taken in the Year 1910, Vol. I: Population, General Report and Analysis (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1913). US Bureau of the Census Fourteenth Census Taken in the Year 1920, Volume II: Population, General Report and Analytic Tables (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1922). US Bureau of the Census Fifteenth Census of the United States: 1930. Population, Vol. II: General Report, Statistics by Subject (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1933). US Bureau of the Census Sixteenth Census of the Population: 1940. Population Characteristics of the Non-White Population by Race (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1943). US Bureau of the Census U.S. Census of the Population: 1950. Vol. IV: Special Reports, Part 3, Chapter B, Non-White Population by Race (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1953). US Bureau of the Census U.S. Census of the Population: 1960. Subject Reports. Nonwhite Population by Race. Final Report PC(2)-1C (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1963). US Bureau of the Census Census of Population: 1970. Subject Reports. Final Report PC(2)-1G, Japanese, Chinese and Filipinos in the United States (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1973). US Department of Health, Education and Welfare A Study of Selected Socioeconomic Characteristics of Ethnic Minorities Based on the 1970 Census, Vol. II: Asian Americans, HEW Publication No. (OS) 75–121 (Washington, DC: US Department of Health, Education and Welfare, 1974). US Department of Justice Immigration and Naturalization Service Annual Report (Washington, DC: US Department of Justice, 1977). Valentine, B.L. Hustling and Other Hard Work (New York: The Free Press, 1978).

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Chinese-American Family Strategies Valentine, C. Culture and Poverty: Critique and Counterproposals (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968). Weiss, M.S. Valley City: A Chinese Community in America (Cambridge, MA: Schenkman, 1974). Wolff, K. The Sociology of Georg Simmel (Glencoe, IL: The Free Press, 1950). Wong, B. ‘‘A comparative study of the assimilation of the Chinese in New York City and Lima, Peru,’’ Comparative Studies in Society and History 20 (July 1978): 335–58. Wong, J.S. Fifth Chinese Daughter (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1950). Wu, C. ‘‘Chink’’: A Documentary History of Anti-Chinese Prejudice in America (New York: Meridian, 1972). Young, M. and Wilmott, P. The Symmetrical Family (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1973).

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CHAPTER

ELEVEN

Defining Asian American Realities through Literature* Elaine H. Kim

There were some letters in the ‘‘Dear Abby’’ column recently that reflect a gulf between Asian Americans and the descendants of European immigrants. Two Irish Americans wrote that they could not understand why an American of ‘‘Oriental’’ descent would complain about being asked ‘‘what are you’’ within five minutes of being introduced to a ‘‘Caucasian.’’ One wrote, ‘‘I don’t think it’s rude . . . I think it’s a positive component of international understanding.’’ Abby says that the ‘‘Oriental’’ readers, ‘‘without exception,’’ responded like the following letter writer: . . . What am I? Why, I’m a person like everyone else. . . . ‘Where did you come from?’ would be an innocent question when one Caucasian asks it of another, but when it is asked of an Asian, it takes on a different tone . . . . When I say, ‘I’m from . . . Portland, Oregon!’ they are invariably surprised . . . because they find it hard to believe that an Asian-looking person is actually . . . American . . . . Being white is not a prerequisite for being . . . American . . . and . . . it’s high time everyone realized it.

Significantly, Abby concludes the column with the other Irish American letter: ‘‘The Irish are so proud of being Irish, they tell you before you even ask. Tip O’Neill never tried to hide his Irish ancestry.’’1 So much writing by Asian Americans is focused on the theme of claiming an American, as opposed to Asian, identity that we may begin to wonder if this constitutes accommodation, a collective colonized spirit – the fervent wish to ‘‘hide our ancestry,’’ which is impossible for us anyway, to relinquish our marginality, and to lose ourselves in an intense identification with the hegemonic *Elaine H. Kim ‘‘Defining Asian American Realities through Literature.’’ Cultural Critique 6 (1987): 87–111. Reprinted by permission of University of Minnesota Press. The version printed here has been reworded in places by the author especially for this publication.

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culture. Or is it in fact a celebration of our marginality and a profound expression of protest against being defined by domination? Today, as we study the power of ‘‘otherness’’ and the celebration of marginality, we must pause to think about the complexity and diversity of minority discourse in order to understand why the political concerns expressed in Asian American literature are unique. Tied to issues of gender, social stratification, racial oppression, and the need to restore the foundations of our history and culture, the most recurrent theme in our writing is what I call claiming America for Asian Americans. That does not mean disappearing like raindrops in the ocean of white America, fighting to become ‘‘normal,’’ losing ourselves in the process. It means inventing a new identity, defining ourselves against a racial fantasy, so that we can be reconciled with one another. It is this seeming paradox, the Asian American claim on America, that is the oppositional quality of our discourse. In this article, I have deliberately chosen to provide a roughly chronological survey of various Asian American literary works, because our literature is still unfamiliar to most scholars and because it represents diverse nationalities and different class backgrounds, nativities, generations, historical moments, and genders, factors that often make quite contradictory demands. In general, though, I think it is fair to say that the literature I discuss reflects an overarching collective concern, the invention of an American identity. Through the early 1980s, much of Asian American literature was produced by American-born, American-educated Asians whose first language was English. The Asian American writer often existed on the margins of his or her own marginal community, wedged between the hegemonic culture and the nonEnglish-speaking communities largely unconcerned with self-definition. They continued to be second and third generation American born Chinese and Japanese. They did not speak in the voices of the vast numbers of immigrants and refugees whose stories have never been well represented in our literature, past or present.

Inscriptions of Asians in US Popular Culture Although we are no longer under direct colonial domination, clumsy racial fantasies about Asians continue to flourish in the West, and these extend to Asian Americans as well. Familiar representations of Asians – always unalterably alien – as helpless heathens, comical servants, loyal allies and, only in the case of women, exotic sex objects imbued with an innate understanding of how to please, serve, and titillate, extend directly to Asian Americans and exist in all cases to define as their dialectical opposite the Anglo man as heroic, courageous, and physically superior, whether as soldier, missionary, master, or lover. These racial romances may be part of the baggage of Western imperialist penetration into Asia; nevertheless they are extended to us, who have not been 197

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allowed a separate identity. Asian America is after all itself a creation of white racism that groups nationalities and nativities together, making it possible to blame – and murder – a Chinese American out of frustration over competition from Japanese auto manufacturers. We can see how the notions about Asians and Asian Americans overlap in the ‘‘middleman minority’’ function for both. British and American scholarship traditionally placed Asians between blacks and whites on a racial continuum: if whites were born to lead, blacks were best at hard labor, and Asians were suited to carry out orders. This notion has been sedimented into our interpretations of economic development in Asia today: the ‘‘little tigers,’’ South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore, are sandwiched between the industrialized nations of the West and the countries of Africa and Latin America. Only Japan presents a classification problem. In this country, Asian America is a buffer zone between whites and blacks or Latinos: supposedly obedient, docile, efficient at carrying out the mandates of the decision makers, Asian Americans are increasingly visible in low middle management, high clerical, and small business occupations. Ideologically, we occupy the position of ‘‘model minority,’’ living proof that racism is not what keeps other people of color down.

Views of the Literary Critics Racist and culturally hegemonic views of Asians and Asian Americans are inscribed in works by well-known Anglo American writers like Jack London, as well as a plethora of lesser writers, like the creator of Charlie Chan, Earl Derr Biggers, whose caricatures have survived him. That both Biggers and his British, counterpart, Arthur Sarsfield Ward, creator of Fu Manchu, received recognition and honorary degrees at Harvard demonstrates how extensive has been the penetration of these views of Asians and Asian Americans into the American intelligentsia. Indeed, it is difficult for Anglo American literary critics to remain unaffected by the same notions embedded in the minds of Dear Abby’s readers. Contemporary Chinese American playwright Frank Chin noted that New York critics of his play, Chickencoop Chinaman, complained that his characters did not speak, dress, or act ‘‘like Orientals.’’ Certainly reviews of our literature by Anglo-American critics reveal that the criteria used to assess their literary merit have been other than literary and aesthetic. Reviewers of Etsu Sugimoto’s A Daughter of the Samurai (1925) praised the writer because she ‘‘pleads no causes, asks no vexing questions’’2 at a time when the controversial issue of Japanese exclusion was being spiritedly discussed. Critics of The Grass Roof (1931) lauded Younghill Kang’s Korea, which is described as a ‘‘planet of death,’’ its brilliant colors, haunting music, and the magic of its being fading into an ‘‘infernal twilight’’ of decay commanded by the inability to modernize. But when Kang depicts the arrogance and race prejudice of the American missionaries in Korea, the critics are indignant: 198

Asian American Realities through Literature Mr. Kang does not, I think, give a full account of American missionaries. Doubtless these are blundering human beings, just like the rest of us. He accuses them of lack of education, yet he longed ardently to come to their country for the kind of education they receive. He was desperately eager to receive the benefit of their escort to America.3

During the World War II era, the American public became widely aware of broad distinctions among Asian nationalities, at least between Japanese and all others. China and the Philippines became known as allies in the Pacific, and popular magazines like Life and Time carried feature articles on how to tell the Chinese from the Japanese. In 1943 and 1950, the first books by second generation Chinese Americans were published by major houses. Promoters of Pardee Lowe’s Father and Glorious Descendant suggested that the book might be worth reading because Lowe’s enlistment in the US Army showed him to be ‘‘one of America’s loyal minorities.’’4 Jade Snow Wong’s Fifth Chinese Daughter5 was valued primarily as evidence that American racial minorities have only themselves to blame for their failure in American life. Such a view, expressed by a member of a racial minority group, was important during the Cold War period, when charges of race discrimination in the United States were circulating in developing countries which, having recently been freed from direct colonial rule, were questioning the value of American world leadership. The US State Department in fact negotiated the rights to publish Wong’s book in a number of Asian languages and arranged a tour for her in 1952 to forty-five Asian locales from Tokyo to Karachi, where she was to speak about the benefits of American democracy from the perspective of a Chinese American. During the Civil Rights movement of the late 1960s and the period of increased ethnic awareness immediately ensuing, several books by Japanese Americans were brought out by major publishers. Critical reception was shaped by political concerns at a time when people of color vociferously seeking justice and equality could be shown the example of the non-militant approach of the ‘‘model minority.’’ Jeanne Wakatsuki and James D. Houston’s Farewell to Manzanar6 was celebrated for its ‘‘lack of bitterness, self-pity, or solemnity’’7 in portraying the wartime incarceration of Japanese Americans. Daniel Okimoto’s American in Disguise8 was appreciated by critics for having been written with ‘‘restraint’’ during ‘‘the current racial uproar.’’9 One reviewer praised him for talking of ‘‘the Negro problem sympathetically and yet not without the racial pride of one from a subculture which always worked hard and had a devotion to education as a spur to achievement.’’10 Ironically, what the reviewers call ‘‘racial pride’’ can also be seen as racial self-hatred: American in Disguise illustrates that the price for such ‘‘success’’ is rejection of both Japanese and Japanese American identiy. Okimoto thus finds white women ‘‘personally as well as physically’’ appealing, because they have the ‘‘seductive attraction’’ of being able to provide him with ‘‘[c]rowning evidence of having made it.’’ The ‘‘key to final assimilation,’’ Okimoto notes, is intermarriage, and the book ends with the writer’s reference to his own children, 199

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for whom ‘‘[p]hysically, at least, half the disguise I have worn will be lost.’’ Even in the end, his own face is still an unfortunate ‘‘disguise.’’11 The barriers to understanding Asian American literature posed by the blinders of culturally hegemonic interpretations can be seen in other non-literary criteria. In Publisher’s Weekly, one critic praises Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior12 for its ‘‘myths rich and varied as Chinese brocade’’ and its prose manifesting ‘‘the delicacy and precision of porcelain’’: ‘‘East meets West with . . . charming results’’ in the book.13 A closer look would have revealed its deliberately anti-exotic, anti-nostalgic character: The old man opened his eyes wide at us and turned in a circle, surrounded. His neck tendons stretched out. ‘‘Maggots!’’ he shouted. ‘‘Maggots! Where are my grandsons? I want grandsons! Give me grandsons! Maggots!’’ He pointed at each one of us, ‘‘Maggot! Maggot! Maggot! Maggot! Maggot! Maggot!’’ Then he dived into his food, eating fast and getting seconds. ‘‘Eat, maggots,’’ he said. ‘‘Look at the maggots chew.’’ ‘‘He does that at every meal,’’ the girls told us in English. ‘‘Yeah,’’ we said. ‘‘Our old man hates us too. What assholes.’’14

A critic notes with approval that Kingston’s name indicates that she is married to an ‘‘American,’’ that is, a white, implying that she herself is not ‘‘American’’ and that her marriage has some bearing on the critical approach to her book.15 In the National Observer, one reviewer defends his interpretation by mentioning that his wife is Chinese Canadian. Even Kingston’s portrayal of ambiguity as central to the Chinese American woman’s experience is misconstrued: ‘‘It’s hard to tell where her fantasies end and reality begins,’’ the critic complains. He is confused by her depiction of some Chinese women as aggressive and verbal and others as docile, as if there can only be one type of Chinese woman. These confusions are ‘‘especially hard for a non-Chinese,’’ he concludes, ‘‘and that’s the troubling aspect of the book.’’16 One of the main points of The Woman Warrior is that a marginal person indeed derives power and vision from living with paradoxes. The narrator says: ‘‘I learned to make my mind large, as the universe is large, so that there is room for paradoxes.’’17 Asian American literature has been considered narrow and specialized work penned by aliens to whom the English language and the culture it represents can never really belong. Thus, despite the place we are supposed to occupy as an assimilated ‘‘model minority,’’ it’s hard to think of an Asian American writer who is not immediately identified as such, attesting to the continuing marginality of our literature.

Early Immigrant Writers: a Class Perspective The first Asian American writers in English were acutely aware of common misconceptions about Asia and Asians. These early immigrant writers were not 200

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representative of the general population of Asian Americans, who were predominantly laborers recruited for agricultural and construction work in Hawaii and on the Pacific Coast. Consumed in struggles for their livelihood in a hostile environment and segregated in field labor camps and ethnic urban enclaves, they usually did not speak or write in English. Even Filipino immigrants were mostly illiterate, since recruiters in search of a docile labor force preferred those without formal education. Then too, autobiographical writing and popular fiction were not found in the traditional cultures that produced the first immigrants. In China and Korea, writing and literature were the domain of the literati, who traditionally confined themselves to classical poetry and essays. Autobiography as such was unknown, since for a scholar to write a book about himself would have been deemed egotistical in the extreme. Fiction was considered frivolous and was usually written under pen names. Farmers and peasants performed as master storytellers, dramatic dancers, and singers but rarely expressed themselves through the written word. Scholars and diplomats, who had been exempted from exclusion legislation aimed at restricting the entry of Asian laborers into the United States, comprised a disproportionately large part of the early Asian American voice. Addressing an Anglo American audience, they tried to win sympathy for the people of the educated elite of which they were part. Their portrayals of Asia are focused on high culture, and their criticisms of American society are tentative and apologetic. Probably the best known interpreter of Asia to the West is self-styled cultural envoy Lin Yutang, whose My Country and My People18 enjoyed enormous popularity in the West, although Chinese critics have pointed out that Lin was ‘‘out of tempo with the Chinese people,’’ indulging as he does in ‘‘chitchat on the moon, rocks and gardens, dreams, smoke and incense’’ while Chinese were dying by the millions in their struggle against foreign domination. ‘‘No wonder,’’ writes one critic, ‘‘many Chinese called his book ‘My Country and My Class’ or, resorting to a pun. . . . ‘Mai Country and Mai People,’ mai being the Chinese word for selling and betraying.’’19 Ironically, Lin spent most of his life in the United States as a Chinese expatriate; the place he won for himself here was made possible only if he remained Chinese. The writings of Younghill Kang and Carlos Bulosan illustrate the transition from sojourner to immigrant searching for a permanent place in America. Kang and Bulosan paint vivid portraits of the lives of Korean and Filipino exiles – their work, their aspirations, their exclusion from American social and intellectual life. Searching for entry into that life, first through books and then through American women, both discover that the America of their aspirations does not yet exist: it must be invented, brought into being. Not one of the characters in Kang’s East Goes West20 achieves his American dream. Reading Shakespeare in his unheated room, the narrator is only able to think of food, and the young American woman he so eagerly hopes to befriend moves away, leaving no forwarding address. The story ends with his dream of 201

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being locked in a dark cellar with some black men as torch-bearing whites are about to set them all on fire. His only hope is a Buddhist interpretation of the dream, that he will be reincarnated into a better life. Bulosan’s America Is in the Heart21 describes the lives and work of the Filipino migrant workers who followed the harvest, working in fields and canneries from the Mexican border to Alaska during the 1920s and 1930s. Although Bulosan is attempting to claim America for the thousands of farmworkers and menial laborers for whom he seeks to give voice, it is an America of the heart, a dream, a promise, an ideal forged from loneliness and suffering. We must be united in the effort to make an America in which our people can find happiness. . . . We are all Americans that have toiled and suffered and known oppression and defeat, from the first Indian that offered peace in Manhattan to the last Filipino pea-pickers. . . . America is a prophecy of a new society of men . . . the nameless foreigner, the homeless refugee, the hungry boy begging for a job and the black body dangling from a tree.22

The war era’s paternalistically friendly attitudes toward certain Asian nations has passed, Bulosan died in poverty and obscurity, and Asian Americans are eternal aliens once again, periodically reminded that we have no right to ‘‘complain’’ about anything. Instead, we should be grateful. ‘‘If you don’t like it here,’’ even third generation Asian Americans would be told, ‘‘you can always go back.’’ The contemporary Southeast Asian refugee claim on America is captured in Wendy Law-Yone’s The Coffin Tree,23 which is the story of a Burmese refugee woman who can never ‘‘go back.’’ The contrast between her life in Burma and America provides us with a profound understanding of why she almost loses her mind. Her brother, who had been the vital one in Burma, fails to thrive here. After he dies and she hears of the death of her father, her last link to Burma, she is totally alone in the world, having lost the continuity between past and future provided by her family in the traditional culture. Unless she can adapt herself to a hostile and terrifying new world, with its bitter loneliness, its telephone answering machines, and its asylums for the insane, unless she can survive the transplant and set down roots in American soil, she will disappear from the face of the earth.

Community Portraits In our communities, the wish to ‘‘disappear’’ by being fully assimilated into white society has always been resisted in fervent attempts to preserve cultural integrity within the American context. Although Louis Chu’s Eat a Bowl of Tea24 never achieved popularity or financial success during his lifetime, the novel is now viewed as a cornerstone in the Asian American literary tradition. 202

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The book is set in New York Chinatown in the late 1940s, the characters aging men who have spent their lives in laundry and restaurant labor. Their contacts with American society are limited to harassment by police and immigration officials and brief encounters with American prostitutes. Their lives have been sustained by fantasies about China and by the profound warmth of their friendships with each other. The central contradiction is the conflict between the old community of bachelor sojourners and the young immigrants who will make America their permanent home. Chu’s Chinese American community is on the threshhold of change: forced by the Chinese Revolution to face the likelihood that they may never return to their homeland after all, the old men find that the community structure they have built in New York is all that is left to them. The uncertain future belongs to the youth, represented by Ben Loy, whose sexual impotence is a reflection of the social powerlessness of generations of Chinatown bachelors constricted by genocidal American laws and policies. The bitter tea he must drink is his willingness to compromise in order to obtain a new life in America. The tea is Chinese medicine, and the move he makes is from New York to San Francisco Chinatown. Although he will not raise his son as he was raised, he will not forsake his Chinese roots. The vital quality of Chu’s prose comes from his ability to appreciate the language spoken around him by a people to whom verbal skill and witty exchanges were valued as a social art. Instead of the ‘‘pidgin English’’ invented for comic effect by Anglo-American writers about the Chinese, Chu translates the idioms and images from Cantonese dialects, presenting them in skillfully crafted dialogues. In these, he gives us a vivid picture of the social relationships and attitudes that governed Chinatown life for many decades. By deliberately not addressing Anglo American readers, Chu is able to present a non-hegemonic view of his own community within the context of American society – that is, as Milton Murayama says, ‘‘setting the record straight . . . with love, with all the warts showing.’’25 At the same time, he is able to use the English language in new ways. Because of differential treatment of Japanese Americans under American laws, American-born, American-educated, English-speaking second generation Japanese nisei comprised about half of the Japanese population in the United States by 1930, resulting in the publication of more Japanese American literary work in English earlier than those found in other groups. This work appeared first in ethnic print media. Addressed to fellow nisei, it unself-consciously attempts to appropriate the English language and literary forms for Japanese American use. The nuanced quality of these writings is a balance made possible by the writers’ biculturalism, which gives them two pairs of eyes through which to see both their communities and their American context. By the 1950s, some of this work was published outside the newsprint ghetto. John Okada’s No-No Boy26 was probably rejected by the Japanese American press and community in the 1950s because it depicts both American society and the post-war Seattle Japanese American community in an intensely unflattering 203

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light. The characters have little in common with the ‘‘model minority’’ that picks itself up by the bootstraps: incapacitated by self-hatred, their relationships have been distorted by the internment experience. Parents and children, husbands and wives, brothers and friends are pitted against each other in bitter conflicts caused by their collective shame. The protagonist searches desperately for a way to put together the pieces of his own fragmented life. Despite his pain and alienation, he retains his profound faith in the promise of American justice and equality. No-No Boy is an indictment of race hatred and a testament to the strength and faith of the oppressed. Nor is the view of the pre-war Japanese American family and community and its American context a pretty one in Milton Murayama’s All I Asking For Is My Body (1959).27 The nisei stagger under the combined weight of Japanese family traditions and the uniquely American plantation system of Hawaii. The book challenges unquestioning acceptance of tyranny and hierarchy as impediments to human freedom. Murayama’s dialogues are carefully crafted to express the bicultural realities of the characters in standard and pidgin English and in standard and colloquial Japanese, which is translated into standard and informal English. Murayama decided to print the book himself with the help of a linotype setter from Hawaii because he felt that commercial editors would ‘‘correct the English and kill the pidgin.’’28 Gender perspectives in the critique of pre-war Japanese American family and community life on the West Coast are contained in half a dozen remarkable short stories published between 1949 and 1961 by Hisaye Yamamoto.29 The focus is on the changing roles of women imprisoned with well-meaning but weak and insensitive husbands and on the bleakness and isolation of rural toil. Ultimately, the women are vanquished. The men are never condemned, but they remain in the shadows as guardians of the prison doors, for the most part conventional and colorless in comparison to the women who are the central figures. The women’s strength comes from surviving sorrow. They also pass a legacy to their daughters, who as a result may not be subdued in the end. Characteristic of Yamamoto’s style is subtle irony and understatement, usually through the juxtaposition of two currents that reflect the quintessential quality of Japanese American life: beneath a placid and respectable surface, there are dark hints of hidden tragedy, tinged with death and violence. Yamamoto accomplishes this by presenting the stories through the eyes of an ingenuous young American-born narrator who understands less about what she is describing than what readers can guess.

Alienation and Loss The contemporary generation of Japanese American writers, most of whom are of the sansei or third generation, grandchildren of the immigrants, is feeling the 204

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effects of the internment and dispersal of the Japanese American community Okada and Yamamoto depicted with such familiarity and confidence. Although most returned to California after the US government’s largely unsuccessful attempt to scatter them across the United States at the end of the war, they never regained their hold on Pacific Coast agriculture, and the Japantowns that had flourished all along Highway 99, the road that cuts through the fields and past the canneries of Asian America, have disappeared. Nationally, more than half of today’s sansei marriages are outmarriages. Ronald Tanaka traces the path toward cultural annihilation in a poem about a book of photographs on Japanese American internment: the people who put out that book, i guess they won a lot of awards. it was a very photogenic period of california history, especially if you were a white photographer with compassion for helpless people. but the book would have been better, i think, or more complete, if they had put in my picture and yours, with our hakujin wives, our long hair and the little signs that say, ‘‘what? me speak japanese?’’ and ‘‘self-determination for everyone but us,’’ and then maybe on the very last page, a picture of our kids. They don’t even look like japanese30

In the decade between 1965 and 1975, playwright Frank Chin and short story writer Jeffery Paul Chan focused their attentions on a search for a viable new identity for Chinese American men, an identity that would link them to the cowboys who settled the American West and the nameless men who built the transcontinental railroad with their bare hands. The identity crises of the young in Chin and Chan’s work stems in part from the complicity of older generations of Chinese immigrant men who cling to ‘‘mildewed memories’’ of China and to Chinese American women who cater to tourists’ exotic fantasies. The failure of fathers is a favorite theme: in Chin’s Chickencoop Chinaman,31 Tam Lum’s father is a dishwasher who bathes in his underpants because he fears that little old white ladies might peek at him through a keyhole. Women are represented as insensitive and unsophisticated or else as seekers after white ‘‘racist love.’’ The only possible survival is escape from the suffocating environment – escape, ironically, into the culture that invented the fantasy in the first place. After lashing out at the emasculating effects of racial oppression, Chin and Chan accept the oppressors’ definition of ‘‘masculinity.’’ The result is unresolved tension between contempt 205

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and desire to fight for their Asian American characters. Cynicism, sexism, alienation, and preoccupation with death and decay have led not to a new identity but to the conclusion that we are doomed. In 1978, Chin said: There is no doubt in my mind that the Asian American is on the doorstep of extinction. There’s so much out-marriage now that all that is going to survive are the stereotypes. White culture has not acknowledged Asian American art. Either you’re foreign in this country, or you’re an honorary white. I hope we can create work that will add to the human estate, but then I think we’ll die out.32

Reconciliation Most contemporary Asian American writers do not share Chin’s pessimism. By weaving connections between us and our history, our forebears, each other, other people of color in this country and the world, these writers are inventing Asian American identities outside the realm of racial romance and externally imposed definitions. Much contemporary Asian American literature expresses kinship with other people of color in America, especially blacks and Native Americans, who frequently appear in the works. ‘‘Soon the white snow will melt,’’ writes poet Al Robles, and ‘‘the brown, black, yellow earth will come to life.’’33 Our self-invention was stimulated by US involvement in Asia, creating links with Asia on our own terms. Because we had been defined historically by race, it was difficult for many of us not to respond to the racial character of the war in Vietnam. Stunned by graphic news coverage of war-torn hamlets, we sometimes saw the faces of our friends and relatives in the visages of Vietnamese peasants. We were susceptible to the argument that US foreign policy in Asia had always been racist and genocidal, that profits had been more important to government policy makers than Asian lives. We perceived the parallels between the war in Vietnam and the conquest of the Philippine resistance during the Spanish– American War, in which an estimated one-sixth of the population of Ilocos was exterminated in the name of democracy. We concluded that the use of the atomic bomb on Japanese civilians during World War II evidenced the racist attitudes of military officials and policy makers toward the entire race. In ‘‘The New Anak’’ (1975), Sam Tagatac writes of a Filipino American soldier in Vietnam who thinks of the land of his birth and his countrymen when he sees the tropical sun and rains, the distant hills, and the peasants with their water buffaloes as they are strafed by American bombers: I remember the light of that lagoon, the mythical sound of the flying dragon, spitting fire, one pass, one strafing gun across water for what is water from the sight of the gods, the crosshair splitting in the forming of a real image, so distant the face of . . . your face, my face.34 206

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In Maxine Hong Kingston’s China Men,35 the Chinese American brother is haunted by nightmares of himself as a soldier in the rescuing army, walking among enemy corpses. Laundry tubs drain beneath the bodies. The live women and children on the ironing tables, the last captured, are being dissected. He takes up the sword and hacks into the enemy, slicing them; they come apart in rings and rolls. . . . When he stops, he finds that he has cut up the victims too, who were his own relatives. The faces of the strung-up people are also those of his own family. Chinese faces, Chinese eyes, noses, and cheekbones.36

Dedicating her poems to dead heroes of Latin America and Africa like Orlando Letelier and Steven Biko, sansei poet Janice Mirikitani reflects on the connections between the wars waged by the US in the Third World, the bombing of Japan, and the internment of Japanese Americans. if you’re too dark they will kill you if you’re too swift they will buy you if you’re too beautiful they will rape you watch with eyes open speak darkly turn your head like the owl behind you37

Restoring the Foundations Recognizing our kinship with others who struggle against domination, we must also claim our own identity as Americans. Asian American writers must piece together and sort out the meaning of our past, distorted and omitted by racism, from shreds of stories heard in childhood or from faded photographs that have never been explained. In Wing Tek Lum’s ‘‘A Picture of My Mother’s Family’’ (1974), the poet searches for the significance of each detail of an old photograph: he must try to make the story of his half-forgotten ancestors relevant to himself. Like many Asian Americans, he does not even know their names, where they were born, or anything about their childhood in a distant land. The photograph is tantalizingly unrevealing. It is perhaps morning, the coolness captured now in such clear light; they seem somehow illuminated by beams from the moon, . . . my grandfather . . . 207

Elaine H. Kim looks on . . . towards his right far away. I imagine a dark rose has caught his proud eye, though I do not know if such flowers have ever grown there.38

Taking up as their task the restoration of the foundations of Asian American history in the US, contemporary writers are locating, translating, and publishing work by previously little-known writers in their native languages, literature that illuminates our American roots. Island: Poetry and History of Chinese Immigrants on Angel Island 1910–1940 (1980) is an anthology of poetry carved in Chinese by unknown immigrants on the walls of the Angel Island Detention Center barracks. They give voice to the spirit of our forebears: How many people ever return from battles? ..... Leaving behind my writing brush and removing my sword, I came to America. Who was to know two streams of tears would flow upon arriving here? If there comes a day when I will have attained by ambition and become successful I will certainly behead the barbarians and spare not a single blade of grass. Don’t say that everything within is Western styled. Even it if is built of jade, it has turned into a cage.39

By penetrating and occupying the consciousness of his shadowy ancestors, Lawrence Yep contributes to the effort to repair the foundations of the Asian American heritage in Dragonwings,40 a historical novel about nineteenth-century Chinese in America who invented a biplane. Rewriting our history from an Asian American perspective has brought to light new cultural heroes. The two characters in David Henry Hwang’s play, ‘‘The Dance and the Railroad,’’41 are Chinese railroad workers in the 1867 strike. Many contemporary Japanese American writers focus on the internment. In ‘‘Family Album for Charlotte Davis,’’ Lonnie Kaneko searches for the meaning of the word ‘‘Minidoka’’ only to discover that the name of that desert camp means water. Yesterday Charlotte asked, ‘You mean there is still a bitterness?’ Something wormed its way through my blood Snake. Water. Earth. ‘It is a thirst,’ I say.42

Sensitive to the foreboding certainty that the elderly and their life experiences will vanish before they can be understood and appreciated, Asian American writers portray the old with a sense of urgency. Bienvenido N. Santos, himself a 208

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Filipino expatriate who has lived in the United States since the declaration of martial law in the Philippines, says that his attention continually returns to the Filipino manongs who are the unsung heroes of American labor. . . . old timers among our countrymen who sat out the evening of their lives before television sets in condemned buildings. . . . Then the grin in both story and writer kept getting twisted in a grimace of pain close to tears. . . . now I realize that perhaps I have also been writing about myself.

The preservation of the oldtimers’ tales is important to the young because through the ‘‘transmission of grief from father to son we realize that it is the son who is singing and leading the dance in the end.’’43 Claiming America requires reconciliation with our fathers and forefathers in this country, Shawn Hsu Wong’s short novel Homebase opens with a garden book reference to a Chinese tree planted a century ago in California gold country: ‘‘Often condemned as a weed tree . . . it must be praised for its ability to create beauty and shade under adverse conditions.’’44 The narrator is haunted by the ghosts of the men of his great-grandfather’s generation, men who built the railroads over the High Sierras, setting down roots deep in the earth like sharp talons clinging close to the heart of the land. He imagines letters his greatgrandfather might have written home to China: ‘‘I do not want the seasons to run over my back, letting the days and night, the weather ride me, break me. I will find a piece of land to work where I can remain . . . and watch the seasons ease on that place, root down in this difficult soil, and nurture my land.’’45 But the Chinese were ‘‘motherless and wifeless . . . in a country that hated [them].’’ They worked their way from the hinterland to the ocean’s edge; Rainsford imagines that they tried to swim home to China and that the desert sands and the white surf are made of their bones, bleached by the sea and sun. Rainsford has been an orphan, living on the fringes of America, speaking Chinese or English like a ventriloquist’s dummy through the grimace of clenched teeth. He dreams of traveling across the country with a patronizing, whining, ‘‘cheerleader-teaser’’ white girl who is the ‘‘shadow, the white ghost of all my love life . . . the dream of my capture of America . . . she tells me things about me that I am not . . . that I am the product of the richest and oldest culture in the history of the world . . . when in fact I have nothing of my own in America.’’46 When Rainsford finally rejects her ‘‘love,’’ she becomes irritated and tells him to go back where he came from. Driving on in the dark night, he sees his grandfather in the mountain fog and smells his clothes in the redwood trees as he travels through the canyons and cascades where his forefathers once worked and are buried. An American Indian tells him that he must find out where his people have been and see the town after which he is named, so that he can claim his home, his history, and the legacy of his forefathers. By reaffirming the love that connects his life to the lives of his father and forefathers, and thus his links to Chinese America, he can affirm his American identity: ‘‘[I]dentity is a word full 209

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of home. Identity is a word that whispers, not whispers, but GETS you to say, ‘ever, ever yours. . . . ’ Dear Father, I say, I write, I sing, I give you my love, this is a letter, whispering those words, ‘ever, ever yours.’ ’’ Immigrant fathers and American roots are brought together in Maxine Hong Kingston’s China Men. Arriving in five different ways, by way of Cuba, Angel Island, or Ellis Island, the father is the ‘‘legal’’ and the ‘‘illegal’’ immigrant, the ‘‘father from China’’ and the ‘‘American father.’’ By ‘‘banding the nation north and south, east and west’’ with the transcontinental railroad, these fathers have established their legitimacy as the ‘‘binding and building ancestors of this place.’’47 Their spirits unbroken by the treatment they face in America, they remain, planting trees that will take years to bear fruit. Each China man claims America in his own way: by bringing his wife, by buying a house here, by insisting that a Chinese explorer discovered America first. The narrator’s ‘‘American father’’ has ‘‘the power of . . . making places belong to him.’’48 He claims America by donning Fred Astaire clothing and admiring himself in hubcap reflections along Fifth Avenue in New York City. For Kingston’s China men, claiming America is an aggressive act; it means refusing to be broken. Although he is worked like an animal on the sugar plantations of Hawaii, Bak Goong seethes with rebellion and a burning desire to break the silence imposed by labor foremen. He camouflages his talk in curses coughed at his oppressors, avenging himself with a sword forged of his words as he sings to his fellow workers: ‘‘If that demon whips me, I’ll catch the whip and yank him off his horse, crack his head like a coconut. In an emergency a human being can do miracles – fly, swim, lift mountains, throw them. Oh, a man is capable of great feats of speed and strength.’’49

Gender Perspectives Claiming America also means gender reconciliation. Racism has created a haunting distance between men and women in our literature and culture. Certainly the absence of significant female characters in Asian American men’s writing reflects the harsh realities of the bachelor life created by exclusion and anti-miscegenation laws. Carlos Bulosan, for example, wrote at a time when Filipino men outnumbered women in some American cities by as many as fortyseven to one. The inscription in American popular culture of Asian men as sexless automatons is complemented by the popular view of Asian women as only sexual beings, which helps explain the phenomenal success of Singapore Airlines, the enormous demand for X-rated films featuring Asian women in bondage, the demand for ‘‘oriental’’ bath house workers in US cities, and the booming business in mail order marriages. There is no doubt that the rift 210

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between Asian American men and women caused by racism is reflected in our literature. We can detect, however, an intense yearning for reconciliation. The narrator in Wakako Yamauchi’s ‘‘That was all’’ (1980) is haunted by her vision of the slim brown body and mocking eyes of a man she sees only in a fleeting dream as an aging woman.50 In ‘‘The Boatmen on Toneh River’’ (1974), the narrator is ‘‘swept against the smooth brown cheeks of a black-haired youth . . . and into his billowing shirt’’ only in death.51 There are no lovers among Kingston’s China Men. But perhaps a mending of the rift is at hand: the narrator in Shawn Hsu Wong’s Homebase dreams of the woman he loves: ‘‘she is the summit I must return to in the end.’’52 In David Henry Hwang’s ‘‘FOB,’’53 it is not only the gap between the immigrant and American-born Chinese that is bridged; the legendary woman warrior Fa Mu Lan teaches Gwan Kung, god of warriors and writers, how to survive in America, and Grace goes off with Steve, the immigrant, at the end of the play. With her, he can claim a new American identity. It goes almost without saying that homophobia and heterosexism in Asian American and American culture repressed the expression of homosociality in Asian American literature. We can only imagine the gender diversity that must have flourished in the ‘‘bachelor’’ communities.

Community Without the reconciliation of the self to the community we cannot invent ourselves. This ‘‘community’’ begins with but extends beyond the boundaries of our families, far beyond Chinatown to wherever resistance to domination is taking place. While the narrator in The Woman Warrior has to ‘‘get out of hating range’’54 of a community that hates women, that community is the curse and blessing of her life. The escape into the ‘‘American-normal’’ world gives her a new, antiseptic way of seeing things, but it has diminished her. Now when she peeks into the basement window where the villagers say they see a girl dancing like a bottle imp, she no longer sees a spirit in a skirt made of light; instead, concrete pours out of her mouth to cover forests with freeways and sidewalks, replacing the vibrant world she left with plastics, periodical tables, and ‘‘TV dinners with vegetables no more complex than peas mixed with diced carrots.’’55 It is not the colorless world she seeks refuge in that has taught her who her enemies are, the ‘‘stupid racists’’ and ‘‘tyrants who for whatever reason can deny my family food and work.’’ These are easily recognizable, ‘‘each boss two feet taller than I am and impossible to meet eye to eye . . . if I took a sword, which my hate must surely have forged out of the air, and gutted [him], I would put color and wrinkles into his shirt.’’56 She has temporarily traded the glorious identity of Fa Mu Lan, who could be both woman warrior and model of filial piety, for a ‘‘slum grubby’’ American reality. All she can do in America is get straight As and become a clerk-typist. The question is whether or not her heritage and the 211

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tradition of Fa Mu Lan can serve her here. Although she has left the immigrant community, she longs to return: The swordswoman and I are not so dissimilar. May my people understand the resemblance so that I can return to them. What we have in common are the words at our backs. . . . And I have so many words – ‘chink’ words and ‘gook’ words too – that they do not fit on my skin.57

If we read Cathy Song’s poetry as Asian Americans, we can see that the most effective poems in Picture Bride58 are not the ones replete with images of jade and sour plums or that compare children to dumplings wrapped in wonton skins or describe a girl’s cheeks as being like tofu, but the ones that explore the relationship between the persona and her family, from whom she ventures forth and with whom she is eventually reconciled. The volume as a whole traces the strength of kin communion and the ties between the generations. The narratorcharacter dreams of freedom from the constricted world of her mother, whose vision is limited like that of a seamstress to the piece of cloth she is working on at the moment beneath her fingers. The older woman sleeps in ‘‘tight blankets’’ and catches strands of her daughter’s braids in her gold ring. But after the narrator moves across a series of landscapes that carry her ever further away from her family, she comes to rest finally at her mother’s feet. It has taken me all these years to realize that this is what I must do to recognize my life. When I stretch a canvas to paint the clouds, it is your spine that declares itself: arching, your arms stemming out like tender shoots to hang sheets in the sky.59

This is not an urge to disappear into the ocean of American society. This is a reaffirmation of our invention of ourselves. In Dangerous Music (1975), Jessica Tarahata Hagedorn’s America is the ‘‘loneliest of countries,’’ where the Filipino immigrant can lose her sanity and forget who she is among bottles of foot deodorant, mouthwash, and vaginal spray, where she can die a ‘‘natural death’’ encased in Saran Wrap on the beach. She must ‘‘stay crazy all the time’’ with songs inside knifing the air of sorrow with our dance a carnival of spirits shredded blossoms in the water60 212

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The opacity of Asian American writing is also that it is opaque is the source of its strength and vision. What Asian American writers express is the desire to remain as ‘‘others’’ by defining our own ‘‘otherness,’’ not as foreigners but as American ‘‘others.’’ Our claim on America, then, is part of our resistance to domination.

Notes 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29

‘‘Dear Abby,’’ San Francisco Chronicle, 28 April 1986. New York Tribune, 22 November 1925. Lady Hosie, ‘‘A Voice From Korea,’’ Saturday Review of Literature, 4 April 1931, 707. Pardee Lowe, Father and Glorious Descendant (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1943), book jacket. Jade Snow Wong, Fifth Chinese Daughter (New York: Harper and Row, 1950). Jeanne Wakatsuki and James D. Houston, Farewell to Manzanar (San Francisco: San Francisco Book Company/Houghton Mifflin, 1973). Saturday Review World, 6 November 1973; Library Journal, 1 November 1973, 3257. Daniel Okimoto, American in Disguise (New York: Walker-Weatherhill, 1971). Phoebe Adams, ‘‘Short Reviews: Books,’’ Atlantic Monthly 227, no. 4 (April 1971), 104. J. J. Conlin, Best-Seller 31, no. 9 (1 April 1971). Okimoto, American in Disguise, 206. Maxine Hong Kingston, The Woman Warrior (New York: Vintage Books, 1977). Publisher’s Weekly 212 (September 1976): 72. Kingston, The Woman Warrior, 222–3. Jane Kramer, ‘‘On Being Chinese in China and America,’’ New York Times Book Review, 7 November 1976, 19. Michael Malloy, ‘‘ ‘The Woman Warrior’: On Growing Up Chinese, Female, and Bitter,’’ National Observer, 9 October 1976, 25. Kingston, The Woman Warrior, 35. Lin Yutang, My Country and My People (New York: John Day Co., 1937). Chan Wing-Tsit, ‘‘Lin Yutang, Critic and Interpreter,’’ College English 8(4) (January 1947): 163–4. Younghill Kang, East Goes West (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1937). Carlos Bulosan, America Is in the Heart (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1946 and 1973). Ibid., 188–9. Wendy Law-Yone, The Coffin Tree (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1983). Louis Chu, Eat A Bowl of Tea (New York: Lyle Stuart, 1961). Interview, Louis Chu, 7 December 1979. John Okada, No-No Boy (Rutland, VT: Charles E. Tuttle Co., 1957). Milton Murayama, All I Asking For Is My Body (San Francisco: Supa Press, 1959, 1968, 1975). Interview, Milton Murayama, 7 December 1979. ‘‘The Legend of Miss Sasagawara,’’ Kenyon Review 12 (1) (Winter 1950): 99–115; ‘‘Yoneko’s Earthquake,’’ Furioso 6 (1) (Winter 1951): 5–16; ‘‘Las Vegas Charley,’’ Arizona Quarterly 4 (Winter 1961): 303–22; ‘‘The Brown House,’’ Harper’s Bazaar 2879 (October 1951): 166; 283–4 and in Asian American Authors, ed. Kai-yu Hsu and Helen Palubinskas (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1972), 114–22; ‘‘Seventeen Syllables,’’ Partisan Review 16 (7–12) (July–December 1949): 1122–1134 and in Ethnic American Short Stories, ed. Katharine D. Newman (New York: Washington Square Press, 1975), 89–103.

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Elaine H. Kim 30 Ronald Tanaka, ‘‘Appendix to Executive Order,’’ Ayumi: A Japanese American Anthology (San Francisco: Japanese American Anthology Committee, 1980), 240. 31 Frank Chin, The Chickencoop Chinaman and The Year of the Dragon (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1981). 32 Nikki Bridges, ‘‘Conversations and Convergences,’’ Asian American Women Writers’ Panel, Occidental College, January 1978, 16. 33 Alfred Robles, Untitled Poem, Aion 1 (2) (Fall 1971): 81 (Asian American Publications) (ed. Janice Mirikitani). 34 Sam Tagatac, ‘‘The New Anak,’’ in Aiieeeee! An Anthology of Asian-American Writers, ed. Frank Chin, Jeffery Paul Chan, Lawson Fusao Inada, and Shawn Hsu Wong (Washington, DC: Howard University Press, 1974), 248. 35 Maxine Hong Kingston, China Men (New York: Alfred K. Knopf, 1980). 36 Ibid., 291. 37 Janice Mirikitani, ‘‘Japs,’’ Awake in the River (San Francisco: Isthmus Press, 1978). 38 Wing Tek Lum, ‘‘A Picture of My Mother’s Family,’’ Yardbird Reader, vol. 3, ed. Frank Chin and Shawn Hsu Wong (Berkeley: Yardbird Publishing Company, 1974), 141. 39 Him Mark Lai, Genny Lim, and Judy Yung, eds, Island: Poetry and History of Chinese Immigrants on Angel Island 1910–1940 (San Francisco: Chinese Culture Center Hoc Doi Project, 1980), 84–5, 134–5. 40 Lawrence Yep, Dragonwings (New York: Harper and Row, 1975). 41 David Henry Hwang, Broken Promises: Four Plays By David Henry Hwang (New York: Avon Books, 1983). 42 Lonnie Kaneko, ‘‘Family Album for Charlotte Davis,’’ Amerasia Journal 3(1) (Summer 1975): 135. 43 Bienvenido N. Santos, ‘‘Preface,’’ Scent of Apples (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1979), xx; ‘‘The Filipino as Exile,’’ Greenfield Review 6 (1–2) (Spring 1977): 51. 44 Shawn Hsu Wong, Homebase (New York: I. Reed Books, 1979), 1. 45 Ibid., 27. 46 Ibid., 31–2. 47 Kingston, China Men, 146. 48 Ibid., 238. 49 Ibid., 101. 50 Wakako Yamauchi, ‘‘That Was All,’’ Amerasia Journal 7 (1) (Spring 1980): 115–20. 51 Wakako Yamauchi, ‘‘The Boatmen on Toneh River,’’ Counterpoint: Critical Perspectives on Asian America, ed. Emma Gee (Los Angeles: UCLA Asian American Studies Center, 1976), 533. 52 Wong, Homebase, 79. 53 David Henry Hwang, ‘‘FOB,’’ in Broken Promises. 54 Kingston, The Woman Warrior, 62. 55 Ibid., 237. 56 Ibid., 58. 57 Ibid., 62–3. 58 Cathy Song, Picture Bride (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1983). 59 Ibid., 48. 60 Jessica Hagedorn, ‘‘Something About You,’’ Dangerous Music (San Francisco: Momo’s Press, 1975).

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CHAPTER

TWELVE

Asian Americans as the Model Minority: An Analysis of the Popular Press Image in the 1960s and 1980s* Keith Osajima

The year 1986 marked an anniversary of sorts: twenty years earlier, the first articles proclaiming Asian Americans as the ‘‘model’’ minority appeared in the popular press. Since then, the model minority thesis has been the target of considerable criticism. Members of the Asian American community have argued that the image is racially stereotypic, empirically inaccurate, and no longer applicable to the changing Asian American population. Yet, in spite of these critiques, the image remains dominant in the 1980s, appearing in numerous popular press articles in recent years. The analytic focus of this chapter is the persistence of the model minority image into the 1980s. It will examine how the image of Asian Americans as the successful minority has been able to withstand criticism and changing conditions, yet remain an important conceptual force in the popular press. It will compare the discursive construction of the model minority image as portrayed in the popular press during two historical periods – the 1960s and 1980s – and discuss how that discourse has been shaped by surrounding social and political conditions. The comparative analysis will reveal how changes in the discourse on Asian American success have enabled it to maintain relevance and explanatory power in the contemporary literature.

*Keith Osajima ‘‘Asian Americans as the Model Minority: An Analysis of the Popular Press Image in the 1960s and 1980s.’’ In Gary Okihiro et al. (eds.), Reflections on Shattered Windows: Promises and Prospects for Asian American Studies (Pullman: Washington State University Press, 1988), 165–74. Reprinted by permission of Gary Y. Okihiro.

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Elements of an Image – 1960s At the beginning of January 1966, William Petersen went to great lengths in a New York Times Magazine article to praise the efforts of Japanese Americans in their successful struggle to enter the mainstream of American life.1 In December of that same year, the U.S. News and World Report also published a story lauding Chinese Americans for their remarkable achievements and praised Chinatowns as bastions of peace and prosperity.2 As with the Japanese Americans, the article praised the Chinese for their ability to overcome years of racial discrimination. The newfound ‘‘success’’ image for both groups rested upon a foundation of two basic elements. The first was the empirical evidence for success. Embedded in each story were a number of ‘‘facts’’ that substantiated Asian American success. Statistics on the educational achievements of Japanese and Chinese headed the list. Other evidence of success included movement into high status occupations, rising incomes, and low rates of mental illness and crime. Second, the articles offered an explicit theoretical explanation for why Asian Americans had succeeded. At the heart of this explanation was a direct link between traditional Asian cultural values and subsequent achievement in education and occupations. Petersen argued that Japanese Americans’ adherence to values such as a deep respect for parents and authority, a reverence for learning, and a proclivity for hard work created a psychological achievement orientation that drove Japanese to do well in school. Similarly, the U.S. News and World Report article identified cultural emphases on hard work, thrift, and morality as factors that helped Chinese Americans to overcome obstacles and move up the socioeconomic ladder.

Asian American Success – Ideological and Political Implications The 1966 articles marked a significant turning point in the public’s perception of Asian Americans. After enduring a century of blatant racial discrimination and negative stereotypes, the Japanese and Chinese suddenly found themselves cast into a favorable light. In place of the unassimilable, inscrutable Fu Manchu and the vicious kamikaze pilot emerged the image of the high achieving, successful minority. This image of Asian American success did not appear in a vacuum. The definition of a new racial identity emerged at a moment of tremendous racial upheaval in America. The Civil Rights Movement, increased state intervention in race relations, urban riots, and black militancy collided in the mid-1960s, touching off intense debates on the direction of racial politics.3 In this context, the Asian American success story took on new meanings. The accomplishments of less than one-million Asian Americans emerged as a model 216

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for how all minority groups could ‘‘make it’’ in society. The articulation of successful Asians in the popular press carried ramifications that extended well beyond the Chinatowns and Japantowns of America. On the political level, Asian American success constituted a direct critique of Blacks who sought relief through federally supported social programs. Asian Americans, we were told, were able to make it on their own. Welfare programs were unneccessary. ‘‘At a time when it is being proposed that hundreds of billions be spent to uplift Negroes and other minorities, the nation’s 300,000 Chinese-Americans are moving ahead on their own, with no help from anyone else,’’ declared the U.S. News and World Report,4 and wrote Petersen: ‘‘By any criterion we choose, the Japanese Americans are better than any other group in our society, including native-born whites. They have established this remarkable record, moreover, by their own almost totally unaided effort.’’5 Asian American success also sent a distinct political message to the nascent Black Power Movement. The achievements of Asians diffused the black militants’ claim that America was fundamentally a racist society, structured to keep minorities in a subordinate position. The Asian American experience identified cultural values and hard work as the keys to success. The political implication for those who had yet to make it was that their culture was not ‘‘good’’ enough. This delineation of good and bad culture deflected attention away from societal factors and placed the blame for racial inequality on minorities.6 Beyond these political implications, the model minority thesis presented a picture of American society that resonated with dominant ideological precepts.7 Asian achievement confirmed that the United States was indeed the land of opportunity. It defined success in narrow, materialistic terms. The movement of Asians into the mainstream of American life affirmed the ideal that America was an open society, willing to accept and incorporate those minorities and immigrants who were willing to assimilate. Perhaps most importantly, the thesis upheld a fundamental meritocratic belief that America was a fair society.8 Asian Americans had made it because America judged and rewarded people, not by the color of their skin, but on the basis of their qualifications, skills, attitudes, and behavior. The model minority thesis, then, was far from a neutral construct. It was an image that carried political and ideological implications specific to the historical conditions of race relations in the mid-1960s. I now turn to the 1980s, where the nexus of political, racial, demographic, and economic conditions demarcates a historical context in sharp contrast to the 1960s. The following sections will look at how the changing context of the 1980s has altered the discourse on the Asian American experience.

Incorporating Change and Dissent – 1980s Between 1982 and 1986, ten articles on Asian American success appeared in major popular press publications.9 Two changes in the focus and content of the 217

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discussion on Asian American success in the present period are immediately apparent. First, the articles all recognized the changing nature of the Asian American population. The focus of these articles was on Korean, Vietnamese, and other foreign-born Asians, rather than on Japanese and Chinese Americans. This modification is directly attributable to the tremendous demographic changes that have occurred over the past twenty years. Since the 1965 Immigration Act, Asians have become the fastest growing minority in the country. From 1970 to 1980, the Asian population grew from 1.4 to 3.5 million people. During this period, the Korean population increased 400 percent from 69,000 to over 350,000, while the Filipino population more than doubled from 340,000 to 780,000, and the Chinese population grew from 435,000 to 812,000.10 In addition to these immigrants, the Asian American population has grown due to the influx of nearly a million Vietnamese and Southeast Asian refugees after the fall of Saigon in 1975. Second, the articles displayed a greater recognition of the complexities and critiques associated with the model minority thesis. Three out of the ten articles presented substantial discussions on the negative impact that parental pressures have had on Asian American students.11 Four articles acknowledged the stereotypic nature of the success image, and noted the resentment that some Asians feel toward being considered the model minority.12 In a related theme, six articles pointed out that Asians were entering arenas not previously associated with the quiet Asian image, such as politics, business management, art, fashion, and music.13 Six articles mentioned that one of the indicators of success, median family income, was somewhat misleading because Asians tend to have more workers per family.14 That complex portrait of the Asian American experience reflects the recognition in the popular press that the Asian community has grown more diverse in the past fifteen years. In addition to the immigration that has brought highly skilled people into new occupational settings, the social movements of the late 1960s and 1970s, that included the Asian American Movement, heightened the political, social, and cultural consciousness of many Asian Americans. In this context, many Asians were encouraged to explore a broader range of political and cultural arenas. The inclusion of potentially negative consequences in these articles also acknowledges a more comprehensive understanding of the model minority thesis that has been developed through scholarly research. The sensitivity to stereotyping and the pressures associated with success, for example, stems from the research on culture and identity that emerged in the early 1970s.15 The critique of certain statistical indicators of success flows directly from the critical research on the Asian labor market experience.16 These studies showed that median family income was not a good measure for success because it masked the fact that the per worker income rates for Asian Americans fell significantly below that of comparably educated whites. 218

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Consistency Amidst Change The incorporation of new information and dissent is one way the discourse on Asian Americans has changed in the 1980s. The increased comprehensiveness of contemporary articles may lead one to conclude that the popular press is taking a more critical, fair, and balanced view of Asian Americans, and that the articles are less political than similar stories in the 1960s. Further examination, however, reveals a certain consistency amidst change. The core elements of the original model minority thesis – the empirical evidence for success and a culturally based explanation for achievement – continue to be an integral part of the current discussion on Asian Americans. The educational achievement of Asian Americans, for example, remained a critical indicator of success. In nine of the ten recent articles, the outstanding performance of Asian students in the Westinghouse Science Talent competition was cited as a measure of achievement. In seven of those articles, the high percentage of Asian students in universities was offered as proof of educational success. In seven stories, Asian student success was substantiated by their above average SAT scores in math. In explaining this success in school, the articles offered a theory that is consistent with the 1960s model minority thesis. At the heart of the explanations are familiar, culturally based attributes. In all ten articles, the Asian American family was mentioned as a key to educational success. Anecdotal stories of refugee parents working sixteen hours a day to pay for their children’s education; of mothers insisting that their children study long hours; and of parents impressing upon their children the importance of education were offered to illustrate the influence of the family. Hard work and a reverence for learning also returned in the 1980s as vital to success. References to hard work appeared in five of the ten articles;17 and the reverence for learning appeared in four stories.18 In four articles, the reasons for Asian success were encompassed under the broader influence of Confucian ethics, where education was sacred and scholarly achievements were a way to express filial piety.19 The continued reliance on culturally based explanations for success mirror the same dominant ideological assumptions that articles from the 1960s rested upon. Asian American success once again reaffirms that America is a land of opportunity, where people are rewarded for their hard work and diligence. The rapid movement of Asian immigrants into the educational and economic mainstream proves that America is still open, fair, and able to incorporate industrious people. The stress on educational achievement and subsequent occupational mobility remains the main, albeit narrow, criteria for success. 219

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Political Implications of the 1980s Image In addition to maintaining the core elements of the original model minority thesis and conveying dominant ideological messages, contemporary articles continue to address political concerns. What must be noted, however, are changes in the form and content of those political messages that reflect changes in the surrounding racial and political climate. Borrowing from authors Michael Omi and Howard Winant, these discursive changes represent a ‘‘rearticulation’’ of Asian American success images in the 1980s, in which core elements of the discourse are infused ‘‘with a new political meaning and link(ed) with other key elements of conservative political ideology.’’20 This rearticulation is achieved in three ways. First, the overt racial comparisons between the success of Asians and the failures of other minorities are tempered and replaced in the current literature by a non-racial discourse that focuses primarily on differences between Asian American families and ‘‘American’’ families. In several articles, the authors suggest that Asian American families are ‘‘better,’’ which accounts for their remarkable success. In ‘‘Why Asians Succeed Here,’’ the author quotes a professor who says that ‘‘Asian families pay more attention to their children,’’21 and the U.S. News and World Report article cites the following observation: ‘‘If an American child isn’t doing well in school, his parents think the teacher or school has failed or the student just doesn’t have it. The Asian parents’ view is that the student isn’t trying hard enough.’’22 In ‘‘Why Asians are Going to the Head of the Class,’’ the writer states that ‘‘Asian or Asian American parents are able to instill in their children a much greater motivation to work harder,’’ and quotes conservative scholar Thomas Sowell’s observation: ‘‘Asian parents are teaching a lesson that otherwise isn’t being taught in America anymore. When you see a study that says Asian kids study harder than white and black kids and are getting better grades, it tells you something.’’23 While many of these comparisons are made in non-racial terms, they carry significant racial meaning in the conservative political action and discourse of the 1980s. Praise for the Asian American family is a consistent part of a broader conservative perspective that blames many of today’s social problems on the deterioration of the family. President Reagan’s attacks on abortion and school busing, and his support for school prayer and tuition tax credits have been made in the name of restoring strength to the family and community. That many of these policies constitute direct attacks on programs originally designed to benefit racial minorities speaks to the subtle manner in which the elevation of family is actually a code word to disguise underlying racial concern.24 Second, the discussion on Asian American achievement is shaped by conservative educational reform proposals that have emerged from the recent nationallevel debates on public schools. In the fervent debates following reports such as A Nation at Risk, many suggest that American education could be improved by lengthening the school year and increasing the amount of homework in school.25 220

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References to these conservative reforms infuse the dialogue on Asian Americans. Three articles argue that the longer school year in Asian countries, roughly 225 days compared to 180 in the United States, plays an important role in the educational success of Asian immigrants.26 One of the articles attributes success to the work ethic of Asians and their willingness to do homework. It cites a study that found that American first grade students spent an average of fourteen minutes a night on homework and hated it, while Japanese first graders spent thirty-seven minutes and Chinese spent seventy-seven minutes on homework and loved it.27 Finally, the discourse on Asian American success, particularly in higher education, is linked to growing anti-Asian sentiments. ‘‘A Drive to Excel,’’ for example, explicitly mentions that the growing number of Asian students in universities are resented by white students, who feel threatened. It reports stories of white students dropping courses if there were ‘‘too many Oriental faces.’’ It also tells of jokes that MIT stood for ‘‘Made in Taiwan,’’ and UCLA was ‘‘University of Caucasians Living Among Asians.’’28 The controversy over admissions ceilings for Asian students is another arena where Asian American success appears to be the basis for discriminatory action. The notion that Asian American success constitutes a potential threat is also expressed in subtle forms. A New York Times Magazine story exemplifies this in describing Asian Americans as ‘‘surging into the nation’s best colleges like a tidal wave’’29 (emphasis added), and another author, in referring to the increase of Asians at Harvard, writes: ‘‘The figure is now 10% – five times their share of the population.’’30 In both instances, Asian success is discussed in almost alarming tones, reminiscent of the ‘‘hordes’’ of Asians that threatened California in the late 1800s. The irony that Asian American success has become a basis for discriminatory backlash is understandable in the context of growing anti-Asian sentiment in the 1980s. The decline of the American economy in the 1970s and the concomitant competition from Japan has given rise to increased tensions between Asians and Whites in the 1980s. These tensions have manifested themselves in numerous instances of violence against Asian Americans as exemplified by the 1982 murder of Vincent Chin. [Chin was a 27-year-old Chinese American who was killed in Detroit by two white men who thought he was Japanese. Much attention has focused on the brutal beating of Chin by these two men, who used a baseball bat to beat him and made racially charged remarks to Chin on the evening of the beating. The men were all but acquitted of the crimes; widespread Asian American protests erupted around the event.] Discrimination and resentment in universities is another manifestation of those growing hostilities.

Tilting the Scale Contemporary articles on Asian American success are remarkably pliable constructs. They have expanded to incorporate new information and critiques of the 221

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model minority thesis. At the same time, they maintain the core elements of the original model minority thesis, that continues to address political and ideological concerns. The question remains: what is the overriding message expressed in these articles? Does the incorporation of new information and critiques balance the image of Asian American success and create a fair picture of the Asian experience in the 1980s, or do the articles largely perpetuate a stereotypic view of Asians as the model minority? I would argue that the portrayal of Asian Americans continues to be largely stereotypic. The dominant message conveyed is that Asian Americans are successful and have overcome discrimination with determination and hard work. This message is evident in the titles alone that grab the reader’s attention and impart an initial image of Asian Americans as successful. Beyond the titles, the image of Asian American success, and the explanatory emphasis on culture, family, and hard work, is constructed through a number of discursive mechanisms. First, the texts of articles invariably contain key sentences or passages that assign analytic priority to information that supports the model minority thesis. For example, the review of studies on the educational achievement of Asian Americans in the New York Times Magazine concludes with the sentence: ‘‘It is here [the family] that almost all the studies converge.’’31 This simple sentence plays the critical role of identifying and prioritizing the family as the key to success, even though studies might suggest a range of explanations. Similarly, the essayist in the New Republic observes: ‘‘Social scientists wonder just how this success was possible. . . . There is no single answer, but all the various explanations of the Asian-Americans’ success do tend to fall into one category: self-sufficiency.’’32 These two passages provide an interpretive framework for the reader. Second, the model minority thesis is upheld by passages that minimize the impact of contradictory information. This is most evident in the discussion on median Asian American family income. As mentioned earlier, six articles cite high median family incomes of Asian Americans as an indicator of success.33 Five of the articles acknowledge that this measure is problematic because Asian American families tend to have more income earners than the norm, or because there are large numbers of Asian Americans in poverty. The inclusion of this information, however, does not alter the dominant message that Asian Americans are economically successful. In four of the five articles, the authors minimize or discount the importance of the critiques.34 One article discusses the critiques, then says, ‘‘Yet success stories abound. Even among recent Indo-Chinese refugees, large numbers have climbed out of poverty and found jobs.’’35 Another article prefaces the critique of family income with the following line: ‘‘By at least one indicator, it seems hard to believe that Asian-Americans suffer greatly from discrimination.’’36 These minimizing passages are important for they enable authors to include potentially contradictory information yet still maintain the overall model minority thrust. 222

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Finally, the articles promote the model minority thesis through the selective use of scholarly research. Research studies that support the notion that families are the key to Asian American success appear as authoritative evidence. For example, three articles cite Harold Stevenson’s study of education in the United States, Japan, and Taiwan to substantiate their claim that Asian families instill a proclivity for hard work.37 On the other hand, research that is critical of the model minority thesis never appears in the articles. This is particularly true in the discussion on median family income. There are no references to the extensive body of research that shows that Asians earn less than their educational levels would normally warrant.

Conclusion I conclude this discussion with a simple but important image. Todd Gitlin, in describing how hegemonic ideologies operate, writes, they ‘‘stand still, in a sense, by moving.’’38 This analysis of the treatment of Asian Americans by the popular press illustrates how this process works. There was significant movement in the discourse on Asian Americans in the 1980s. The articles have been updated through the incorporation of new information. They have withstood critiques, not by denying them, but by acknowledging them and then minimizing their power through a variety of discursive techniques. They have maintained relevance in the 1980s by changing to address contemporary political issues.

Notes 1 William Petersen, ‘‘Success Story, Japanese–American Style,’’ New York Times Magazine, January 9, 1966, 20–1, 33, 36, 38, 40–1, 43. 2 ‘‘Success Story of One Minority in the U.S.,’’ U.S. News and World Report, December 26, 1966, 73–8. 3 Stokely Carmichael and Charles V. Hamilton, Black Power: The Politics of Liberation in America (New York: Vintage Books, 1967); and Frances Fox Piven and Richard Cloward, Poor People’s Movements (New York: Vintage Books, 1977). 4 ‘‘Success Story,’’ 73. 5 Petersen, ‘‘Success Story,’’ 21. 6 William Ryan, Blaming the Victim, rev. edn (New York: Vintage Books, 1976). 7 Ira Katznelson and M. Kesselman, The Politics of Power, 2nd edn (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1979). 8 Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, Schooling in Capitalist America: Educational Reform and the Contradictions of Economic Life (New York: Basic Books, 1976). 9 The ten articles reviewed in this section, chronologically ordered, are: ‘‘Asian Americans: A ‘Model Minority’,’’ Newsweek, December 6, 1982, 39, 41–2, 51; ‘‘Confucian Work Ethic,’’ Time, March 28, 1983, 52; ‘‘A Drive to Excel,’’ Newsweek-On Campus, April 1984, 4–8, 12–13; ‘‘A Formula for Success,’’ Newsweek, April 23, 1984, 77–8; Suzana McBee, ‘‘Asian Americans, Are They Making the Grade?,’’ U.S. News and World Report, April 1984, 41–3, 46–7;

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10 11 12 13

14

15

16

17

18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33

‘‘To America with Skills,’’ Time, July 8, 1985, 42–4; David Bell, ‘‘The Triumph of Asian Americans,’’ New Republic, July 1985, 24–31; Fox Butterfield, ‘‘Why Asians are Going to the Head of the Class,’’ New York Times Magazine, August 3, 1986, 19–24; Robert Oxnam, ‘‘Why Asians Succeed Here,’’ New York Times Magazine, November 30, 1986, 74–5, 89–90, 92; and Anthony Ramirez, ‘‘America’s Super Minority,’’ Fortune Magazine, November 24, 1986, 148–9, 152, 156, 160. Robert Gardner, Bryant Robey, and Peter C. Smith, ‘‘Asian Americans: Growth, Change, and Diversity,’’ Population Bulletin 40 (1985): 2–44. See ‘‘Confucian Work Ethic’’; ‘‘A Drive to Excel’’; and ‘‘A Formula for Success.’’ See ‘‘A Drive to Excel’’; ‘‘A Formula for Success’’; McBee, ‘‘Are They Making the Grade?’’; and Oxnam, ‘‘Why Asians Succeed Here.’’ See ‘‘Asian Americans, a ‘Model Minority’ ’’; ‘‘A Drive to Excel’’; ‘‘A Formula for Success’’; McBee, ‘‘Are They Making the Grade?’’; Bell, ‘‘The Triumph of Asian Americans’’; and Oxnam, ‘‘Why Asians Succeed Here.’’ See ‘‘Asian Americans, A ‘Model Minority’ ’’; ‘‘A Formula for Success’’; McBee, ‘‘Are They Making the Grade?’’; ‘‘To America with Skills’’; Bell, ‘‘The Triumph of Asian Americans’’; and Oxnam, ‘‘Why Asians Succeed Here.’’ Ben Tong, ‘‘The Ghetto of the Mind,’’ Amerasia Journal 1 (1971): 1–31; and Colin Watanabe, ‘‘Self-expression and the Asian American Experience,’’ Personnel and Guidance Journal 51 (1973): 390–6. Amado Cabezas, ‘‘The Asian American Today as an Economic Success Model’’ (Paper presented at Break the Silence: A Conference on Anti-Asian Violence, Berkeley, 1986); Kwang Chung Kim and W.M. Hurh, ‘‘Korean Americans and the ‘Success’ Image – A Critique,’’ Amerasia Journal 10 (1983): 3–21; and Morrison Wong, ‘‘The Cost of Being Chinese, Japanese, and Filipino,’’ Pacific Sociological Review 25 (1982): 59–78. See ‘‘Asian Americans, A ‘Model Minority’ ’’; ‘‘A Drive to Excel’’; McBee, ‘‘Are They Making the Grade’’; Butterfield, ‘‘Going to the Head of the Class’’; and Oxnam, ‘‘Why Asians Succeed Here.’’ See ‘‘Asian Americans, A ‘Model Minority’ ’’; ‘‘A Drive to Excel’’; ‘‘A Formula for Success’’; and Oxnam, ‘‘Why Asians Succeed Here.’’ See ‘‘Confucian Work Ethic’’; McBee, ‘‘Are They Making the Grade’’; Butterfield, ‘‘Going to the Head of the Class’’; and Oxnam, ‘‘Why Asians Succeed Here.’’ Michael Omi and Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1980s (New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986), 114. Oxnam, ‘‘Why Asians Succeed Here,’’ 89. McBee, ‘‘Are They Making the Grade?,’’ 42. Butterfield, ‘‘Going to the Head of the Class,’’ 20, 21. Omi and Winant, Racial Formation, 84. National Commission on Excellence in Education, A Nation at Risk (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1983). See ‘‘Confucian Work Ethic’’; ‘‘A Formula for Success’’; and Butterfield, ‘‘Going to the Head of the Class,’’ 21. Butterfield, ‘‘Going to the Head of the Class,’’ 21. ‘‘A Drive to Excel,’’ 8. Butterfield, ‘‘Going to the Head of the Class,’’ 21. Bell, ‘‘The Triumph of Asian Americans,’’ 26. Butterfield, ‘‘Going to the Head of the Class,’’ 24. Bell, ‘‘The Triumph of Asian Americans,’’ 26. See ‘‘Asian Americans, A ‘Model Minority’ ’’; ‘‘A Drive to Excel’’; ‘‘A Formula for Success’’; McBee, ‘‘Are They Making the Grade?’’; ‘‘To America with Skills’’; and Oxnam, ‘‘Why Asians Succeed Here.’’

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Asian Americans as the Model Minority 34 See ‘‘A Formula for Success’’; McBee, ‘‘Are They Making the Grade?’’; ‘‘To America with Skills’’; and Oxnam, ‘‘Why Asians Succeed Here.’’ 35 McBee, ‘‘Are They Making the Grade?,’’ 42. 36 Bell, ‘‘The Triumph of Asian Americans,’’ 28. 37 See ‘‘A Drive to Excel’’; McBee, ‘‘Are They Making the Grade?’’; and Butterfield, ‘‘Going to the Head of the Class.’’ 38 Todd Gitlin, ‘‘Television’s Screens: Hegemony in Transition,’’ in Cultural and Economic Reproduction in Education, Michael Apple, ed. (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982), 210.

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THIRTEEN

Mestiza Girlhood: Interracial Families in Chicago’s Filipino American Community since 1925* Barbara M. Posadas

This essay about the Filipino community in the years since 1925, explores one element of Filipino American group diversity and culture by focusing on the daughters born to interracial couples of Chicago’s old-timer generation.1 My examination of mestiza girlhood is divided into three areas: the women’s absorption and perpetuation of the ethnic heritage of their parents; the level of their interracial consciousness within and outside the nuclear family; and their subsequent integration into both Chicago’s Filipino American community and the wider world as measured by such indices as education, occupation, and social interaction. I have chosen to separate the offspring by sex so as to determine the extent of sex-stereotyped patterns of female childrearing with regard to schooling and dating. Further, the dynamics of mother–daughter and father– daughter bonds across the color line provide a unique opportunity to analyze minority divergence from dominant norms and problems.

The Community Filipino American ethnicity in Chicago today constitutes an amalgam born of time and circumstance. While records show that the first arrival of a Filipino in *Barbara M. Posadas ‘‘Mestiza Girlhood: Interracial Families in Chicago’s Filipino American Community since 1925.’’ In Asian Women United of California, Making Waves: An Anthology of Writings by and about Asian American Woman (Boston: Beacon Press, 1989), 273–82. ß 1989 by Asian Women United of California. Reprinted by Permission of Beacon Press, Boston.

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Chicago occurred in 1906,2 the substantial immigration, which would later be termed the ‘‘old-timers’ generation,’’ was confined to the period between 1925 and 1934. By the latter date Chicago’s Filipino population had undoubtedly surpassed the 1,796 noted in the 1930 federal census. The overwhelming majority of the migrants were young, unmarried men whose search for feminine company and whose establishment of an ethnic community were complicated by the absence of eligible Filipinas, by racism, and by the passage of the Tydings– McDuffie Act in 1934. This legislation set the Philippines on a course toward independence from the United States, but at the same time limited the previously unrestricted immigration of Philippine nationals to fifty per year. The effects of this law, together with problems stemming from the Depression, caused a reduction of approximately fifty in Chicago’s official Filipino population for 1940.3 Detail provided in the 1940 census permits the construction of a group portrait of Chicago Filipinos. In that year, the sex ratio of Filipinos in the city reflected past patterns and continued isolation; among the 1,259 Filipinos over twenty-five years of age, the proportion of men to women stood at twenty-five to one. Yet approximately 44 percent of these men were married. The presence of only forty-two married Filipinas in the city indicates that most marriages were interracial. For Filipino men in Chicago, choice of a white bride of Eastern or Southern European background was the typical course; 92 percent of those who married had done so outside their ethnic group.4 Given the categories of the 1940 census, it is impossible to determine as precisely the figures for interracial childbearing. Of the 1,740 Filipinos in Chicago, 422 were under the age of fifteen, most likely living with their parents. Since the number of endogamous marriages in Chicago was so small, most of these children were presumably born to interracial couples. While males still outnumbered females, the sex ratio among this age group was much more evenly balanced: 1.5 to 1.0.5 Subsequent censuses have failed to replicate the categories of the 1940 survey and to provide data on individual cities. In 1950, Filipinos were lumped with Koreans and Asian Indians in an ‘‘All Other’’ classification. The 1960 census reveals only that the Filipino population in Illinois had grown to 3,587, an 85.9 percent increase during the preceding twenty years. Happily, however, the 1970 census gives more detail and permits a tentative contrast between old-timers’ and newcomers’ marriage patterns. Of those men over forty-five years of age, 59 percent were married to women of another race, while among those under forty-four, intermarriage was restricted to 16 percent. Given the decade’s 252.8 percent growth rate of the Filipino population in Illinois, and the persistence of this rate throughout the 1970s – an increase of over forty thousand in twenty years – the contrast within the community between the old generation and the new is not surprising.6 Further complicating the pattern, an unknown number of men of the old-timer 227

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generation, once married to white women, found Filipino wives in their later years.

The Context Little has been written about Filipino American mestizo children. During the 1930s, as academicians and policy makers investigated what they called the Filipino ‘‘problem,’’ University of Southern California graduate students Benicio T. Catapusan and Severino F. Corpus focused on interracial family life. Catapusan stressed cultural conflict within the home: In the husband’s traditional home the father was the head of the family. . . . But in the current American situation . . . authority . . . is now exercised by the mother . . . under the presupposition that she is better adapted; she can think and act more quickly in American ways than does her Filipino husband.7

Four years later, in further treatment of the subject, Catapusan posited this consequence: ‘‘increasingly, in language, manners, ideals, and loyalties the mestizos . . . conform approximately to . . . American standards.’’ Could they, however, assimilate? Corpus theorized that second-generation Filipinos would experience (or constitute) a ‘‘social problem’’ if their small numbers forced them to seek spouses of ‘‘other races,’’ as had their Filipino fathers.8 More recent analysis has been contradictory. Writing in 1971, Alfredo N. Munoz argued: While looking more American than Filipino, the mestizos and mestizas feel more [like] Filipinos than Americans. They are rice-eaters instead of flour-consumers, Catholics instead of Protestants. They are at home with Filipinos more than they are with Americans.9

By contrast, anthropologist Edwin B. Almirol found that in Salinas, California, at Filipino kin and community gatherings . . . the English-speakers are a minority; . . . Filipinos of different generations, from grandparents to grandchildren, eat, sing, drink, and dance together to the music of recorded Filipino folk songs played loudly on a turn-table. The Americanborn and the mestizo often express their feelings of being left out during these occasions.10

Perhaps this study of ten Filipino American daughters in the Chicago area – ranging in age from mid-twenties to mid-fifties, in education from high school graduate to PhD, and in occupation from homemaker to university professor – can help reconcile these divergent views and, in addition, indicate how the mestizas’ cultural orientation was established. 228

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The Families The Chicago Filipino old-timers migrated to the Middle West in search of education and middle-class employment.11 Many had finished high school in the Islands and then completed at least a year at a Midwestern college or university or attended an urban commercial or technical institute. Though most had intended to return to the Islands with an American degree in hand, for various reasons those who made up the Chicago old-timer community failed to do so. As they struggled to support themselves and their new families, they found work as chauffeurs, busboys, and barbers – all service occupations shunned by white workers. More permanent employment was available in the late 1920s when the Pullman Company systematically recruited Filipinos to serve as attendants on railroad club cars, a job classification segregated by race from black sleeping car porters. At one time as many as three hundred Chicago Filipinos worked for the Pullman Company.12 While the old-timer Filipinos had more education than most males of their age in Chicago, the same was not true of their spouses. In most instances, the Filipinos married young women who either were the daughters of Eastern European immigrants or who were themselves migrants from rural America. Many of these women had dropped out of school after the eighth grade to begin factory work and contribute to their families’ income. They met their future Filipino husbands at dance halls and often suffered at least temporary ostracism from their families after their marriages. The interracial couples tended to cluster together with their husbands’ province-mates or fellow Pullman employees on the near North or West Sides of Chicago in apartment buildings whose owners were willing to rent to racially mixed couples. It is within this setting that two-thirds of the mestiza daughters grew to maturity between the early 1930s and the mid-1960s. Throughout their lives in their parents’ households, the women of this study were encouraged by Filipino fathers and white mothers alike to assimilate to the dominant society and to reject, in a sense, their ethnicity and race. Chicago made this task difficult: the city’s milieu emphasized ethnic and racial identity, frequently defining neighborhoods by it. Ethnic inhabitants, particularly in the city’s older sections, used language, food, and homeland traditions to reinforce group ties and to provide a heritage even for the mobile ethnics of their group who had left the neighborhoods of their youth. Blacks lived in segregation on the city’s South and West Sides, creating a virtual ‘‘city within a city’’ that was their own.13 In this setting, interracial couples and their children were an anomaly. Most women were from close-knit European ethnic backgrounds, but found that their unapproved marriages had shattered many old ties. Filipino men, defined by race, were confined with their families to marginal areas. Yet these interracial families were too few in number to establish a fully viable community. For them, 229

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then, disappearance into larger society promised escape from here-and-now difficulties.14 Parental backgrounds were not totally abandoned. Both crocheted handiwork from Polish grandmothers and straw handbags sent from the Philippines might be admired and used. Ethnic foods from each nationality might be served daily in some homes and on holidays in others. Filipino dialects and European languages might be heard when relatives and friends visited. Nonetheless parents generally sought to free their daughters from any practices or habits which might label them as different. Learning a language other than English at home was not considered, for a foreign tongue seemed to conflict with desired American behavior patterns. One daughter recalled her mother’s veto of brightly colored clothing: ‘‘You look like you just got off the boat.’’ Similarly, mestizas rejected pierced ears until teenage girls in general sought gold posts and dangling hoops. And as adolescents they spent their summers avoiding the darkening effects of the sun. The contrasting ethnic appearance between mothers and daughters could be traumatic for both. In the early 1950s a young mother walking with her two small daughters was stopped by a stranger who complimented her generosity in adopting war orphans. ‘‘They’re mine,’’ said the mother, an exchange which her then four-year-old child remembers to this day. In contrast, another pair recalled happy smiles when a casual acquaintance saw likeness enough to link the two as parent and offspring in a crowd. Most daughters, though, resembled their fathers more than their mothers, a fact which seems to have strengthened the normally close bond between fathers and their small daughters; no one could mistake Daddy’s little girl. Even in one rare instance when the child bore her mother’s blond hair and blue eyes, their almond shape and her slightly broad, flat nose testified to her Filipino father’s influence. Thus, throughout the years, as their daughters grew to maturity, Filipino fathers enjoyed a rare freedom from curiosity when in public with their children, a freedom regularly denied when husbands and wives, or mothers and children, ventured from home. The strength of the father–daughter bond could be noticed in other ways as well. Daughters generally recall that day-to-day responsibility for their rearing rested with their mothers. Many Filipino fathers, who worked as railroad attendants for the Pullman Company, were away from home for as long as a week at a time. Given these regular absences and the fact that few married women worked outside the home before World War II, discipline fell to them while their children were small.15 Fathers of preadolescent daughters reserved roles for themselves as companions and advisors. Work trips for Pullman employees were followed by layovers, periods of several days during which railroad workers recovered from the exertions of their most recent travel. Daughters uniformly recall anxiously waiting for their fathers’ return. Treats could be expected – ice cream, magazines, and occasionally a scarf or other trinket left by a forgetful passenger. During their long hours at home, fathers played board games and cards with 230

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their daughters; mothers continued their household chores. Similarly, because most mothers could not drive the family car, plans for special trips to doctors and dentists, and to museums and the distant zoo, were put off until those days when fathers would be in town. Because most Filipino men had more formal education than their wives, decisions concerning their children’s schooling commonly became the fathers’ responsibility. Many Filipino men had originally migrated from the Islands in the hope of obtaining an American high school or college education.16 When these dreams were dashed in their own lives, Filipino fathers hoped to fulfill them through the lives of their children. Because they came from a society that values the education of females as well as males,17 Filipino fathers encouraged their daughters to get as much education as they could, for schooling still seemed to them the most likely route to mobility in America. The mestizas’ level of educational achievement appears to have been affected by the generation during which they matured. Children born in the late 1920s and early 1930s rarely attended college. Given the absence of large scholarship and loan programs, families just emerging from the Depression found college tuition to be an insurmountable burden. So, after completing high school, the mestizas secured office work, white-collar employment which represented a step up from the light factory jobs their mothers had held before marriage and from the service occupations of their Filipino fathers. In the years immediately after World War II, Filipino American women responded, as did their peers, to the social pressure to marry and bear children. Even if they intended to resume work when their children reached school age, these mestizas thought of jobs and income levels rather than careers.18 In contrast more of the daughters who finished high school during the 1960s attended college. The society as a whole moved toward a four-year degree as the norm,19 and Filipino American families, like many others, endured sacrifices, juggled the monthly budget, and completed the confidential financial assistance forms that might result in funding. Fathers in particular worried over the courses in which their daughters enrolled. For some the urgency of parental concern, as well as modest resources, dictated that daughters live at home while pursuing higher education. One young woman who graduated from college in 1965 remembered her lack of freedom vividly: her father chose each class through her sophomore year, ultimately selecting mathematics as her major. She welcomed her graduation from a community college, which enabled her to flee to a public university in another state. While her example was atypically severe, other daughters were reminded that technical fields offered greater financial rewards and more prestige than traditional occupations such as teaching and nursing. Irrespective of the fields they ultimately chose, however, the daughters of this era were more likely than older daughters to regard their work as a lifelong career and to view their fathers’ influence as central to their educational achievement. As one professional woman in her mid-thirties remarked: 231

Barbara M. Posadas When I was growing up and we socialized with my mother’s ethnic relatives, it was clear that I was different from my cousins, not only because I was part Filipino, but also because I intended to go to college. All the other girls viewed an office job and marriage as their ultimate goal. If my father hadn’t pushed so hard, I’m sure I would have been caught in their world.

If strong bonds were forged with their fathers in these areas, daughters turned more frequently to their mothers for understanding and intervention as they began dating, because conflicts with their fathers often arose. Mothers and fathers alike upheld traditional standards of morality – ‘‘sex before marriage was a no-no.’’ Yet parents still disagreed over behavior. Filipino fathers, recalling both the customs of the Islands, when chaperones had been ever-present, and their own conduct as single men cut loose in America, argued for strict hours and close supervision. Mothers favored a middle ground. ‘‘She didn’t want me to run wild, but she was prepared to be reasonable,’’ said one daughter. Another daughter recalled: My mother was more liberal in the situation, let’s say, of people living together. She knew my sister had been living with her boyfriend [in the late 1960s] and never would tell my father. . . . It would have killed him.

So long as they remained in their parents’ homes, so long as they continued to be single, daughters found these tensions to be constant. Ironically, given the strictness of their fathers, the ethnic identity of the boys they dated and the men they married was rarely at issue. So long as their beaus were moral, respectful, sociable, and potentially good providers, ethnicity mattered little. None of the mestiza daughters married men wholly or even part Filipino – but neither did they choose spouses of their mothers’ ethnic backgrounds. These marriages, the births of their own children, their ties to their husbands’ families, and their own diverse friendships drew the mestiza daughters into a world that was more heterogeneous and more American. Race has handicapped the Chicago mestizas in rare, isolated instances. Each woman recalls an instance in which she was singled out as different – denied a party invitation as a child, subjected to a racial slur as an adult – but once on their own or married, they escaped their parents’ difficulties in finding housing or employment. If anything, affirmative action in recent years may have added a competitive edge: the Spanish surnames of their fathers have been known to catch the attention of job recruiters.

Mestiza Identity As should be clear by now, the perpetuation of Filipino culture was not a major emphasis in the upbringing of these mestiza daughters. To love one’s father, to be proud of one’s father, was not synonymous with knowledge of and pride in a 232

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Filipino heritage. The Islands themselves were a distant mystery to most. Those who visited the Philippines were shocked by the abject poverty and by the wide gulf between social classes. But even in this assessment, fathers lent support. Decades had passed and the land to which these men returned was rarely the land of their memories. The daughters of the old-timers’ generation were educated before ‘‘black power’’ and ‘‘white pride’’ spurred many other Americans to consider their own roots. Yet even if they had explored their ancestry, group identity would have remained elusive. The Filipino immigrant population grew in Chicago after immigration law changes in 1965, but many offspring of the old-timers’ generation found little of themselves in the imported culture of the newcomers. Daughters might gather at Chicago’s Rizal Center when the child of a family friend was married, but none belonged to the more than forty Filipino organizations in Chicago. The mestizas, like many others of multiple heritage, acknowledge their parental background, but function more as the products of an American mass culture than of an ethnic enclave.

Notes 1 An extended treatment of Filipino–white intermarriage is in Barbara M. Posadas, ‘‘Crossed Boundaries in Interracial Chicago: Filipino American Families since 1925,’’ Amerasia Journal 8(2) (1981): 31–52. Illinois did not bar interracial marriage between Filipinos and white women. The material for this study, part of a forthcoming book on the Filipino old-timers’ generation in Chicago, is derived almost exclusively from oral interviews conducted with a dozen elderly Filipinos and their families. See also Posadas, ‘‘The Hierarchy of Color and Psychological Adjustment in an Industrial Environment: Filipinos, the Pullman Company and the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters,’’ Labor History 23(3) (Summer 1982): 349–73; and Posadas and Roland L. Guyotte, ‘‘From Student Community to Immigrant Community: Chicago’s Filipinos before World War II’’ (Paper delivered at the Philippine Studies Conference, Ohio University, Athens, Ohio, August 1983). 2 Associated Filipino Press, VI, no. 2, 30 December 1934, cited in Bessie Louise Pierce Notes, Chicago Historical Society. 3 H. Brett Melendy, Asians in America: Filipinos, Koreans, and East Asians (Boston: Twayne, 1977), 251. Melendy’s seven chapters on Filipinos in America constitute the best survey of this subject. For material on the Chicago community, see Albert W. Palmer, Orientals in American Life (New York: Friendship Press, 1934), 94–102; Paul G. Cressey, The Taxi-Dance Hall: A Sociological Study in Commercialized Recreation and City Life (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1932), 145–74; and Benny F. Feria, Filipino Son (Boston: Meader, 1954). 4 US Bureau of the Census, 1940 Census of Population: Characteristics of the Nonwhite Population by Race (Washington, DC, 1943), 109–10. See also, Posadas, ‘‘Crossed Boundaries.’’ 5 US Bureau of the Census, 1940, 109. 6 US Bureau of the Census, 1950 Census of Population. Vol. II: Characteristics of the Population. Part 13; Illinois (Washington, DC, 1952); US Bureau of the Census, 1960 Census of Population. Vol. 1: Characteristics of the Population Part 15: Illinois (Washington, DC, 1963), 15–58; US Bureau of the Census, 1970 Census of Population, Subject Reports: Japanese, Chinese, and Filipinos in the United States (Washington, DC, 1973), 140; US Bureau of the Census, 1980 Census of Population. Race of the Population by States: 1980 (Washington, DC, 1981), 13.

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Barbara M. Posadas 7 Benicio T. Catapusan, ‘‘Filipino Intermarriage Problems in the United States,’’ Sociology and Social Research 22 (January–February 1938): 269–70. 8 Catapusan, ‘‘The Social Adjustment of Filipinos in the United States’’ (PhD diss., University of Southern California, 1940), 86; and Severino F. Corpus, ‘‘Second Generation Filipinos in Los Angeles,’’ Sociology and Social Research 22 (May–June 1938): 450. 9 Alfredo N. Munoz, The Filipinos in America (Los Angeles: Mountainview, 1971), 119. 10 Edwin B. Almirol, ‘‘Ethnic Identity and Social Negotiation: A Study of a Filipino Community in California’’ (PhD diss., University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, 1977), 169. 11 As a group, the Chicago Filipinos were more educated than their California contemporaries. Median years of schooling for the Chicagoans stood at 12.2 in 1940; for Californians, the figure was 6.8. See Posadas, ‘‘Crossed Boundaries,’’ 34. 12 See Posadas, ‘‘The Hierarchy of Color.’’ 13 See, for example, Humbert S. Nelli, Italians in Chicago, 1880–1930 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970); and Allan Spear, Black Chicago: The Making of a Negro Ghetto, 1890–1920 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967). 14 In contrast, on black–white intermarriages in Chicago, see St. Clair Drake and Horace R. Cayton, Black Metropolis: A Study of Negro Life in a Northern City (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1962 [1945]), 129–59. 15 Lois W. Banner, Women in Modern America: A Brief History (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1974), 191–6. 16 Posadas, ‘‘Crossed Boundaries,’’ 35, 40; and Posadas and Guyotte, ‘‘From Student Community to Immigrant Community.’’ 17 Encarnacion Alzona, A History of Education in the Philippines, 1565–1930 (Manila: University of the Philippines Press, 1932), 240–337; and Dorothy L. Cordova, ‘‘Educational Alternatives for Asian-Pacific Women,’’ in US Dept. of Education, National Institute of Education, Conference on the Educational and Occupational Needs of Asian-Pacific American Women (Washington, DC, 1980), 143. 18 Carl N. Degler, At Odds: Women and the Family in America from the Revolution to the Present (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980), 418–35. 19 Christopher Jencks and David Riesman, The Academic Revolution (New York: Doubleday, 1968); and Roland L. Guyotte, ‘‘Liberal Education and the American Dream: Public Attitudes and the Emergence of Mass Higher Education, 1920–1950’’ (PhD diss., Northwestern University, 1980).

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CHAPTER

FOURTEEN

Looking for My Penis: The Eroticized Asian in Gay Video Porn* Richard Fung

Several scientists have begun to examine the relation between personality and human reproductive behaviour from a gene-based evolutionary perspective. . . . In this vein we reported a study of racial difference in sexual restraint such that Orientals > whites > blacks. Restraint was indexed in numerous ways, having in common a lowered allocation of bodily energy to sexual functioning. We found the same racial pattern occurred on gamete production (dizygotic birthing frequency per 100: Mongoloids, 4; Caucasoids, 8; Negroids, 16), intercourse frequencies (premarital, marital, extramarital), developmental precocity (age at first intercourse, age at first pregnancy, number of pregnancies), primary sexual characteristics (size of penis, vagina, testis, ovaries), secondary sexual characteristics (salient voice, muscularity, buttocks, breasts), and biologic control of behaviour (periodicity of sexual response, predictability of life history from onset of puberty), as well as in androgen levels and sexual attitudes.1

This passage from the Journal of Research in Personality was written by University of Western Ontario psychologist Philippe Rushton, who enjoys considerable controversy in Canadian academic circles and in the popular media. His thesis, articulated throughout his work, appropriates biological studies of the continuum of reproductive strategies of oysters through to chimpanzees and posits that degree of ‘‘sexuality’’ – interpreted as penis and vagina size, frequency of intercourse, buttock and lip size – correlates positively with criminality and sociopathic behavior and inversely with intelligence, health, and longevity. Rushton sees race as the determining factor and places East Asians (Rushton uses the word Orientals) on one end of the spectrum and blacks on the other. Since whites fall squarely in the middle, the position of perfect balance, there is no need for analysis, and they remain free of scrutiny. *Richard Fung ‘‘Looking for My Penis: The Eroticized Asian in Gay Video Porn.’’ In Bad Object-Choices (ed.), How Do I Look? Queer Film and Video (Seattle: Bay Press), 145–68.

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Notwithstanding its profound scientific shortcomings, Rushton’s work serves as an excellent articulation of a dominant discourse on race and sexuality in Western society – a system of ideas and reciprocal practices that originated in Europe simultaneously with (some argue as a conscious justification for2) colonial expansion and slavery. In the nineteenth century these ideas took on a scientific gloss with social Darwinism and eugenics. Now they reappear, somewhat altered, in psychology journals from the likes of Rushton. It is important to add that these ideas have also permeated the global popular consciousness. Anyone who has been exposed to Western television or advertising images, which is much of the world, will have absorbed this particular constellation of stereotyping and racial hierarchy. In Trinidad in the 1960s, on the outer reaches of the empire, everyone in my schoolyard was thoroughly versed in these ‘‘truths’’ about the races. Historically, most organizing against racism has concentrated on fighting discrimination that stems from the intelligence–social behavior variable assumed by Rushton’s scale. Discrimination based on perceived intellectual ability does, after all, have direct ramifications in terms of education and employment, and therefore for survival. Until recently, issues of gender and sexuality remained a low priority for those who claimed to speak for the communities.3 But antiracist strategies that fail to subvert the race–gender status quo are of seriously limited value. Racism cannot be narrowly defined in terms of race hatred. Race is a factor in even our most intimate relationships. The contemporary construction of race and sex as exemplified by Rushton has endowed black people, both men and women, with a threatening hypersexuality. Asians, on the other hand, are collectively seen as undersexed.4 But here I want to make some crucial distinctions. First, in North America, stereotyping has focused almost exclusively on what recent colonial language designates as ‘‘Orientals’’ – that is East and Southeast Asian peoples – as opposed to the ‘‘Orientalism’’ discussed by Edward Said, which concerns the Middle East. This current, popular usage is based more on a perception of similar physical features – black hair, ‘‘slanted’’ eyes, high cheek bones, and so on – than through a reference to common cultural traits. South Asians, people whose backgrounds are in the Indian subcontinent and Sri Lanka, hardly figure at all in North American popular representations, and those few images are ostensibly devoid of sexual connotation.5 Second, within the totalizing stereotype of the ‘‘Oriental,’’ there are competing and sometimes contradictory sexual associations based on nationality. So, for example, a person could be seen as Japanese and somewhat kinky, or Filipino and ‘‘available.’’ The very same person could also be seen as ‘‘Oriental’’ and therefore sexless. In addition, the racial hierarchy revamped by Rushton is itself in tension with an earlier and only partially eclipsed depiction of all Asians as having an undisciplined and dangerous libido. I am referring to the writings of the early European explorers and missionaries, but also to antimiscegenation laws and such specific legislation as the 1912 Saskatchewan law that barred white women from employment in Chinese-owned businesses. 236

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Finally, East Asian women figure differently from men both in reality and in representation. In ‘‘Lotus Blossoms Don’t Bleed,’’ Renee Tajima points out that in Hollywood films: There are two basic types: the Lotus Blossom Baby (a.k.a. China Doll, Geisha Girl, shy Polynesian beauty, et al.) and the Dragon Lady (Fu Manchu’s various female relations, prostitutes, devious madames). . . . Asian women in film are, for the most part, passive figures who exist to serve men – as love interests for white men (re: Lotus Blossoms) or as partners in crime for men of their own kind (re: Dragon Ladies).6 Dutiful creatures that they are, Asian women are often assigned the task of expendability in a situation of illicit love. . . . Noticeably lacking is the portrayal of love relationships between Asian women and Asian men, particularly as lead characters.7

Because of their supposed passivity and sexual compliance, Asian women have been fetishized in dominant representation, and there is a large and growing body of literature by Asian women on the oppressiveness of these images. Asian men, however – at least since Sessue Hayakawa, who made a Hollywood career in the 1920s of representing the Asian man as sexual threat8 – have been consigned to one of two categories: the egghead/wimp, or – in what may be analogous to the lotus blossom–dragon lady dichotomy – the kung fu master/ ninja/samurai. He is sometimes dangerous, sometimes friendly, but almost always characterized by a desexualized Zen asceticism. So whereas, as Fanon tells us, ‘‘the Negro is eclipsed. He is turned into a penis. He is a penis,’’9 the Asian man is defined by a striking absence down there. And if Asian men have no sexuality, how can we have homosexuality? Even as recently as the early 1980s, I remember having to prove my queer credentials before being admitted with other Asian men into a Toronto gay club. I do not believe it was a question of a color barrier. Rather, my friends and I felt that the doorman was genuinely unsure about our sexual orientation. We also felt that had we been white and dressed similarly, our entrance would have been automatic.10 Although a motto for the lesbian and gay movements has been ‘‘we are everywhere,’’ Asians are largely absent from the images produced by both the political and the commercial sectors of the mainstream gay and lesbian communities. From the earliest articulation of the Asian gay and lesbian movements, a principal concern has therefore been visibility. In political organizing, the demand for a voice, or rather the demand to be heard, has largely been responded to by the problematic practice of ‘‘minority’’ representation on panels and boards.11 But since racism is a question of power and not of numbers, this strategy has often led to a dead-end tokenistic integration, failing to address the real imbalances. Creating a space for Asian gay and lesbian representation has meant, among other things, deepening an understanding of what is at stake for Asians in 237

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coming out publicly.12 As is the case for many other people of color and especially immigrants, our families and our ethnic communities are a rare source of affirmation in a racist society. In coming out, we risk (or feel that we risk) losing this support, though the ever-growing organizations of lesbian and gay Asians have worked against this process of cultural exile. In my own experience, the existence of a gay Asian community broke down the cultural schizophrenia in which I related on the one hand to a heterosexual family that affirmed my ethnic culture and, on the other, to a gay community that was predominantly white. Knowing that there was support also helped me come out to my family and further bridge the gap. If we look at commercial gay sexual representation, it appears that the antiracist movements have had little impact: the images of men and male beauty are still of white men and white male beauty. These are the standards against which we compare both ourselves and often our brothers – Asian, black, native, and Latino.13 Although other people’s rejection (or fetishization) of us according to the established racial hierarchies may be experienced as oppressive, we are not necessarily moved to scrutinize our own desire and its relationship to the hegemonic image of the white man.14 In my lifelong vocation of looking for my penis, trying to fill in the visual void, I have come across only a handful of primary and secondary references to Asian male sexuality in North American representation. Even in my own video work, the stress has been on deconstructing sexual representation and only marginally on creating erotica. So I was very excited at the discovery of a Vietnamese American working in gay porn. Having acted in six videotapes, Sum Yung Mahn is perhaps the only Asian to qualify as a gay porn ‘‘star.’’ Variously known as Brad Troung or Sam or Sum Yung Mahn, he has worked for a number of different production studios. All of the tapes in which he appears are distributed through International Wavelength, a San Francisco-based mail order company whose catalog entries feature Asians in American, Thai, and Japanese productions. According to the owner of International Wavelength, about 90 percent of the Asian tapes are bought by white men, and the remaining 10 percent are purchased by Asians. But the number of Asian buyers is growing. In examining Sum Yung Mahn’s work, it is important to recognize the different strategies used for fitting an Asian actor into the traditionally white world of gay porn and how the terms of entry are determined by the perceived demands of an intended audience. Three tapes, each geared toward a specific erotic interest, illustrate these strategies. Below the Belt (1985, directed by Philip St. John, California Dream Machine Productions), like most porn tapes, has an episodic structure. All the sequences involve the students and sensei of an all-male karate dojo. The authenticity of the setting is proclaimed with the opening shots of a gym full of gi-clad, seriousfaced young men going through their weapons exercises. Each of the main actors 238

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is introduced in turn; with the exception of the teacher, who has dark hair, all fit into the current porn conventions of Aryan, blond, shaved, good looks.15 Moreover, since Sum Yung Mahn is not even listed in the opening credits, we can surmise that this tape is not targeted to an audience with any particular erotic interest in Asian men. Most gay video porn exclusively uses white actors; those tapes having the least bit of racial integration are pitched to the speciality market through outlets such as International Wavelength.16 This visual apartheid stems, I assume, from an erroneous perception that the sexual appetites of gay men are exclusive and unchangeable. A Karate dojo offers a rich opportunity to introduce Asian actors. One might imagine it as the gay Orientalist’s dream project. But given the intended audience for this video, the erotic appeal of the dojo, except for the costumes and a few misplaced props (Taiwanese and Korean flags for a Japanese art form?), are completely appropriated into a white world. The tape’s action occurs in a gym, in the students’ apartments, and in a garden. The one scene with Sum Yung Mahn is a dream sequence. Two students, Robbie and Stevie, are sitting in a locker room. Robbie confesses that he has been having strange dreams about Greg, their teacher. Cut to the dream sequence, which is coded by clouds of green smoke. Robbie is wearing a red headband with black markings suggesting script (if indeed they belong to an Asian language, they are not the Japanese or Chinese characters that one would expect). He is trapped in an elaborate snare. Enter a character in a black ninja mask, wielding a nanchaku. Robbie narrates: ‘‘I knew this evil samurai would kill me.’’ The masked figure is menacingly running the nanchaku chain under Robbie’s genitals when Greg, the teacher, appears and disposes of him. Robbie explains to Stevie in the locker room: ‘‘I knew that I owed him my life, and I knew I had to please him [long pause] in any way that he wanted.’’ During that pause we cut back to the dream. Amid more puffs of smoke, Greg, carrying a man in his arms, approaches a low platform. Although Greg’s back is toward the camera, we can see that the man is wearing the red headband that identifies him as Robbie. As Greg lays him down, we see that Robbie has ‘‘turned Japanese’’! It’s Sum Yung Mahn. Greg fucks Sum Yung Mahn, who is always face down. The scene constructs anal intercourse for the Asian Robbie as an act of submission, not of pleasure: unlike other scenes of anal intercourse in the tape, for example, there is no dubbed dialogue on the order of ‘‘Oh yeah . . . fuck me harder!’’ but merely ambiguous groans. Without coming, Greg leaves. A group of (white) men wearing Japanese outfits encircle the platform, and Asian Robbie, or ‘‘the Oriental boy,’’ as he is listed in the final credits, turns to lie on his back. He sucks a cock, licks someone’s balls. The other men come all over his body; he comes. The final shot of the sequence zooms in to a close-up of Sum Yung Mahn’s headband, which dissolves to a similar close-up of Robbie wearing the same headband, emphasizing that the two actors represent one character. 239

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We now cut back to the locker room. Robbie’s story has made Stevie horny. He reaches into Robbie’s pants, pulls out his penis, and sex follows. In his Asian manifestation, Robbie is fucked and sucks others off (Greek passive/French active/bottom). His passivity is pronounced, and he is never shown other than prone. As a white man, his role is completely reversed: he is at first sucked off by Stevie, and then he fucks him (Greek active/French passive/top). Neither of Robbie’s manifestations veers from his prescribed role. To a greater extent than most other gay porn tapes, Below the Belt is directly about power. The hierarchical dojo setting is milked for its evocation of dominance and submission. With the exception of one very romantic sequence midway through the tape, most of the actors stick to their defined roles of top or bottom. Sex, especially anal sex, as punishment is a recurrent image. In this genre of gay pornography, the role-playing in the dream sequence is perfectly apt. What is significant, however, is how race figures into the equation. In a tape that appropriates emblems of Asian power (karate), the only place for a real Asian actor is as a caricature of passivity. Sum Yung Mahn does not portray an Asian, but rather the literalization of a metaphor, so that by being passive, Robbie actually becomes ‘‘Oriental.’’ At a more practical level, the device of the dream also allows the producers to introduce an element of the mysterious, the exotic, without disrupting the racial status quo of the rest of the tape. Even in the dream sequence, Sum Yung Mahn is at the center of the frame as spectacle, having minimal physical involvement with the men around him. Although the sequence ends with his climax, he exists for the pleasure of others. Richard Dyer, writing about gay porn, states that although the pleasure of anal sex (that is, of being anally fucked) is represented, the narrative is never organized around the desire to be fucked, but around the desire to ejaculate (whether or not following from anal intercourse). Thus, although at a level of public representation gay men may be thought of as deviant and disruptive of masculine norms because we assert the pleasure of being fucked and the eroticism of the anus, in our pornography this takes a back seat.17

Although Tom Waugh’s amendment to this argument – that anal pleasure is represented in individual sequences18 – also holds true for Below the Belt, as a whole the power of the penis and the pleasure of ejaculation are clearly the narrative’s organizing principles. As with the vast majority of North American tapes featuring Asians, the problem is not the representation of anal pleasure per se, but rather that the narratives privilege the penis while always assigning the Asian the role of bottom; Asian and anus are conflated. In the case of Sum Yung Mahn, being fucked may well be his personal sexual preference. But the fact remains that there are very few occasions in North American video porn in which an Asian fucks a white man, so few, in fact, that International Wavelength promotes the tape Studio X (1986) with the blurb ‘‘Sum Yung Mahn makes history as the first Asian who fucks a non-Asian.’’19 240

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Although I agree with Waugh that in gay as opposed to straight porn ‘‘the spectator’s positions in relation to the representations are open and in flux,’’20 this observation applies only when all the participants are white. Race introduces another dimension that may serve to close down some of this mobility. This is not to suggest that the experience of gay men of color with this kind of sexual representation is the same as that of heterosexual women with regard to the gendered gaze of straight porn. For one thing, Asian gay men are men. We can therefore physically experience the pleasures depicted on the screen, since we too have erections and ejaculations and can experience anal penetration. A shifting identification may occur despite the racially defined roles, and most gay Asian men in North America are used to obtaining pleasure from all-white pornography. This, of course, goes hand in hand with many problems of selfimage and sexual identity. Still, I have been struck by the unanimity with which gay Asian men I have met, from all over this continent as well as from Asia, immediately identify and resist these representations. Whenever I mention the topic of Asian actors in American porn, the first question I am asked is whether the Asian is simply shown getting fucked. Asian Knights (1985, directed by Ed Sung, William Richhe Productions), the second tape I want to consider, has an Asian producer-director and a predominantly Asian cast. In its first scenario, two Asian men, Brad and Rick, are seeing a white psychiatrist because they are unable to have sex with each other: Rick: We never have sex with other Asians. We usually have sex with Caucasian guys. Counselor: Have you had the opportunity to have sex together? Rick: Yes, a coupla times, but we never get going.

Homophobia, like other forms of oppression, is seldom dealt with in gay video porn. With the exception of safe sex tapes that attempt a rare blend of the pedagogical with the pornographic, social or political issues are not generally associated with the erotic. It is therefore unusual to see one of the favored discussion topics for gay Asian consciousness-raising groups employed as a sex fantasy in Asian Knights. The desexualized image of Asian men that I have described has seriously affected our relationships with one another, and often gay Asian men find it difficult to see each other beyond the terms of platonic friendship or competition, to consider other Asian men as lovers. True to the conventions of porn, minimal counseling from the psychiatrist convinces Rick and Brad to shed their clothes. Immediately sprouting erections, they proceed to have sex. But what appears to be an assertion of gay Asian desire is quickly derailed. As Brad and Rick make love on the couch, the camera crosscuts to the psychiatrist looking on from an armchair. The rhetoric of the editing suggests that we are observing the two Asian men from his point of view. Soon the white man takes off his clothes and joins in. He immediately takes up a position at the center of the action – and at the center of the frame. What 241

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appeared to be a ‘‘conversion fantasy’’ for gay Asian desire was merely a ruse. Brad and Rick’s temporary mutual absorption really occurs to establish the superior sexual draw of the white psychiatrist, a stand-in for the white male viewer, who is the real sexual subject of the tape. And the question of Asian– Asian desire, though presented as the main narrative force of the sequence, is deflected, or rather reframed from a white perspective. Sex between the two Asian men in this sequence can be related somewhat to heterosexual sex in some gay porn films, such as those produced by the Gage brothers. In Heatstroke (1982), for example, sex with a woman is used to establish the authenticity of the straight man who is about to be seduced into gay sex. It dramatizes the significance of the conversion from the sanctioned object of desire, underscoring the power of the gay man to incite desire in his socially defined superior. It is also tied up with the fantasies of (female) virginity and conquest in Judeo-Christian and other patriarchal societies. The therapysession sequence of Asian Knights also suggests parallels to representations of lesbians in straight porn, representations that are not meant to eroticize women loving women, but rather to titillate and empower the sexual ego of the heterosexual male viewer. Asian Knights is organized to sell representations of Asians to white men. Unlike Sum Yung Mahn in Below the Belt, the actors are therefore more expressive and sexually assertive, as often the seducers as the seduced. But though the roles shift during the predominantly oral sex, the Asians remain passive in anal intercourse, except that they are now shown to want it! How much this assertion of agency represents a step forward remains a question. Even in the one sequence of Asian Knights in which the Asian actor fucks the white man, the scenario privileges the pleasure of the white man over that of the Asian. The sequence begins with the Asian reading a magazine. When the white man (played by porn star Eric Stryker) returns home from a hard day at the office, the waiting Asian asks how his day went, undresses him (even taking off his socks), and proceeds to massage his back.21 The Asian man acts the role of the mythologized geisha or ‘‘the good wife’’ as fantasized in the mail-order bride business. And, in fact, the ‘‘house boy’’ is one of the most persistent white fantasies about Asian men. The fantasy is also a reality in many Asian countries where economic imperialism gives foreigners, whatever their race, the pick of handsome men in financial need. The accompanying cultural imperialism grants status to those Asians with white lovers. White men who for various reasons, especially age, are deemed unattractive in their own countries, suddenly find themselves elevated and desired. From the opening shot of painted lotus blossoms on a screen to the shot of a Japanese garden that separates the episodes, from the Chinese pop music to the chinoiserie in the apartment, there is a conscious attempt in Asian Knights to evoke a particular atmosphere.22 Self-conscious ‘‘Oriental’’ signifiers are part and parcel of a colonial fantasy – and reality – that empowers one kind of gay man over another. Though I have known Asian men in dependent relations with 242

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older, wealthier white men, as an erotic fantasy the house boy scenario tends to work one way. I know of no scenarios of Asian men and white house boys. It is not the representation of the fantasy that offends, or even the fantasy itself, rather the uniformity with which these narratives reappear and the uncomfortable relationship they have to real social conditions. International Skin (1985, directed by William Richhe, N’wayvo Richhe Productions), as its name suggests, features a Latino, a black man, Sum Yung Mahn, and a number of white actors. Unlike the other tapes I have discussed, there are no ‘‘Oriental’’ devices. And although Sum Yung Mahn and all the men of color are inevitably fucked (without reciprocating), there is mutual sexual engagement between the white and nonwhite characters. In this tape Sum Yung Mahn is Brad, a film student making a movie for his class. Brad is the narrator, and the film begins with a self-reflexive ‘‘head and shoulders’’ shot of Sum Yung Mahn explaining the scenario. The film we are watching supposedly represents Brad’s point of view. But here again the tape is not targeted to black, Asian, or Latino men; though Brad introduces all of these men as his friends, no two men of color ever meet on screen. Men of color are not invited to participate in the internationalism that is being sold, except through identification with white characters. This tape illustrates how an agenda of integration becomes problematic if it frames the issue solely in terms of black– white, Asian–white mixing: it perpetuates a system of white-centeredness. The gay Asian viewer is not constructed as sexual subject in any of this work – not on the screen, not as a viewer. I may find Sum Yung Mahn attractive, I may desire his body, but I am always aware that he is not meant for me. I may lust after Eric Stryker and imagine myself as the Asian who is having sex with him, but the role the Asian plays in the scene with him is demeaning. It is not that there is anything wrong with the image of servitude per se, but rather that it is one of the few fantasy scenarios in which we figure, and we are always in the role of servant. Are there then no pleasures for an Asian viewer? The answer to this question is extremely complex. There is first of all no essential Asian viewer. The race of the person viewing says nothing about how race figures in his or her own desires. Uniracial white representations in porn may not in themselves present a problem in addressing many gay Asian men’s desires. But the issue is not simply that porn may deny pleasures to some gay Asian men. We also need to examine what role the pleasure of porn plays in securing a consensus about race and desirability that ultimately works to our disadvantage. Though the sequences I have focused on in the preceding examples are those in which the discourses about Asian sexuality are most clearly articulated, they do not define the totality of depiction in these tapes. Much of the time the actors merely reproduce or attempt to reproduce the conventions of pornography. The fact that, with the exception of Sum Yung Mahn, they rarely succeed – because of their body type, because Midwestern-cowboy-porn dialect with Vietnamese intonation is just a bit incongruous, because they groan or gyrate just a bit too 243

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much – more than anything brings home the relative rigidity of the genre’s codes. There is little seamlessness here. There are times, however, when the actors appear neither as simulated whites nor as symbolic others. There are several moments in International Skin, for example, in which the focus shifts from the genitals to hands caressing a body; these moments feel to me more ‘‘genuine.’’ I do not mean this in the sense of an essential Asian sexuality, but rather a moment is captured in which the actor stops pretending. He does not stop acting, but he stops pretending to be a white porn star. I find myself focusing on moments like these, in which the racist ideology of the text seems to be temporarily suspended or rather eclipsed by the erotic power of the moment. In ‘‘Pornography and the Doubleness of Sex for Women,’’ Joanna Russ writes Sex is ecstatic, autonomous and lovely for women. Sex is violent, dangerous and unpleasant for women. I don’t mean a dichotomy (i.e., two kinds of women or even two kinds of sex) but rather a continuum in which no one’s experience is wholly positive or negative.23

Gay Asian men are men and therefore not normally victims of the rape, incest, or other sexual harassment to which Russ is referring. However, there is a kind of doubleness, of ambivalence, in the way that Asian men experience contemporary North American gay communities. The ‘‘ghetto,’’ the mainstream gay movement, can be a place of freedom and sexual identity. But it is also a site of racial, cultural, and sexual alienation sometimes more pronounced than that in straight society. For me sex is a source of pleasure, but also a site of humiliation and pain. Released from the social constraints against expressing overt racism in public, the intimacy of sex can provide my (non-Asian) partner an opening for letting me know my place – sometimes literally, as when after we come, he turns over and asks where I come from.24 Most gay Asian men I know have similar experiences. This is just one reality that differentiates the experiences and therefore the political priorities of gay Asians and, I think, other gay men of color from those of white men. For one thing we cannot afford to take a libertarian approach. Porn can be an active agent in representing and reproducing a sex–race status quo. We cannot attain a healthy alliance without coming to terms with these differences. The barriers that impede pornography from providing representations of Asian men that are erotic and politically palatable (as opposed to correct) are similar to those that inhibit the Asian documentary, the Asian feature, the Asian experimental film and videotape. We are seen as too peripheral, not commercially viable – not the general audience. Looking for Longston (1988),25 which is the first film I have seen that affirms rather than appropriates the sexuality of black gay men, was produced under exceptional economic circumstances that freed it from the constraints of the marketplace.26 Should we call for an independent gay Asian pornography? Perhaps I am, in a utopian sort of way, though 244

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I feel that the problems in North America’s porn conventions are manifold and go beyond the question of race. There is such a limited vision of what constitutes the erotic. In Canada, the major debate about race and representation has shifted from an emphasis on the image to a discussion of appropriation and control of production and distribution – who gets to produce the work. But as we have seen in the case of Asian Knights, the race of the producer is no automatic guarantee of ‘‘consciousness’’ about these issues or of a different product. Much depends on who is constructed as the audience for the work. In any case, it is not surprising that under capitalism, finding my penis may ultimately be a matter of dollars and cents.

Discussion Audience member

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Simon Watney

You made a comment about perceived distinctions between Chinese and Japanese sexuality. I have no idea what you mean. In the West, there are specific sexual ambiences associated with the different Asian nationalities, sometimes based on cultural artifacts, sometimes on mere conjecture. These discourses exist simultaneously, even though in conflict with, totalizing notions of ‘‘Oriental’’ sexuality. Japanese male sexuality has come to be identified with strength, virility, perhaps a certain kinkiness, as signified for example by the clothing and gestures in Below the Belt. Japanese sexuality is seen as more ‘‘potent’’ than Chinese sexuality, which is generally represented as more passive and languorous. At the same time, there is the cliche´ that ‘‘all Orientals look alike.’’ So in this paradox of the invisibility of difference lies the fascination. If he can ascertain where I’m from, he feels that he knows what he can expect from me. In response to this query about ‘‘ethnic origins,’’ a friend of mine answers, ‘‘Where would you like me to be from?’’ I like this response because it gently confronts the question while maintaining the erotic possibilities of the moment. I wanted to point out that the first film you showed, Below the Belt, presents us with a classic anxiety dream image. In it there is someone whose identity is that of a top man, but that identity is established in relation to a competing identity that allows him to enjoy sexual passivity, which is represented as a racial identity. It’s as if he were in racial drag. I thought this film was extraordinary. Under what 245

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other conditions are Caucasian men invited to fantasize ourselves as racially other? And it seems to me that the only condition that would allow the visibility of that fantasy to be acted out in this way is the prior anxiety about a desired role, about top and bottom positions. This film is incredibly transparent and unconscious about how it construes or confuses sexual role-playing in relation to race. And the thrust of it all seems to be the construction of the Asian body as a kind of conciliatory pseudoheterosexuality for the white ‘‘top,’’ who has anus envy, as it were. I completely agree. The film says too much for its own good by making this racist agenda so clear. I think your presentation was really important, and it parallels research I’m doing with regard to the image of Latino men in gay male porn. I wondered if you might comment a bit more, however, about the class relations you find within this kind of work. For example, I’ve found a consistent theme running throughout gay white male porn of Latino men represented as either campesino or criminal. That is, it focuses less on body type – masculine, slight, or whatever – than on signifiers of class. It appears to be a class fantasy collapsed with a race fantasy, and in a way it parallels the actual power relations between the Latino stars and the producers and distributors, most of whom are white. There are ways in which your comments can also apply to Asians. Unlike whites and blacks, most Asians featured in gay erotica are younger men. Since youth generally implies less economic power, class-race hierarchies appear in most of the work. In the tapes I’ve been looking at, the occupations of the white actors are usually specified, while those of the Asians are not. The white actors are assigned fantasy appeal based on profession, whereas for the Asians, the sexual cachet of race is deemed sufficient. In Asian Knights there are also sequences in which the characters’ lack of ‘‘work’’ carries connotations of the housewife or, more particularly, the house boy. But there is at least one other way to look at this discrepancy. The lack of a specified occupation may be taken to suggest that the Asian actor is the subject of the fantasy, a surrogate for the Asian viewer, and therefore does not need to be coded with specific attributes.

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Tom Waugh

Fung

Waugh Fung

Audience member

Fung

I think your comparison of the way the Asian male body is used in gay white porn to the way lesbianism is employed in heterosexual pornography is very interesting. You also suggested that racial markers in gay porn tend to close down its potential for openness and flux in identifications. Do you think we can take it further and say that racial markers in gay porn replicate, or function in the same way as, gender markers do in heterosexual pornography? What, in fact, I intended to say with my comparison of the use of lesbians in heterosexual porn and that of Asian male bodies in white gay male porn was that they’re similar but also very different. I think that certain comparisons of gender with race are appropriate, but there are also profound differences. The fact that Asian gay men are men means that, as viewers, our responses to this work are grounded in our gender and the way gender functions in this society. Lesbians are women, with all that that entails. I suspect that although most Asian gay men experience ambivalence with white gay porn, the issues for women in relation to heterosexual pornography are more fundamental. The same rigidity of roles seems to be present in most situations. Yes, that’s true. If you notice the way the Asian body is spoken of in Rushton’s work, the terms he uses are otherwise used when speaking of women. But it is too easy to discredit these arguments. I have tried instead to show how Rushton’s conclusions are commensurate with the assumptions everywhere present in education and popular thought. I’m going to play devil’s advocate. Don’t you think gay Asian men who are interested in watching gay porn involving Asian actors will get ahold of the racially unmarked porn that is produced in Thailand or Japan? And if your answer is yes, then why should a white producer of gay porn go to the trouble of making tapes that cater to a relatively small gay Asian market? This is about dollars and cents. It seems obvious that the industry will cater to the white man’s fantasy. On the last point I partially agree. That’s why I’m calling for an independent porn in which the gay Asian man is producer, actor, and intended viewer. I say this somewhat halfheartedly, because personally I am not very interested in producing porn, though I do want to continue working 247

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with sexually explicit material. But I also feel that one cannot assume, as the porn industry apparently does, that the desires of even white men are so fixed and exclusive. Regarding the first part of your question, however, I must insist that Asian Americans and Asian Canadians are Americans and Canadians. I myself am a fourth-generation Trinidadian and have only a tenuous link with Chinese culture and aesthetics, except for what I have consciously searched after and learned. I purposely chose not to talk about Japanese or Thai productions because they come from cultural contexts about which I am incapable of commenting. In addition, the fact that porn from those countries is sometimes unmarked racially does not mean that it speaks to my experience or desires, my own culture of sexuality. With regard to race representation or racial signifiers in the context of porn, your presentation elaborated a problem that came up in some of the safe sex tapes that were shown earlier. In them one could see a kind of trope that traces a circular pattern – a repetition that leads a black or Asian spectator to a specific realm of fantasy. I wonder if you could talk a bit more about the role of fantasy, or the fantasy one sees in porn tapes produced predominantly by white producers. I see a fixing of different black subjects in recognizable stereotypes rather than a more dialectical representation of black identities, where a number of options or fantasy positions would be made available. Your last film, Looking for Langston, is one of the few films I know of that has placed the sexuality of the black gay subject at its center. As I said earlier, my own work, especially Chinese Characters [1986], is more concerned with pulling apart the tropes you refer to than in constructing an alternative erotics. At the same time I feel that this latter task is imperative, and I hope that it is taken up more. It is in this context that I think the current attack on the National Endowment for the Arts and arts funding in the United States supports the racist status quo. If it succeeds, it effectively squelches the possibility of articulating counterhegemonic views of sexuality. Just before I left Toronto, I attended an event called ‘‘Cum Talk,’’ organized by two people from Gay Asians Toronto and from Khush, the group for South Asian

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Gregg Bordowitz

Furg

Jose´ Arroyo

lesbians and gay men. We looked at porn and talked about the images people had of us, the role of ‘‘bottom’’ that we are constantly cast in. Then we spoke of what actually happened when we had sex with white men. What became clear was that we don’t play out that role and are very rarely asked to. So there is a discrepancy between the ideology of sexuality and its practice, between sexual representation and sexual reality. When Jean Carlomusto and I began working on the porn project at Gay Men’s Health Crisis, we had big ideas of challenging many of the roles and positionings involved in the dominant industry. But as I’ve worked more with porn, I find that it’s really not an efficient arena in which to make such challenges. There is some room to question assumptions, but there are not many ways to challenge the codes of porn, except to question the conditions of production, which was an important point raised at the end of your talk. It seems to me that the only real way to picture more possibilities is, again, to create selfdetermining groups, make resources available for people of color and lesbians and other groups so that they can produce porn for themselves. I only partly agree with you, because I think, so far as is possible, we have to take responsibility for the kinds of images we create, or re-create. Asian Knights had a Chinese producer, after all. But, yes, of course, the crucial thing is to activate more voices, which would establish the conditions for something else to happen. The liberal response to racism is that we need to integrate everyone – people should all become coffee-colored, or everyone should have sex with everyone else. But such an agenda doesn’t often account for the specificity of our desires. I have seen very little porn produced from such an integrationist mentality that actually affirms my desire. It’s so easy to find my fantasies appropriated for the pleasures of a white viewer. In that sense, porn is most useful for revealing relationships of power. You’ve been talking critically about a certain kind of colonial imagery. Isaac’s film Looking for Langston contains not only a deconstruction of this imagery in its critique of the Mapplethorpe photographs, but also a new construction of black desire. What kind of strategies do you see for a similar reconstructing of erotic Asian imagery? 249

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One of the first things that needs to be done is to construct Asians as viewing subjects. My first videotape, Orientations (1984), had that as a primary goal. I thought of Asians as sexual subjects, but also as viewing subjects to whom the work should be geared. Many of us, whether we’re watching news or pornography or looking at advertising, see that the image or message is not really being directed at us. For example, the sexism and heterosexism of a disk jockey’s attitudes become obvious when he or she says, ‘‘When you and your girlfriend go out tonight . . . .’’ Even though that’s meant to address a general audience, it’s clear that this audience is presumed not to have any women (not to mention lesbians!) in it. The general audience, as I analyze him, is white, male, heterosexual, middle-class, and center-right politically. So we have to understand this presumption first, to see that only very specific people are being addressed. When I make my videotapes, I know that I am addressing Asians. That means that I can take certain things for granted and introduce other things in a completely different context. But there are still other questions of audience. When we make outreach films directed at the straight community – the ‘‘general public’’ – in an effort to make lesbian and gay issues visible, we often sacrifice many of the themes that are important to how we express our sexualities: drag, issues of promiscuity, and so on. But when I made a tape for a gay audience, I talked about those same issues very differently. For one thing, I talked about those issues. And I tried to image them in ways that were very different from the way the dominant media image them. In Orientations I had one guy talk about park and washroom sex – about being a slut, basically – in a park at midday with front lighting. He talked very straightforwardly about it, which is only to say that there are many possibilities for doing this. I think, however, that to talk about gay Asian desire is very difficult, because we need to swim through so much muck to get to it. It is very difficult (if even desirable) to do in purely positive terms, and I think it’s necessary to do a lot of deconstruction along the way. I have no readymade strategies; I feel it’s a hit-and-miss sort of project. I want to bring back the issue of class. One of the gay Asian stereotypes that you mentioned was the Asian house boy. The reality is that many of these people are

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immigrants: English is a second language for them, and they are thus economically disenfranchised through being socially and culturally displaced. So when you talk about finding the Asian penis in pornography, how will this project work for such people? Since pornography is basically white and middle-class, what kind of tool is it? Who really is your target audience? If I understand your question correctly, you are asking about the prognosis for new and different representations within commercial porn. And I don’t think the prognosis is very good: changes will probably happen very slowly. At the same time, I think that pornography is an especially important site of struggle precisely for those Asians who are, as you say, economically and socially at a disadvantage. For those who are most isolated, whether in families or rural areas, print pornography is often the first introduction to gay sexuality – before, for example, the gay and lesbian press or gay Asian support groups. But this porn provides mixed messages: it affirms gay identity articulated almost exclusively as white. Whether we like it or not, mainstream gay porn is more available to most gay Asian men than any independent work you or I might produce. That is why pornography is a subject of such concern for me.

Notes 1 J. Philippe Rushton and Anthony F. Bogaert, University of Western Ontario, ‘‘Race versus Social Class Difference in Sexual Behaviour: A Follow-up Test of the r/K Dimension,’’ Journal of Research in Personality 22 (1988): 259. 2 See Eric Williams, Capitalism and Slavery (New York: Capricorn, 1966). 3 Feminists of color have long pointed out that racism is phrased differently for men and women. Nevertheless, since it is usually heterosexual (and often middle-class) males whose voices are validated by the power structure, it is their interests that are taken up as ‘‘representing’’ the communities. See Barbara Smith, ‘‘Toward a Black Feminist Criticism,’’ in All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, But Some of Us Are Brave: Black Women’s Studies (Old Westbury, NY: The Feminist Press, 1982), 162. 4 The mainstream ‘‘leadership’’ within Asian communities often colludes with the myth of the model minority and the reassuring desexualization of Asian people. 5 In Britain, however, more race–sex stereotypes of South Asians exist. Led by artists such as Pratibha Parmar, Sunil Gupta, and Hanif Kureishi, there is also a growing and already significant body of work by South Asians themselves which takes up questions of sexuality. 6 Renee Tajima, ‘‘Lotus Blossoms Don’t Bleed: Images of Asian Women,’’ Anthologies of Asian American Film and Video (New York: A distribution project of Third World Newsreel, 1984), 28. 7 Ibid., 29.

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Richard Fung 8 See Stephen Gong, ‘‘Zen Warrior of the Celluloid (Silent) Years: The Art of Sessue Hayakawa,’’ Bridge 8 (2) (Winter 1982–83): 37–41. 9 Frantz Fanon, Black Skin White Masks (London: Paladin, 1970), 120. For a reconsideration of this statement in the light of contemporary black gay issues, see Kobena Mercer, ‘‘Imaging the Black Man’s Sex,’’ in Photography/Politics: Two, ed. Pat Holland, Jo Spence, and Simon Watney (London: Comedia/Methuen, 1987); reprinted in Male Order: Unwrapping Masculinity, ed. Rowena Chapman and Jonathan Rutherford (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1988), 141. 10 I do not think that this could happen in today’s Toronto, which now has the second largest Chinese community on the continent. Perhaps it would not have happened in San Francisco. But I still believe that there is an onus on gay Asians and other gay people of color to prove our homosexuality. 11 The term minority is misleading. Racism is not a matter of numbers but of power. This is especially clear in situations where people of color constitute actual majorities, as in most former European colonies. At the same time, I feel that none of the current terms are really satisfactory and that too much time spent on the politics of ‘‘naming’’ can in the end be diversionary. 12 To organize effectively with lesbian and gay Asians, we must reject self-righteous condemnation of ‘‘closetedness’’ and see coming out more as a process or a goal, rather than as a prerequisite for participation in the movement. 13 Racism is available to be used by anyone. The conclusion that – because racism ¼ power þ prejudice – only white people can be racist is Eurocentric and simply wrong. Individuals have varying degrees and different sources of power, depending on the given moment in a shifting context. This does not contradict the fact that, in contemporary North American society, racism is generally organized around white supremacy. 14 From simple observation, I feel safe in saying that most gay Asian men in North America hold white men as their idealized sexual partners. However, I am not trying to construct an argument for determinism, and there are a number of outstanding problems that are not easily answered by current analyses of power. What of the experience of Asians who are attracted to men of color, including other Asians? What about white men who prefer Asians sexually? How and to what extent is desire articulated in terms of race as opposed to body type or other attributes? To what extent is sexual attraction exclusive and/or changeable, and can it be consciously programmed? These questions are all politically loaded, as they parallel and impact the debates between essentialists and social constructionists on the nature of homosexuality itself. They are also emotionally charged, in that sexual choice involving race has been a basis for moral judgment. 15 See Richard Dyer, Heavenly Bodies: Film Stars and Society (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1986). In his chapter on Marilyn Monroe, Dyer writes extensively on the relationship between blondness, whiteness, and desirability. 16 Print porn is somewhat more racially integrated, as are the new safe sex tapes – by the Gay Men’s Health Crisis, for example – produced in a political and pedagogical rather than a commercial context. 17 Richard Dyer, ‘‘Coming to Terms,’’ Jump Cut 30 (March 1985): 28. 18 Tom Waugh, ‘‘Men’s Pornography, Gay vs. Straight,’’ Jump Cut 30 (March 1985): 31. 19 International Wavelength News 2(1) (January 1991). 20 Tom Waugh, ‘‘Men’s Pornography, Gay vs. Straight,’’ 33. 21 It seems to me that the undressing here is organized around the pleasure of the white man in being served. This is in contrast to the undressing scenes in, say, James Bond films, in which the narrative is organized around undressing as an act of revealing the woman’s body, an indicator of sexual conquest. 22 Interestingly, the gay video porn from Japan and Thailand that I have seen has none of this Oriental coding. Asianness is not taken up as a sign but is taken for granted as a setting for the narrative.

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Asian American Masculinity in Pornography 23 Joanna Russ, ‘‘Pornography and the Doubleness of Sex for Women,’’ Jump Cut 32 (April 1986): 39. 24 Though this is a common enough question in our postcolonial, urban environments, when asked of Asians it often reveals two agendas: first, the assumption that all Asians are newly arrived immigrants and, second, a fascination with difference and sameness. Although we (Asians) all supposedly look alike, there are specific characteristics and stereotypes associated with each particular ethnic group. The inability to tell us apart underlies the inscrutability attributed to Asians. This ‘‘inscrutability’’ took on sadly ridiculous proportions when during World War II the Chinese were issued badges so that white Canadians could distinguish them from ‘‘the enemy.’’ 25 Isaac Julien (director), Looking for Langston (United Kingdom: Sankofa Film and Video, 1988). 26 For more on the origins of the black film and video workshops in Britain, see Jim Pines, ‘‘The Cultural Context of Black British Cinema,’’ in Black-frames: Critical Perspectives on Black Independent Cinema, ed. Mybe B. Cham and Claire Andrade-Watkins (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1988), 26.

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FIFTEEN

Heterogeneity, Hybridity, Multiplicity: Marking Asian American Differences* Lisa Lowe

In a recent poem by Janice Mirikitani, a Japanese-American nisei woman describes her sansei daughter’s rebellion.1 The daughter’s denial of JapaneseAmerican culture and its particular notions of femininity reminds the nisei speaker that she, too, has denied her antecedents, rebelling against her own more traditional issei mother:

I want to break tradition – unlock this room where women dress in the dark. Discover the lies my mother told me. The lies that we are small and powerless that our possibilities must be compressed to the size of pearls, displayed only as passive chokers, charms around our neck. Break Tradition. I want to tell my daughter of this room of myself filled with tears of shakuhatchi, ............... poems about madness, sounds shaken from barbed wire and goodbyes and miracles of survival. This room of open window where daring ones escape. My daughter denies she is like me . . . her pouting ruby lips, her skirts *Lisa Lowe ‘‘Heterogeneity, Hybridity, Multiplicity: Marking Asian American Differences.’’ Diaspora 1 (Spring 1991): 24–44.

Heterogeneity, Hybridity, Multiplicity swaying to salsa, teena marie and the stones, her thighs displayed in carnivals of color. I do not know the contents of her room. She mirrors my aging. She is breaking tradition. (9)

The nisei speaker repudiates the repressive confinements of her issei mother: the disciplining of the female body, the tedious practice of diminution, the silences of obedience. In turn, the crises that have shaped the nisei speaker – internment camps, sounds of threatening madness – are unknown to, and unheard by, her sansei teenage daughter. The three generations of Japanese immigrant women in this poem are separated by their different histories and by different conceptions of what it means to be female and Japanese. The poet who writes ‘‘I do not know the contents of her room’’ registers these separations as ‘‘breaking tradition.’’ In another poem, by Lydia Lowe, Chinese women workers are divided also by generation, but even more powerfully by class and language. The speaker is a young Chinese-American who supervises an older Chinese woman in a textile factory. The long bell blared, and then the lo-ban made me search all your bags before you could leave. Inside he sighed about slow work, fast hands, missing spools of thread– and I said nothing. I remember that day you came in to show me I added your tickets six zippers short. It was just a mistake. You squinted down at the check in your hands like an old village woman peers at some magician’s trick. That afternoon when you thrust me your bags I couldn’t look or raise my face. Doi m-jyu. Eyes on the ground, I could only see one shoe kicking against the other. (29) 255

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This poem, too, invokes the breaking of tradition, although it thematizes another sort of stratification among Asian women: the structure of the factory places the English-speaking younger woman above the Cantonese-speaking older one. Economic relations in capitalist society force the young supervisor to discipline her elders, and she is acutely ashamed that her required behavior does not demonstrate the respect traditionally owed to parents and elders. Thus, both poems foreground commonly thematized topoi of diasporan cultures: the disruption and distortion of traditional cultural practices – like the practice of parental sacrifice and filial duty, or the practice of respecting hierarchies of age – not only as a consequence of immigration to the United States, but as a part of entering a society with different class stratifications and different constructions of gender roles. Some Asian American discussions cast the disruption of tradition as loss and represent the loss in terms of regret and shame, as in the latter poem. Alternatively, the traditional practices of family continuity and hierarchy may be figured as oppressively confining, as in Mirikitani’s poem, in which the two generations of daughters contest the more restrictive female roles of the former generations. In either case, many Asian American discussions portray immigration and relocation to the United States in terms of a loss of the ‘‘original’’ culture in exchange for the new ‘‘American’’ culture. In many Asian American novels, the question of the loss or transmission of the ‘‘original’’ culture is frequently represented in a family narrative, figured as generational conflict between the Chinese-born first generation and the Americanborn second generation.2 Louis Chu’s 1961 novel Eat a Bowl of Tea, for example, allegorizes in the conflicted relationship between father and son the differences between ‘‘native’’ Chinese values and the new ‘‘westernized’’ culture of Chinese-Americans. Other novels have taken up this generational theme; one way to read Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior (1975) or Amy Tan’s recent The Joy Luck Club (1989) is to understand them as versions of this generational model of culture, refigured in feminine terms, between mothers and daughters. However, I will argue that interpreting Asian American culture exclusively in terms of the master narratives of generational conflict and filial relation essentializes Asian American culture, obscuring the particularities and incommensurabilities of class, gender, and national diversities among Asians; the reduction of ethnic cultural politics to struggles between first and second generations displaces (and privatizes) inter-community differences into a familial opposition. To avoid this homogenizing of Asian Americans as exclusively hierarchical and familial, I would contextualize the ‘‘vertical’’ generational model of culture with the more ‘‘horizontal’’ relationship represented in Diana Chang’s ‘‘The Oriental Contingent.’’ In Chang’s short story, two young women avoid the discussion of their Chinese backgrounds because each desperately fears that the other is ‘‘more Chinese,’’ more ‘‘authentically’’ tied to the original culture. The narrator, Connie, is certain that her friend Lisa ‘‘never referred to her own background because it was more Chinese than Connie’s, and therefore of a higher order. She was tact incarnate. All along, she had been going out of 256

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her way not to embarrass Connie. Yes, yes. Her assurance was definitely uppercrust (perhaps her father had been in the diplomatic service), and her offhand didacticness, her lack of self-doubt, was indeed characteristically ChineseChinese’’ (173). Connie feels ashamed because she assumes herself to be ‘‘a failed Chinese’’; she fantasizes that Lisa was born in China, visits there frequently, and privately disdains Chinese-Americans. Her assumptions about Lisa prove to be quite wrong, however; Lisa is even more critical of herself for ‘‘not being genuine.’’ For Lisa, as Connie eventually discovers, was born in Buffalo and was adopted by non-Chinese-American parents; lacking an immediate connection to Chinese culture, Lisa projects upon all Chinese the authority of being ‘‘more Chinese.’’ Lisa confesses to Connie at the end of the story: ‘‘The only time I feel Chinese is when I’m embarrassed I’m not more Chinese – which is a totally Chinese reflex I’d give anything to be rid of!’’ (176). Chang’s story portrays two women polarized by the degree to which they have each internalized a cultural definition of ‘‘Chineseness’’ as pure and fixed, in which any deviation is constructed as less, lower, and shameful. Rather than confirming the cultural model in which ‘‘ethnicity’’ is passed from generation to generation, Chang’s story explores the ‘‘ethnic’’ relationship between women of the same generation. Lisa and Connie are ultimately able to reduce one another’s guilt at not being ‘‘Chinese enough’’; in one another they are able to find a common frame of reference. The story suggests that the making of Chinese-American culture – how ethnicity is imagined, practiced, continued – is worked out as much between ourselves and our communities as it is transmitted from one generation to another. In this sense, Asian American discussions of ethnicity are far from uniform or consistent; rather, these discussions contain a wide spectrum of articulations that includes, at one end, the desire for an identity represented by a fixed profile of ethnic traits, and at another, challenges to the very notions of identity and singularity which celebrate ethnicity as a fluctuating composition of differences, intersections, and incommensurabilities. These latter efforts attempt to define ethnicity in a manner that accounts not only for cultural inheritance, but for active cultural construction, as well. In other words, they suggest that the making of Asian American culture may be a much ‘‘messier’’ process than unmediated vertical transmission from one generation to another, including practices that are partly inherited and partly modified, as well as partly invented.3 As the narrator of The Woman Warrior suggests, perhaps one of the more important stories of Asian American experience is about the process of receiving, refiguring, and rewriting cultural traditions. She asks: ‘‘ChineseAmericans, when you try to understand what things in you are Chinese, how do you separate what is peculiar to childhood, to poverty, insanities, one family, your mother who marked your growing with stories, from what is Chinese? What is Chinese tradition and what is the movies?’’ (6). Or the dilemma of cultural syncretism might be posed in an interrogative version of the uncle’s impromptu proverb in Wayne Wang’s film Dim Sum: ‘‘You can take the girl out 257

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of Chinatown, but can you take the Chinatown out of the girl?’’ For rather than representing a fixed, discrete culture, ‘‘Chinatown’’ is itself the very emblem of fluctuating demographics, languages, and populations.4 I begin my article with these particular examples drawn from Asian American cultural texts in order to observe that what is referred to as ‘‘Asian America’’ is clearly a heterogeneous entity. From the perspective of the majority culture, Asian Americans may very well be constructed as different from, and other than, Euro-Americans. But from the perspectives of Asian Americans, we are perhaps even more different, more diverse, among ourselves: being men and women at different distances and generations from our ‘‘original’’ Asian cultures – cultures as different as Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Filipino, Indian, and Vietnamese – Asian Americans are born in the United States and born in Asia; of exclusively Asian parents and of mixed race; urban and rural; refugee and nonrefugee; communist-identified and anticommunist; fluent in English and non-English speaking; educated and working class. As with other diasporas in the United States, the Asian immigrant collectivity is unstable and changeable, with its cohesion complicated by intergenrationality, by various degrees of identification and relation to a ‘‘homeland,’’ and by different extents of assimilation to and distinction from ‘‘majority culture’’ in the United States. Further, the historical contexts of particular waves of immigration within single groups contrast with one another; the Japanese-Americans who were interned during World War II encountered quite different social and economic barriers than those from Japan who arrive in southern California today. And the composition of different waves of immigrants differs in gender, class, and region. For example, the first groups of Chinese immigrants to the United States in 1850 were from four villages in Canton province, male by a ratio of 10 to 1, and largely of peasant backgrounds; the more recent Chinese immigrants are from Hong Kong, Taiwan, or the People’s Republic (themselves quite heterogeneous and of discontinuous ‘‘origins’’), or from the Chinese diaspora in other parts of Asia, such as Macao, Malaysia, or Singapore, and they are more often educated and middleclass men and women.5 Further, once arriving in the United States, very few Asian immigrant cultures remain discrete, inpenetrable communities. The more recent groups mix, in varying degrees, with segments of the existing groups; Asian Americans may intermarry with other ethnic groups, live in neighborhoods adjacent to them, or work in the same businesses and on the same factory assembly lines. The boundaries and definitions of Asian American culture are continually shifting and being contested from pressures both ‘‘inside’’ and ‘‘outside’’ the Asian origin community. I stress heterogeneity, hybridity, and multiplicity in the characterization of Asian American culture as part of a twofold argument about cultural politics, the ultimate aim of that argument being to disrupt the current hegemonic relationship between ‘‘dominant’’ and ‘‘minority’’ positions. On the one hand, my observation that Asian Americans are heterogeneous is part of a strategy to destabilize the dominant discursive construction and determination of Asian 258

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Americans as a homogeneous group. Throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Asian immigration to the United States was managed by exclusion acts and quotas that relied upon racialist constructions of Asians as homogeneous;6 the ‘‘model minority’’ myth and the informal quotas discriminating against Asians in university admissions policies are contemporary versions of this homogenization of Asians.7 On the other hand, I underscore Asian American heterogeneities (particularly class, gender, and national differences among Asians) to contribute to a dialogue within Asian American discourse, to negotiate with those modes of argumentation that continue to uphold a politics based on ethnic ‘‘identity.’’ In this sense, I argue for the Asian American necessity – politically, intellectually, and personally – to organize, resist, and theorize as Asian Americans, but at the same time I inscribe this necessity within a discussion of the risks of a cultural politics that relies upon the construction of sameness and the exclusion of differences.

1 The first reason to emphasize the dynamic fluctuation and heterogeneity of Asian American culture is to release our understandings of either the ‘‘dominant’’ or the emergent ‘‘minority’’ cultures as discrete, fixed, or homogeneous, and to arrive at a different conception of the general political terrain of culture in California, a useful focus for this examination since it has become commonplace to consider it an ‘‘ethnic state,’’ embodying a new phenomenon of cultural adjacency and admixture.8 For if minority immigrant cultures are perpetually changing – in their composition, configuration, and signifying practices, as well as in their relations to one another – it follows that the ‘‘majority’’ or dominant culture, with which minority cultures are in continual relation, is also unstable and unclosed. The suggestion that the general social terrain of culture is open, plural, and dynamic reorients our understanding of what ‘‘cultural hegemony’’ is and how it works in contemporary California. It permits us to theorize about the roles that ethnic immigrant groups play in the making and unmaking of culture – and how these minority discourses challenge the existing structure of power, the existing hegemony.9 We should remember that Antonio Gramsci writes about hegemony as not simply political or economic forms of rule but as the entire process of dissent and compromise through which a particular group is able to determine the political, cultural, and ideological character of a state (Selections). Hegemony does not refer exclusively to the process by which a dominant formation exercises its influence but refers equally to the process through which minority groups organize and contest any specific hegemony.10 The reality of any specific hegemony is that, while it may be for the moment dominant, it is never absolute or conclusive. Hegemony, in Gramsci’s thought, is a concept that describes both the social processes through which a particular dominance is maintained and those through which that dominance is challenged 259

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and new forces are articulated. When a hegemony representing the interests of a dominant group exists, it is always within the context of resistances from emerging ‘‘subaltern’’ groups.11 We might say that hegemony is not only the political process by which a particular group constitutes itself as ‘‘the one’’ or ‘‘the majority’’ in relation to which ‘‘minorities’’ are defined and know themselves to be ‘‘other,’’ but it is equally the process by which positions of otherness may ally and constitute a new majority, a ‘‘counterhegemony.’’12 The subaltern classes are, in Gramsci’s definition, prehegemonic, not unified groups, whose histories are fragmented, episodic and identifiable only from a point of historical hindsight. They may go through different phases when they are subject to the activity of ruling groups, may articulate their demands through existing parties, and then may themselves produce new parties; in The Prison Notebooks, Gramsci describes a final phase at which the ‘‘formations [of the subaltern classes] assert integral autonomy’’ (52). The definition of the subaltern groups includes some noteworthy observations for our understanding of the roles of racial and ethnic immigrant groups in the United States. The assertion that the significant practices of the subaltern groups may not be understood as hegemonic until they are viewed with historical hindsight is interesting, for it suggests that some of the most powerful practices may not always be the explicitly oppositional ones, may not be understood by contemporaries, and may be less overt and recognizable than others. Provocative, too, is the idea that the subaltern classes are by definition ‘‘not unified’’; that is, the subaltern is not a fixed, unified force of a single character. Rather, the assertion of ‘‘integral autonomy’’ by not unified classes suggests a coordination of distinct, yet allied, positions, practices, and movements – class-identified and not class-identified, in parties and not, ethnic-based and gender-based – each in its own not necessarily equivalent manner transforming and disrupting the apparatuses of a specific hegemony. The independent forms and locations of cultural challenge – ideological, as well as economic and political – constitute what Gramsci calls a ‘‘new historical bloc,’’ a new set of relationships that together embody a different hegemony and a different balance of power. In this sense, we have in the growing and shifting ethnic minority populations in California an active example of this new historical bloc described by Gramsci; and in the negotiations between these ethnic groups and the existing majority over what interests precisely constitute the ‘‘majority,’’ we have an illustration of the concept of hegemony, not in the more commonly accepted sense of ‘‘hegemonymaintenance,’’ but in the often ignored sense of ‘‘hegemony-creation.’’13 The observation that the Asian American community and other ethnic immigrant communities are heterogeneous lays the foundation for several political operations: first, by shifting, multiplying, and reconceiving the construction of society as composed of two numerically overdetermined camps called the majority and the minority, cultural politics is recast so as to account for a multiplicity of various, nonequivalent groups, one of which is Asian Americans. Second, the conception of ethnicity as heterogeneous provides a position for Asian 260

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Americans that is both ethnically specific, yet simultaneously uneven and unclosed; Asian Americans can articulate distinct group demands based on our particular histories of exclusion, but the redefined lack of closure – which reveals rather than conceals differences – opens political lines of affiliation with other groups (labor unions, other racial and ethnic groups, and gay, lesbian, and feminist groups) in the challenge to specific forms of domination insofar as they share common features.

2 In regard to the practice of ‘‘identity politics’’ within Asian American discourse, the articulation of an ‘‘Asian American identity’’ as an organizing tool has provided a concept of political unity that enables diverse Asian groups to understand our unequal circumstances and histories as being related; likewise, the building of ‘‘Asian American culture’’ is crucial, for it articulates and empowers our multicultural, multilingual Asian origin community vis-a`-vis the institutions and apparatuses that exclude and marginalize us. But I want to suggest that essentializing Asian American identity and suppressing our differences – of national origin, generation, gender, party, class – risks particular dangers: not only does it underestimate the differences and hybridities among Asians, but it also inadvertently supports the racist discourse that constructs Asians as a homogeneous group, that implies we are ‘‘all alike’’ and conform to ‘‘types’’; in this respect, a politics based exclusively on ethnic identity willingly accepts the terms of the dominant logic that organizes the heterogeneous picture of racial and ethnic diversity into a binary schema of ‘‘the one’’ and ‘‘the other.’’ The essentializing of Asian American identity also reproduces oppositions that subsume other nondominant terms in the same way that Asians and other groups are disenfranchised by the dominant culture: to the degree that the discourse generalizes Asian American identity as male, women are rendered invisible; or to the extent that Chinese are presumed to be exemplary of all Asians, the importance of other Asian groups is ignored. In this sense, a politics based on ethnic identity facilitates the displacement of inter-community differences – between men and women, or between workers and managers – into a false opposition of ‘‘nationalism’’ and ‘‘assimilation.’’ We have an example of this in recent debates where Asian American feminists who challenge Asian American sexism are cast as ‘‘assimilationist,’’ as betraying Asian American ‘‘nationalism.’’ To the extent that Asian American discourse articulates an identity in reaction to the dominant culture’s stereotype, even to refute it, I believe the discourse may remain bound to, and overdetermined by, the logic of the dominant culture. In accepting the binary terms (‘‘white’’ and ‘‘non-white,’’ or ‘‘majority’’ and ‘‘minority’’) that structure institutional policies about ethnicity, we forget that these binary schemas are not neutral descriptions. Binary constructions of difference use a logic that prioritizes the first term and subordinates the second; 261

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whether the pair ‘‘difference’’ and ‘‘sameness’’ is figured as a binary synthesis that considers ‘‘difference’’ as always contained within the ‘‘same,’’ or that conceives of the pair as an opposition in which ‘‘difference’’ structurally implies ‘‘sameness’’ as its complement, it is important to see each of these figurations as versions of the same binary logic. My argument for heterogeneity seeks to challenge the conception of difference as exclusively structured by a binary opposition between two terms by proposing instead another notion of difference that takes seriously the conditions of heterogeneity, multiplicity, and nonequivalence. I submit that the most exclusive construction of Asian American identity – which presumes masculinity, American birth, and speaking English – is at odds with the formation of important political alliances and affiliations with other groups across racial and ethnic, gender, sexuality, and class lines. An essentialized identity is an obstacle to Asian American women allying with other women of color, for example, and it can discourage laboring Asian Americans from joining unions with workers of other colors. It can short-circuit potential alliances against the dominant structures of power in the name of subordinating ‘‘divisive’’ issues to the national question. Some of the limits of identity politics are discussed most pointedly by Frantz Fanon in his books about the Algerian resistance to French colonialism. Before ultimately turning to some Asian American cultural texts in order to trace the ways in which the dialogues about identity and difference are represented within the discourse, I would like to briefly consider one of Fanon’s most important texts, The Wretched of the Earth (Les damne´s de la terre, 1961). Although Fanon’s treatise was cited in the 1960s as the manifesto for a nationalist politics of identity, rereading it now [in the 1990s] we find his text, ironically, to be the source of a serious critique of nationalism. Fanon argues that the challenge facing any movement dismantling colonialism (or a system in which one culture dominates another) is to provide for a new order that does not reproduce the social structure of the old system. This new order, he argues, must avoid the simple assimilation to the dominant culture’s roles and positions by the emergent group, which would merely caricature the old colonialism, and it should be equally suspicious of an uncritical nativism, or racialism, appealing to essentialized notions of precolonial identity. Fanon suggests that another alternative is necessary, a new order, neither an assimilationist nor a nativist inversion, which breaks with the structures and practices of cultural domination and which continually and collectively criticizes the institutions of rule. One of the more remarkable turns in Fanon’s argument occurs when he identifies both bourgeois assimilation and bourgeois nationalism as conforming to the same logic, as responses to colonialism that reproduce the same structure of cultural domination. It is in this sense that Fanon warns against the nationalism practiced by bourgeois neocolonial governments. Their nationalism, he argues, can be distorted easily into racism, territorialism, separatism, or ethnic dictatorships of one tribe or regional group over others; the national bourgeoisie replaces the colonizer, yet the social and economic structure remains the same.14 Ironically, he 262

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points out, these separatisms, or ‘‘micro-nationalisms’’ (Mamadou Dia, qtd. in Fanon 1961: 158), are themselves legacies of colonialism. He writes: ‘‘By its very structure, colonialism is regionalist and separatist. Colonialism does not simply state the existence of tribes; it also reinforces and separates them’’ (94). That is, a politics of ethnic separatism is congruent with the divide-and-conquer logic of colonial domination. Fanon links the practices of the national bourgeoisie that has assimilated colonialist thought and practice with nativist practices that privilege one tribe or ethnicity over others; nativism and assimilationism are not opposites but similar logics both enunciating the old order. Fanon’s analysis implies that an essentialized bourgeois construction of ‘‘nation’’ is a classification that excludes other subaltern groups that could bring about substantive change in the social and economic relations, particularly those whose social marginalities are due to class: peasants, workers, transient populations. We can add to Fanon’s criticism that the category of nation often erases a consideration of women and the fact of difference between men and women and the conditions under which they live and work in situations of cultural domination. This is why the concentration of women of color in domestic service or reproductive labor (childcare, homecare, nursing) in the contemporary United States is not adequately explained by a nation-based model of analysis (see Glenn 1981). In light of feminist theory, which has gone the furthest in theorizing multiple inscription and the importance of positionalities, we can argue that it may be less meaningful to act exclusively in terms of a single valence or political interest – such as ethnicity or nation – than to acknowledge that social subjects are the sites of a variety of differences.15 An Asian American subject is never purely and exclusively ethnic, for that subject is always of a particular class, gender, and sexual preference, and may therefore feel responsible to movements that are organized around these other designations. This is not to argue against the strategic importance of Asian American identity, nor against the building of Asian American culture. Rather, I am suggesting that acknowledging class and gender differences among Asian Americans does not weaken us as a group; to the contrary, these differences represent greater political opportunity to affiliate with other groups whose cohesions may be based on other valences of oppression.

3 As I have already suggested, within Asian American discourse there is a varied spectrum of discussion about the concepts of ethnic identity and culture. At one end, there are discussions in which ethnic identity is essentialized as the cornerstone of a nationalist liberation politics. In these discussions, the cultural positions of nationalism (or ethnicism, or nativism) and of assimilation are represented in polar opposition: nationalism affirming the separate purity of its ethnic culture is opposed to assimilation of the standards of dominant society. 263

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Stories about the loss of the ‘‘native’’ Asian culture tend to express some form of this opposition. At the same time, there are criticisms of this essentializing position, most often articulated by feminists who charge that Asian American nationalism prioritizes masculinity and does not account for women. At the other end, there are interventions that refuse static or binary conceptions of ethnicity, replacing notions of identity with multiplicity and shifting the emphasis for ethnic ‘‘essence’’ to cultural hybridity. Settling for neither nativism nor assimilation, these cultural texts expose the apparent opposition between the two as a constructed figure (as Fanon does when he observes that bourgeois assimilation and bourgeois nationalism often conform to the same colonialist logic). In tracing these different discussions about identity and ethnicity through Asian American cultural debates, literature, and film, I choose particular texts because they are accessible and commonly held. But I do not intend to limit discourse to only these particular textual forms; by discourse, I intend a rather extended meaning – a network that includes not only texts and cultural documents, but social practices, formal and informal laws, policies of inclusion and exclusion, and institutional forms of organization, for example, all of which constitute and regulate knowledge about the object of that discourse, Asian America. The terms of the debate about nationalism and assimilation become clearer if we look first at the discussion of ethnic identity in certain debates about the representation of culture. Readers of Asian American literature are familiar with attacks by Frank Chin, Ben Tong, and others on Maxine Hong Kingston, attacks which have been cast as nationalist criticisms of Kingston’s ‘‘assimilationist’’ works. Her novel/autobiography The Woman Warrior is the primary target of such criticism, since it is virtually the only ‘‘canonized’’ piece of Asian American literature; its status can be measured by the fact that the Modern Language Association is currently publishing A Guide to Teaching ‘‘The Woman Warrior’’ in its series that includes guides to Cervantes’s Don Quixote and Dante’s Inferno. A critique of how and why this text has become fetishized as the exemplary representation of Asian American culture is necessary and important. However, Chin’s critique reveals other kinds of tensions in Asian American culture that are worth noting. He does more than accuse Kingston of having exoticized Chinese American culture; he argues that she has ‘‘feminized’’ Asian American literature and undermined the power of Asian American men to combat the racist stereotypes of the dominant white culture. Kingston and other women novelists such as Amy Tan, he says, misrepresent Chinese history in order to exaggerate its patriarchal structure; as a result, Chinese society is portrayed as being even more misogynistic than European society. While Chin and others have cast this conflict in terms of nationalism and assimilationism, I think it may be more productive to see this debate, as Elaine Kim does in a recent essay (‘‘ ‘Such Opposite’ ’’), as a symptom of the tensions between nationalist and feminist concerns in Asian American discourse. I would add to Kim’s analysis that the dialogue between nationalist and feminist 264

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concerns animates precisely a debate about identity and difference, or identity and heterogeneity, rather than a debate between nationalism and assimilationism; it is a debate in which Chin and others stand at one end insisting upon a fixed masculinist identity, while Kingston, Tan, or feminist literary critics like Shirley Lim and Amy Ling, with their representations of female differences and their critiques of sexism in Chinese culture, repeatedly cast this notion of identity into question. Just as Fanon points out that some forms of nationalism can obscure class, Asian American feminists point out that Asian American nationalism – or the construction of an essentialized, native Asian American subject – obscures gender. In other words, the struggle that is framed as a conflict between the apparent opposites of nativism and assimilation can mask what is more properly characterized as a struggle between the desire to essentialize ethnic identity and the fundamental condition of heterogeneous differences against which such a desire is spoken. The trope that opposes nativism and assimilationism can be itself a colonialist figure used to displace the challenges of heterogeneity, or subalternity, by casting them as assimilationist or antiethnic. The trope that opposes nativism and assimilation not only organizes the cultural debates of Asian American discourse but figures in Asian American literature, as well. More often than not, however, this symbolic conflict between nativism and assimilation is figured in the topos with which I began, that of generational conflict. Although there are many versions of this topos, I will mention only a few in order to elucidate some of the most relevant cultural tensions. In one model, a conflict between generations is cast in strictly masculinist terms, between father and son; in this model, mothers are absent or unimportant, and female figures exist only as peripheral objects to the side of the central drama of male conflict. Louis Chu’s Eat a Bowl of Tea (1961) exemplifies this masculinist generational symbolism, in which a conflict between nativism and assimilation is allegorized in the relationship between the father Wah Gay and the son Ben Loy, in the period when the predominantly Cantonese New York Chinatown community changes from a ‘‘bachelor society’’ to a ‘‘family society.’’16 Wah Gay wishes Ben Loy to follow Chinese tradition, and to submit to the father’s authority, while the son balks at his father’s ‘‘old ways’’ and wants to make his own choices. When Wah Gay arranges a marriage for Ben Loy, the son is forced to obey. Although the son had had no trouble leading an active sexual life before his marriage, once married, he finds himself to be impotent. In other words, Chu’s novel figures the conflict of nativism and assimilation in terms of Ben Loy’s sexuality: submitting to the father’s authority, marrying the ‘‘nice Chinese girl’’ Mei Oi and having sons, is the so-called traditional Chinese male behavior. This path represents the nativist option, whereas Ben Loy’s former behavior – carrying on with American prostitutes, gambling, etc. – represents the alleged path of assimilation. At the nativist Chinese extreme, Ben Loy is impotent and is denied access to erotic pleasure, and at the assimilationist American extreme, he has great access and sexual freedom. Allegorizing the choice between cultural options in the register of Ben 265

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Loy’s sexuality, Chu’s novel suggests that resolution lies at neither pole, but in a third ‘‘Chinese-American’’ alternative, in which Ben Loy is able to experience erotic pleasure with his Chinese wife. This occurs only when the couple moves away to another state, away from the father; Ben Loy’s relocation to San Francisco’s Chinatown and the priority of pleasure with Mei Oi over the begetting of a son (which, incidentally, they ultimately do have) both represent important breaks from his father’s authority and from Chinese tradition. Following Fanon’s observations about the affinities between nativism and assimilation, we can understand Chu’s novel as an early masculinist rendering of culture as conflict between the apparent opposites of nativism and assimilation, with its oedipal resolution in a Chinese-American male identity; perhaps only with hindsight can we propose that the opposition itself may be a construction that allegorizes the dialectic between an articulation of essentialized ethnic identity and the context of heterogeneous differences. Amy Tan’s much more recent The Joy Luck Club (1989) refigures this topos of generational conflict in a different social context, among first- and secondgeneration Mandarin Chinese in San Francisco, and more importantly, between women. Tan’s Joy Luck displaces Eat a Bowl not only because it deviates from the figuration of Asian American identity in a masculine oedipal dilemma by refiguring it in terms of mothers and daughters, but also because Joy Luck multiplies the sites of cultural conflict, positing a number of struggles – familial and extrafamilial – as well as resolutions, without privileging the singularity or centrality of one. In this way, Joy Luck ultimately thematizes and demystifies the central role of the mother–daughter relationship in Asian American culture. Joy Luck represents the first-person narratives of four sets of Chinese-born mothers and their American-born daughters. The daughters attempt to come to terms with their mothers’ demands, while the mothers simultaneously try to interpret their daughters’ deeds, expressing a tension between the ‘‘Chinese’’ expectation of filial respect and the ‘‘American’’ inability to fulfill that expectation. By multiplying and subverting the model of generational discord with examples of generational concord, the novel calls attention to the heterogeneity of Chinese-American family relations. On the one hand, mothers like Ying-ying St. Clair complain about their daughters’ Americanization: For all these years I kept my mouth closed so selfish desires would not fall out. And because I remained quiet for so long now my daughter does not hear me. She sits by her fancy swimming pool and hears only her Sony Walkman, her cordless phone, her big, important husband asking her why they have charcoal and no lighter fluid. . . . because I moved so secretly now my daughter does not see me. She sees a list of things to buy, her checkbook out of balance, her ashtray sitting crooked on a straight table. And I want to tell her this: We are lost, she and I, unseen and not seeing, unheard and not hearing, unknown by others. (67) 266

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The mother presents herself as having sacrificed everything for a daughter who has ignored these sacrifices. She sees her daughter as preoccupied with portable, mobile high-tech commodities which, characteristically, have no cords, no ties, emblematizing the mother’s condemnation of a daughter who does not respect family bonds. The mother implies that the daughter recognizes that something is skewed and attempts to correct it – balancing her checkbook, straightening her house – but in the mother’s eyes, she has no access to the real problems; being in America has taken this understanding away. Her daughter, Lena, however, tends to view her mother as unreasonably superstitious and domineering. Lena considers her mother’s concern about her failing marriage as meddlesome; the daughter’s interpretation of their antagonism emphasizes a cultural gap between the mother who considers her daughter’s troubles her own, and the daughter who sees her mother’s actions as intrusive, possessive, and worst of all, denying the daughter’s own separate individuality. On the other hand, in contrast to this and other examples of disjunction between the Chinese mothers and the Chinese-American daughters, Joy Luck also includes a relationship between mother and daughter in which there is an apparent coincidence of perspective; tellingly, in this example the mother has died, and it is left to the daughter to ‘‘eulogize’’ the mother by telling the mother’s story. Jing-mei Woo makes a trip to China, to reunite with her recently deceased mother’s two daughters by an earlier marriage, whom her mother had been forced to abandon almost 40 years before when fleeing China during the Japanese invasion. Jing-mei wants to fulfill her mother’s last wish to see the long-lost daughters; she wishes to inscribe herself in her mother’s place. Her narration of the reunion conveys her utopian belief in the possibility of recovering the past, of rendering herself coincident with her mother, narrating her desire to become again ‘‘Chinese.’’ My sisters and I stand, arms around each other, laughing and wiping the tears from each other’s eyes. The flash of the Polaroid goes off and my father hands me the snapshot. My sisters and I watch quietly together, eager to see what develops. The gray-green surface changes to the bright colors of our three images, sharpening and deepening all at once. And although we don’t speak, I know we all see it: Together we look like our mother. Her same eyes, her same mouth, open in surprise to see, at last, her long-cherished wish. (288)

Unlike Lena St. Clair, Jing-mei does not seek greater autonomy from her mother; she desires a lessening of the disparity between their positions that is accomplished through the narrative evocation of her mother after she has died. By contrasting different examples of mother–daughter discord and concord, Joy Luck allegorizes the heterogeneous culture in which the desire for identity and sameness (represented by Jing-mei’s story) is inscribed within the context of Asian American differences and disjunctions (exemplified by the other three pairs of mothers and daughters). The novel formally illustrates that the 267

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articulation of one, the desire for identity, depends upon the existence of the others, or the fundamental horizon of differences. Further, although Joy Luck has been heralded and marketed as a novel about mother–daughter relations in the Chinese-American family (one cover review characterizes it as a ‘‘story that shows us China, Chinese-American women and their families, and the mystery of the mother–daughter bond in ways that we have not experienced before’’), I would suggest that the novel also represents antagonisms that are not exclusively generational but are due to different conceptions of class and gender among Chinese-Americans. Towards the end of the novel, Lindo and Waverly Jong reach a climax of misunderstanding, in a scene that takes place in a central site of American femininity: the beauty parlor. After telling the stylist to give her mother a ‘‘soft wave,’’ Waverly asks her mother, Lindo, if she is in agreement. The mother narrates: I smile. I use my American face. That’s the face Americans think is Chinese, the one they cannot understand. But inside I am becoming ashamed. I am ashamed she is ashamed. Because she is my daughter and I am proud of her, and I am her mother but she is not proud of me. (255)

The American-born daughter believes she is treating her mother, rather magnanimously, to a day of pampering at a chic salon; the Chinese-born mother receives this gesture as an insult, clear evidence of a daughter ashamed of her mother’s looks. The scene not only marks the separation of mother and daughter by generation but, perhaps less obviously, their separation by class and cultural differences that lead to different interpretations of how female identity is signified. On the one hand, the Chinese-born Lindo and American-born Waverly have different class values and opportunities; the daughter’s belief in the pleasure of a visit to an expensive San Francisco beauty parlor seems senselessly extravagant to the mother whose rural family had escaped poverty only by marrying her to the son of a less humble family in their village. On the other hand, the mother and daughter also conflict over definitions of proper female behavior. Lindo assumes female identity is constituted in the practice of a daughter’s deference to her elders, while for Waverly, it is determined by a woman’s financial independence from her parents and her financial equality with men and by her ability to speak her desires, and it is cultivated and signified in the styles and shapes that represent middle-class feminine beauty. In this sense, I ultimately read Joy Luck not as a novel which exclusively depicts generational conflict among Chinese-American women, but rather as a text that thematizes the trope of the mother–daughter relationship in Asian American culture; that is, the novel comments upon the idealized construction of mother– daughter relationships (both in the majority culture’s discourse about Asian Americans and in the Asian American discourse about ourselves), as well as upon the kinds of differences – of class and culturally specific definitions of gender – that are rendered invisible by the privileging of this trope.17 268

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Before concluding, I want to turn to a final cultural text which not only restates the Asian American narrative that opposes nativism and assimilation but articulates a critique of that narrative, calling the nativist/assimilationist dyad into question. If Joy Luck poses an alternative to the dichotomy of nativism and assimilation by multiplying the generational conflict and demystifying the centrality of the mother–daughter relationship, then Peter Wang’s film A Great Wall (1985) – both in its emplotment and in its very medium of representation – offers yet another version of this alternative. Wang’s film unsettles both poles in the antinomy of nativist essentialism and assimilation by performing a continual geographical juxtaposition and exchange between a variety of cultural spaces. A Great Wall portrays the visit of Leo Fang’s Chinese-American family to the People’s Republic of China and their month-long stay with Leo’s sister’s family, the Chao family, in Beijing. The film concentrates on the primary contrast between the habits, customs, and assumptions of the Chinese in China and the Chinese-Americans in California by going back and forth between shots of Beijing and Northern California, in a type of continual filmic ‘‘migration’’ between the two, as if to thematize in its very form the travel between cultural spaces. From the first scene, however, the film foregrounds the idea that in the opposition between native and assimilated spaces, neither begins as a pure, uncontaminated site or origin; and as the camera eye shuttles back and forth between, both poles of the constructed opposition shift and change. (Indeed, the Great Wall of China, from which the film takes its title, is a monument to the historical condition that not even ancient China was ‘‘pure,’’ but co-existed with ‘‘foreign barbarians’’ against which the Middle Kingdom erected such barriers.) In this regard, the film contains a number of emblematic images that call attention to the syncretic, composite quality of all cultural spaces: when the young Chinese Liu finishes the university entrance exam his scholar-father gives him a Coca-Cola; children crowd around the single village television to watch a Chinese opera singer imitate Pavarotti singing Italian opera; the Chinese student learning English recites the Gettysburg Address. Although the film concentrates on both illustrating and dissolving the apparent opposition between Chinese Chinese and American Chinese, a number of other contrasts are likewise explored: the differences between generations both within the Chao and the Fang families (daughter Lili noisily drops her bike while her father practices tai chi; Paul kisses his Caucasian girlfriend and later tells his father that he believes all Chinese are racists when Leo suggests that he might date some nice Chinese girls); differences between men and women (accentuated by two scenes, one in which Grace Fang and Mrs. Chao talk about their husbands and children, the other in which Chao and Leo get drunk together); and, finally, the differences between capitalist and communist societies (highlighted in a scene in which the Chaos and Fangs talk about their different attitudes toward ‘‘work’’). The representations of these other contrasts complicate and diversify the ostensible focus on cultural differences between Chinese and Chinese-Americans, as if to testify to the condition that there is never only one exclusive valence of 269

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difference, but rather cultural difference is always simultaneously bound up with gender, economics, age, and other distinctions. In other words, when Leo says to his wife that the Great Wall makes the city ‘‘just as difficult to leave as to get in,’’ the wall at once signifies the construction of a variety of barriers – not only between Chinese and Americans, but between generations, men and women, capitalism and communism – as well as the impossibility of ever remaining bounded and impenetrable, of resisting change, recomposition, and reinvention. We are reminded of this impossibility throughout the film, but it is perhaps best illustrated in the scene in which the Fang and Chao families play a rousing game of touch football on the ancient immovable Great Wall. The film continues with a series of wonderful contrasts: the differences in the bodily comportments of the Chinese-American Paul and the Chinese Liu playing ping pong, between Leo’s jogging and Mr. Chao’s tai chi, between Grace Fang’s and Mrs. Chao’s ideas of what is fitting and fashionable for the female body. The two families have different senses of space and of the relation between family members. In one subplot, the Chinese-American cousin Paul is outraged to learn that Mrs. Chao reads her daughter Lili’s mail; he asks Lili if she has ever heard of ‘‘privacy.’’ This later results in a fight between Mrs. Chao and Lili in which Lili says she has learned from their American cousins that ‘‘it’s not right to read other people’s mail.’’ Mrs. Chao retorts: ‘‘You’re not ‘other people,’ you’re my daughter. What is this thing, ‘privacy’?’’ Lili explains to her that ‘‘privacy’’ can’t be translated into Chinese. ‘‘Oh, so you’re trying to hide things from your mother and use western words to trick her!’’ exclaims Mrs. Chao. Ultimately, just as the members of the Chao family are marked by the visit from their American relatives, the Fangs are altered by the time they return to California, each bringing back a memento or practice from their Chinese trip. In other words, rather than privileging either a nativist or assimilationist view, or even espousing a ‘‘Chinese-American’’ resolution of differences, A Great Wall performs a filmic ‘‘migration’’ by shuttling between the various cultural spaces; we are left, by the end of the film, with a sense of culture as dynamic and open, the result of a continual process of visiting and revisiting a plurality of cultural sites. In keeping with the example of A Great Wall, we might consider as a possible model for the ongoing construction of ethnic identity the migratory process suggested by Wang’s filming technique and emplotment: we might conceive of the making and practice of Asian American culture as nomadic, unsettled, taking place in the travel between cultural sites and in the multivocality of heterogeneous and conflicting positions. Taking seriously the heterogeneities among Asian Americans in California, we must conclude that the grouping ‘‘Asian American’’ is not a natural or static category; it is a socially constructed unity, a situationally specific position that we assume for political reasons. It is ‘‘strategic’’ in Gayatri Spivak’s sense of a ‘‘strategic use of a positive essentialism in a scrupulously visible political interest’’ (205). The concept of ‘‘strategic essentialism’’ suggests that it is possible to utilize specific signifiers of ethnic identity, such as Asian American, for the purpose of contesting and disrupting the 270

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discourses that exclude Asian Americans, while simultaneously revealing the internal contradictions and slippages of Asian American so as to insure that such essentialisms will not be reproduced and proliferated by the very apparatuses we seek to disempower. I am not suggesting that we can or should do away with the notion of Asian American identity, for to stress only our differences would jeopardize the hard-earned unity that has been achieved in the last two decades of Asian American politics, the unity that is necessary if Asian Americans are to play a role in the new historical bloc of ethnic Californians. In fact, I would submit that the very freedom, in the 1990s, to explore the hybridities concealed beneath the desire of identity is permitted by the context of a strongly articulated essentialist politics. Just as the articulation of the desire for identity depends upon the existence of a fundamental horizon of differences, the articulation of differences dialectically depends upon a socially constructed and practiced notion of identity. I want simply to remark that in the 1990s, we can afford to rethink the notion of ethnic identity in terms of cultural, class, and gender differences, rather than presuming similarities and making the erasure of particularity the basis of unity. In the 1990s, we can diversify our political practices to include a more heterogeneous group and to enable crucial alliances with other groups – ethnicity-based, class-based, gender-based, and sexualitybased – in the ongoing work of transforming hegemony.

Notes Many thanks to Elaine Kim for her thought-provoking questions, and for asking me to deliver portions of this essay as papers at the 1990 meetings of the Association of Asian American Studies and of the American Literature Association; to James Clifford, who also gave me the opportunity to deliver a version of this essay at a conference sponsored by the Center for Cultural Studies at UC Santa Cruz; to the audience participants at all three conferences who asked stimulating questions which have helped me to rethink my original notions; and to Page duBois, Barbara Harlow, Susan Kirkpatrick, George Mariscal, Ellen Rooney, and Kathryn Shevelow, who read drafts and offered important comments and criticism. 1 Nisei refers to a second-generation Japanese-American, born to immigrant parents in the US; sansei, a third-generation Japanese-American. Issei refers to a first-generation immigrant. 2 See Kim (1982) for the most important book-length study of the literary representations of multi-generational Asian America. 3 Recent anthropological discussions of ethnic cultures as fluid and syncretic systems echo these concerns of Asian American writers. See, for example, Fischer; Clifford. For an anthropological study of Japanese-American culture that troubles the paradigmatic construction of kinship and filial relations as the central figure in culture, see Yanagisako (1985). 4 We might think, for example, of the shifting of the Los Angeles ‘‘Chinatown’’ from its downtown location to the suburban community of Monterey Park. Since the 1970s, the former ‘‘Chinatown’’ has been superceded demographically and economically by Monterey Park, the home of many Chinese-Americans as well as newly arrived Chinese from Hong Kong and Taiwan. The Monterey Park community of 63,000 residents is currently over 50% Asian. On the social and political consequences of these changing demographics, see Fong.

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Lisa Lowe 5 Chan’s history of the Chinese immigrant populations in California, This Bittersweet Soil, (1986) and her history of Asian Americans are extremely important in this regard. Numerous lectures by Ling-chi Wang at UC San Diego in 1987 and at UC Berkeley in 1988 have been very important to my understanding of the heterogeneity of waves of immigration across different Asian-origin groups. 6 The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 barred Chinese from entering the US, the National Origins Act prohibited the entry of Japanese in 1924, and the Tydings–McDuffie Act of 1934 limited Filipino immigrants to 50 people per year. Finally, the most tragic consequence of anti-Asian racism occurred during World War II when 120,000 Japanese-Americans (two-thirds of whom were American citizens by birth) were interned in camps. For a study of the anti-Japanese movement culminating in the immigration act of 1924, see Daniels (1962). Takaki (1989) offers a general history of Asian origin immigrant groups in the United States. 7 The model minority myth constructs Asians as aggressively driven overachievers; it is a homogenizing fiction which relies upon two strategies common in the subordinating construction of racial or ethnic otherness – the racial other as knowable, familiar (‘‘like us’’), and as incomprehensible, threatening (‘‘unlike us’’); the model minority myth suggests both that Asians are overachievers and ‘‘unlike us,’’ and that they assimilate well, and are thus ‘‘like us.’’ Asian Americans are continually pointing out that the model minority myth distorts the real gains, as well as the impediments, of Asian immigrants; by leveling and homogenizing all Asian groups, it erases the different rates of assimilation and the variety of class identities among various Asian immigrant groups. Claiming that Asians are ‘‘overrepresented’’ on college campuses, the model minority myth is one of the justifications for the establishment of informal quotas in university admissions policies, similar to the university admission policies which discriminated against Jewish students from the 1930s to the 1950s. 8 In the last two decades, greatly diverse new groups have settled in California; demographers project that by the end of the [twentieth] century, the ‘‘majority’’ of the state will be composed of ethnic ‘‘minority’’ groups. Due to recent immigrants, this influx of minorities is characterized also by greater diversity within individual groups: the group we call Asian Americans no longer denotes only Japanese, Chinese, Koreans, and Filipinos, but now includes Indian, Thai, Vietnamese, Cambodian, and Laotian groups; Latino communities in California are made up not only of Chicanos, but include Guatemalans, Salvadorans, and Colombians. It is not difficult to find Pakistani, Armenian, Lebanese, and Iranian enclaves in San Francisco, Los Angeles, or even San Diego. While California’s ‘‘multiculturalism’’ is often employed to support a notion of the ‘‘melting pot,’’ to further an ideological assertion of equal opportunity for California’s different immigrant groups, I am, in contrast, pursuing the ignored implications of this characterization of California as an ethnic state: that is, despite the increasing numbers of ethnic immigrants apparently racing to enjoy California’s opportunities, for racial and ethnic immigrants there is no equality, but uneven development, nonequivalence, and cultural heterogeneities, not only between, but within, groups. 9 For an important elaboration of the concept of ‘‘minority discourse,’’ see JanMohamed and Lloyd (1990). 10 This notion of ‘‘the dominant’’ – defined by Williams in a chapter discussing the ‘‘Dominant, Residual, and Emergent’’ as ‘‘a cultural process . . . seized as a cultural system, with determinate dominant features: feudal culture or bourgeois culture or a transition from one to the other’’ – is often conflated in recent cultural theory with Gramsci’s concept of hegemony. Indeed, Williams writes: ‘‘We have certainly still to speak of the ‘dominant’ and the ‘effective,’ and in these senses of the hegemonic’’ (121), as if the dominant and the hegemonic are synonymous. 11 See Gramsci, ‘‘History.’’ Gramsci describes ‘‘subaltern’’ groups as by definition not unified, emergent, and always in relation to the dominant groups:

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Heterogeneity, Hybridity, Multiplicity The history of subaltern social groups is necessarily fragmented and episodic. There undoubtedly does exist a tendency to (at least provisional stages of) unification in the historical activity of these groups, but this tendency is continually interrupted by the activity of the ruling groups; it therefore can only be demonstrated when an historical cycle is completed and this cycle culminates in a success. Subaltern groups are always subject to the activity of ruling groups, even when they rebel and rise up: only ‘permanent’ victory breaks their subordination, and that not immediately. In reality, even when they appear triumphant, the subaltern groups are merely anxious to defend themselves (a truth which can be demonstrated by the history of the French Revolution at least up to 1830). Every trace of independent initiative on the part of subaltern groups should therefore be of incalculable value for the integral historian. (54–5) 12 ‘‘Hegemony’’ remains a suggestive construct in Gramsci, however, rather than an explicitly interpreted set of relations. Contemporary readers are left with the more specific task of distinguishing which particular forms of challenge to an existing hegemony are significantly transformative, and which forms may be neutralized or appropriated by the hegemony. Some cultural critics contend that counterhegemonic forms and practices are tied by definition to the dominant culture and that the dominant culture simultaneously produces and limits its own forms of counter-culture. I am thinking here of some of the ‘‘new historicist’’ studies that use a particular notion of Foucault’s discourse to confer authority to the ‘‘dominant,’’ interpreting all forms of ‘‘subversion’’ as being ultimately ‘‘contained’’ by dominant ideology and institutions. Other cultural historians, such as Williams, suggest that because there is both identifiable variation in the social order over time, as well as variations in the forms of the counter-culture in different historical periods, we must conclude that some aspects of the oppositional forms are not reducible to the terms of the original hegemony. Still other theorists, such as Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, have expanded Gramsci’s notion of hegemony to argue that in advanced capitalist society, the social field is not a totality consisting exclusively of the dominant and the counterdominant, but rather that ‘‘the social’’ is an open and uneven terrain of contesting articulations and signifying practices. Some of these articulations and practices are neutralized, while others can be linked to build important pressures against an existing hegemony. See Laclau and Mouffe (1985), especially pp. 134–45. They argue persuasively that no hegemonic logic can account for the totality of ‘‘the social’’ and that the open and incomplete character of the social field is the precondition of every hegemonic practice. For if the field of hegemony were conceived according to a ‘‘zero-sum’’ vision of possible positions and practices, then the very concept of hegemony, as plural and mutable formations and relations, would be rendered impossible. Elsewhere, in ‘‘Hegemony and New Political Subjects,’’ Mouffe goes even further to elaborate the practical dimensions of the hegemonic principle in terms of contemporary social movements. 13 Adamson reads The Prison Notebooks as the postulation of Gramsci’s activist and educationalist politics; in chapter 6, he discusses Gramsci’s two concepts of hegemony: hegemony as the consensual basis of an existing political system in civil society, as opposed to violent oppression or domination, and hegemony as a historical phase of bourgeois development in which class is understood not only economically but also in terms of a common intellectual and moral awareness, an overcoming of the ‘‘economic-corporative’’ phase. Adamson associates the former (hegemony in its contrast to domination) with ‘‘hegemony-maintenance,’’ and the latter (hegemony as a stage in the political moment) as ‘‘hegemony-creation.’’ Sassoon provides an excellent discussion of Gramsci’s key concepts; she both historicizes the concept of hegemony and discusses the implications of some of the ways in which hegemony has been interpreted. Sassoon emphasizes the degree to which hegemony is opposed to domination to evoke the way in which one social group influences other groups, making certain compromises with them in order to gain their consent for its leadership in society as a whole.

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Lisa Lowe 14 Amı´lcar Cabral, the Cape Verdean African nationalist leader and theorist, echoes some fundamental observations made by Fanon: that the national bourgeoisie will collaborate with the colonizers and that tribal fundamentalism must be overcome or it will defeat any efforts at unity. In 1969, Cabral wrote ironically in ‘‘Party Principles and Political Practice’’ of the dangers of tribalism and nativism: ‘‘No one should think that he is more African than another, even than some white man who defends the interests of Africa, merely because he is today more adept at eating with his hand, rolling rice into a ball and putting it into his mouth’’ (1979: 57). 15 I am thinking here especially of Lauretis (1987); Spivak (1987); and Minh-ha (1989). The latter explains the multiple inscription of women of color: [M]any women of color feel obliged [to choose] between ethnicity and womanhood: how can they? You never have/are one without the other. The idea of two illusorily separated identities, one ethnic, the other woman (or more precisely female), partakes in the EuroAmerican system of dualistic reasoning and its age-old divide-and-conquer tactics. . . . The pitting of anti-racist and anti-sexist struggles against one another allows some vocal fighters to dismiss blatantly the existence of either racism or sexism within their lines of action, as if oppression only comes in separate, monolithic forms. (105) 16 For a more extensive analysis of generational conflict in Chu’s novel, see Gong (1980). Gong asserts that ‘‘The father/son relationship represents the most critical juncture in the erosion of a traditional Chinese value system and the emergence of a Chinese American character. Change from Chinese to Chinese American begins here’’ (74–5). 17 There are many scenes that resonate with my suggestion that generational conflicts cannot be isolated from either class or the historicity of gender. In the third section of the novel, it is class difference in addition to generational strife that founds the antagonism between mother and daughter: Ying-ying St. Clair cannot understand why Lena and her husband, Harold, have spent an enormous amount of money to live in a barn in the posh neighborhood of Woodside. Lena says: ‘‘My mother knows, underneath all the fancy details that cost so much, this house is still a barn’’ (151). In the early relationship between Suyuan Woo and her daughter, Jing-mei, the mother pushes her daughter to become a success, to perform on the piano; we can see that such desires are the reflection of the mother’s former poverty, her lack of opportunity as both a poor refugee and a woman, but the daughter, trapped within a familial framework of explanation, sees her mother as punishing and invasive. Finally, the mother and daughter pair An-mei and Rose Hsu dramatize a conflict between the mother’s belief that it is more honorable to keep personal problems within the Chinese family and the daughter’s faith in western psychotherapy: the mother cannot understand why her daughter would pay a psychiatrist, a stranger, to talk about her divorce, instead of talking to her mother: the mother who was raised believing one must not show suffering to others because they, like magpies, would feed on your tears says of the daughter’s psychiatrist, ‘‘really, he is just another bird drinking from your misery’’ (241).

References Adamson, Walter Hegemony and Revolution: A Study of Antonio Gramsci’s Political and Cultural Theory (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980). Cabral, Amı´lcar University and Struggle: Speeches and Writings of Amı´lcar Cabral, trans. Michael Wolfers (New York: Monthly Review, 1979). Chan, Sucheng Asian Americans: An Interpretive History (Boston: Twayne, 1991). Chan, Sucheng This Bittersweet Soil: The Chinese in California Agriculture, 1860–1910 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986).

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Heterogeneity, Hybridity, Multiplicity Chang, Diana, ‘‘The Oriental Contingent.’’ The Forbidden Stitch, ed. Shirley Geok-Lin Lim, Mayumi Tsutakawa, and Margarita Donnelly (Corvallis: Calyx, 1989) 171–7. Chu, Louis. Eat a Bowl of Tea (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1961). Clifford, James. The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988). Daniels, Roger. The Politics of Prejudice (Berkeley: University of California Press 1962). Fanon, Frantz. The Wretched of the Earth, trans. Constance Farrington (New York: Grove, 1961). Fischer, Michael M. J. ‘‘Ethnicity and the Post-modern Arts of Memory.’’ In Writing Culture, ed. James Clifford and George Marcus. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986. Fong, Timothy. ‘‘A Community Study of Monterey Park, California.’’ Dissertation University of California, Berkeley, 1992. Glenn, Evelyn Nakano ‘‘Occupational Ghettoization: Japanese-American Women and Domestic Service, 1905–1970,’’ Ethnicity 8 (1981): 352–86. Gong, Ted ‘‘Approaching Cultural Change Through Literature: From Chinese to ChineseAmerican,’’ Amerasia 7 (1980): 73–86. Gramsci, Antonio ‘‘History of the Subaltern Classes: Methodological Criteria,’’ Selections 52–60. Gramsci, Antonio. Selections from the Prison Notebooks, ed. and trans. Quinton Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith (New York: International, 1971). A Great Wall. Dir. Peter Wang. New Yorker Films, 1985. JanMohamed, Abdul, and David Lloyd, eds, The Nature and Context of Minority Discourse (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990). Kim, Elaine Asian American Literature: An Introduction to the Writings and Their Social Context (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1982.) Kim, Elaine. ‘‘ ‘Such Opposite Creatures’: Men and Women in Asian American Literature,’’ Michigan Quarterly Review (1990): 68–93. Kingston, Maxine Hong The Woman Warrior (New York: Random, 1975). Laclau, Ernesto, and Chantal Mouffe Hegemony and Socialist Strategy (London: Verso, 1985). Lauretis, Teresa de Technologies of Gender (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987). Lowe, Lydia. ‘‘Quitting Time,’’ Ikon 9, Without Ceremony: a special issue by Asian Women United. Spec. issue of Ikon 9 (1988): 29. Minh-ha, Trinh T. Woman, Native, Other: Writing Postcoloniality and Feminism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989). Mirikitani, Janice ‘‘Breaking Tradition,’’ Without Ceremony. 9. Mouffe, Chantal. ‘‘Hegemony and New Political Subjects: Toward a New Concept of Democracy.’’ In Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, ed. Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (Urbana: University of Illinois, 1988), 89–104. Sassoon, Anne Showstack ‘‘Hegemony, War of Position and Political Intervention.’’ Approaches to Gramsci, ed. Anne Showstack Sassoon (London: Writers and Readers, 1982). Spivak, Gayatri In Other Worlds (London: Routledge, 1987). Takaki, Ronald Strangers From a Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans (Boston: Little, Brown, 1989). Tan, Amy The Joy Luck Club (New York: Putnam’s, 1989). Williams, Raymond Marxism and Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977). Yanagisako, Sylvia Transforming the Past: Kinship and Tradition among Japanese Americans (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1985).

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CHAPTER

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Beyond Identity Politics: The Predicament of the Asian American Writer in Late Capitalism* E. San Juan, Jr.

With the presumed collapse of the transcendental grounds for universal standards of norms and values, proponents of the postmodern ‘‘revolution’’ in cultural studies in Europe and North America have celebrated diffe´rance, marginality, nomadic and decentered identities, indeterminacy, simulacra and the sublime, undecidability, ironic dissemination, textuality, and so forth. A multiplicity of power plays and language games supposedly abounds. The intertextuality of power, desire, and interest begets strategies of positionalities. So take your pick. Instead of the totalizing master narratives of Enlightenment progress, postmodern thinkers valorize the local, the heterogeneous, the contingent and conjunctural. Is it still meaningful to speak of truth? Are we still permitted to address issues of class, gender, and race? What are the implications of this postmodern ‘‘transvaluation’’ of paradigms for literary studies in general and minority/ethnic writing in particular? One salutary repercussion has been the questioning of the Eurocentric canonical archive by feminists, peoples of color, dissenters inside and outside. The poststructuralist critique of the self-identical Subject (by convention white, bourgeois, patriarchal) has inspired a perspectivalist revision of various disciplinary approaches in history, comparative aesthetics, and others. To cite three inaugural examples: Houston Baker’s text-specific inventory of the black vernacular ‘‘blues’’ tradition presented in Blues, Ideology and Afro-American Literature (1984), Arnold Krupat’s foregrounding of oral tribal allegory in American Indian autobiographies enabled by a ‘‘materially situated historicism’’ in The Voice in *E. San Juan, Jr. ‘‘Beyond Identity Politics: The Predicament of the Asian American Writer in Late Capitalism.’’ American Literary History 3 (1991): 542–65. Reprinted by permission of Oxford University Press.

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the Margin (1989), and Ramon Saldivar’s dialectical assessment of Chicano narrative as an ‘‘oppositional articulation’’ of the gaps and silences in American literary history, a thesis vigorously argued in Chicano Narrative (1990). Premised on the notion that everything is socio-discursively constructed, these initiatives so far have not been paralleled by Asian American intellectuals. Who indeed will speak for this composite group? One would suspect that the rubric ‘‘Asian American,’’ itself an artificial hypostasis of unstable elements, would preemptively vitiate any unilateral program of systematization. In addition, Asian Americans’ being judged by media and government as a ‘‘model minority,’’ some allegedly whiter than whites (see Thernstrom 1983; 252; Lee 1990), makes their marginality quite problematic. Perhaps more than other peoples of color, Asian Americans find themselves trapped in a classic postmodern predicament: essentialized by the official pluralism as formerly the ‘‘Yellow Peril’’ and now the ‘‘Superminority,’’ they nevertheless seek to reaffirm their complex internal differences in projects of hybrid and syncretic genealogy. Objectified by state-ordained juridical exclusions (Chinese, Japanese, and Filipinos share this historically unique commonality), they pursue particularistic agendas for economic and cultural autonomy. Given these antinomic forces at work, can Asian American writers collectively pursue a ‘‘molecular micropolitics’’ of marginality? What is at stake if a wellknown authority on ethnic affairs like Ronald Takaki (whose recent book affords a point of departure for my metacommentary) tries to articulate the identity-indifference of this fragmented and dispersed ensemble of ethnoi? (see Grigulevich and Kozlov 1974: 17–44). How does a postmodern politics of identity refract the innovative yet tradition-bound performances of the Chinese American Maxine Hong Kingston and the Filipino American Carlos Bulosan? Given the crisis of the postmodern politics of identity, can we legitimately propose an oppositional ‘‘emergency’’ strategy of writing whose historic agency is still on trial or, as it were, on reprieve? My inquiry begins with remarks on Asian American history’s textuality as prelude to its possible aesthetic inscription. In composing Strangers from a Different Shore in a period when the planet is beginning to be homogenized by a new pax Euro-Americana, a ‘‘New World Order’’ spawning (as I write) from the Persian Gulf, Takaki has performed for us the unprecedented task of unifying the rich, protean, intractable diversity of Asian lives in the US without erasing the specificities, the ramifying genealogies, the incommensurable repertoire of idiosyncrasies of each constituent group – a postmodern feat of reconciling incommensurables, to say the least. There are of course many discrete chronicles of each Asian community, mostly written by sympathetic Euro-American scholars before Takaki’s work. But what distinguishes Takaki’s account, aside from his empathy with his subject and documentary trustworthiness, is its claim to represent the truth based on the prima facie experiences of individuals. At once we are confronted with the crucial problem plaguing such claims to veracity or authenticity: Can these subalterns represent themselves (to paraphrase 277

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Gayatri Spivak) as self-conscious members of a collectivity-for-itself? Or has Takaki mediated the immediacy of naive experience with a theory of representation that privileges the homo economicus as the founding subject of his discourse?1 No one should underestimate Takaki’s achievement here in challenging the tenability of the received dogma (espoused by Nathan Glazer and other neoconservative pundits) that the European immigrant model of successful assimilation applies to peoples of color in the US (see Takaki 1987). Europe’s Others, hitherto excluded from the canonical tradition, are beginning to speak and present themselves so as to rectify the mystifying re-presentation of themselves. In this light, Takaki is to be credited above all for giving Asian Americans a synoptic view of their deracinated lives by making them (as protagonists who discover their roles and destinies in the process) perform the drama of their diverse singularities. This is stage-managed within the framework of a chronological history of their ordeals in struggling to survive, adapt, and multiply in a hostile habitat, with their accompanying rage and grief and laughter. By a montage of personal testimony – anecdotes, letters, songs, telegrams, eyewitness reports, confessions, album photographs, quotidian fragments, cliche´s and banalities of everyday life – juxtaposed with statistics, official documents, reprise of punctual events, Takaki skillfully renders a complex drama of Asians enacting and living their own history. We can perhaps find our own lives already anticipated, pantomimed, rounded off, and judged in one of his varied ‘‘talk stories’’ – a case of life imitating the art of history. Granted the book’s ‘‘truth-effects,’’ I enter a caveat. For all its massive accumulation of raw data and plausible images of numerous protagonists and actions spanning more than a century of wars and revolutions, Takaki’s narrative leaves us wondering whether the collective life-trajectory of Asian Americans imitates the European immigrant success story, spiced with quaint ‘‘Oriental’’ twists – which he clearly implies at the end. If so, it is just one thread of the national fabric, no more tormented nor pacified than any other. If not, then this history is unique in some way that escapes the traditional emplotment of previous annals deriving from the master-narrative of humankind’s continuous material improvement, self-emancipation, and techno-administrative mastery conceived by the philosophes of the European Enlightenment. Either way, there is no reason for Asian Americans to feel excluded from the grand March of Progress. Our puzzlement, however, is not clarified by the book’s concluding chapter, which exposes the myth of the ‘‘model minority’’ in an eloquent argument, assuring us that Asian Americans did not ‘‘let the course of their lives be determined completely by the ‘necessity’ of race and class’’ (473). In the same breath Takaki warns of a resurgent tide of racially motivated attacks against Asian Americans manifested in the media, in campus harassments, in the 1982 murder of Vincent Chin mistaken for a Japanese by unemployed Detroit autoworkers (and, I might add here, in the January 1989 massacre of Vietnamese and Cambodian schoolchildren in Stockton, California, 278

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by a man obsessed with hatred for Southeast Asian refugees). During this same period, in contrast, the judicial victory of the Japanese concentration camp internees’ demand for redress and reparations as well as the growing visibility of Asian American artists furnishes convincing proof that what David Harvey calls the post-Fordist post-Keynesian system (1989: 173–8) still allows dreams to come true, that is, allows Asian Americans the opportunity in particular ‘‘to help America accept and appreciate its diversity.’’ Calculating the losses and gains, Takaki prudentially opts for a meliorative closure. In retrospect, the telos of Strangers from a Different Shore can be thematized as the Asian immigrants’ almost miraculous struggle for survival and recognition of their desperately won middle-class status. What is sought is the redemption of individual sacrifices by way of conformity to the utilitarian, competitive ethos of a business society. Reversing the dismaying prospect for Asian Americans forecast in an earlier survey, American Racism (1970) by Roger Daniels and Harry Kitano, Takaki offers a balance sheet for general consumption: Asian Americans are no longer victimized by legislation denying them naturalized citizenship and landownership. They have begun to exercise their political voices and have representatives in both houses of Congress as well as in state legislatures and on city councils. They enjoy much of the protection of civil rights laws that outlaw racial discrimination in employment as well as housing and that provide for affirmative action for racial minorities. They have greater freedom than did the earlier immigrants to embrace their own ‘‘diversity’’ – their own cultures as well as their own distinctive physical characteristics, such as their complexion and the shape of their eyes. (473–4)

It now becomes clear that despite its encyclopedic scope and archival competence, Takaki’s somewhat premature synthesis is a learned endeavor to deploy a strategy of containment. His rhetoric activates a mode of comic emplotment where all problems are finally resolved through hard work and individual effort, inspired by past memories of clan solidarity and intuitive faith in a gradually improving future. What is this if not a refurbished version of the liberal ideology of a market-centered, pluralist society where all disparities in values and beliefs – nay, even the sharpest contradictions implicating race, class, and gender – can be harmonized within the prevailing structure of power relations? This is not to say that such attempts to empower disenfranchised nationalities are futile or deceptive. But what needs a more than gestural critique is the extent to which such reforms do not eliminate the rationale for the hierarchical, invidious categorizing of people by race (as well as by gender and class) and their subsequent deprivation. Lacking such self-reflection, unable to problematize his theoretical organon, Takaki has superbly accomplished the articulation of the hegemonic doctrine of acquisitive/possessive liberalism as the informing principle of Asian American lives. Whether this is an effect of postmodern 279

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tropology or a symptom of ‘‘bad faith’’ investing the logic of elite populism, I am not quite sure. My reservations are shared by other Asian American observers who detect an apologetic agenda in such liberal historiography. At best, Takaki’s text operates an ironic, if not duplicitous, strategy: to counter hegemonic Eurocentrism, which erases the Asian American presence, a positivist-empiricist valorization of ‘‘lived experience’’ is carried out within the master narrative of evolutionary, gradualist progress. The American ‘‘Dream of Success’’ is thereby ultimately vindicated. This is not to suggest that historians like Takaki have suddenly been afflicted with amnesia, forgetting that it is the totalizing state practice of this ideology of market liberalism that underlies, for one, the violent colonial domination of peoples of color and the rape of the land of such decolonizing territories as the Philippines (my country of origin) and Puerto Rico in the aftermath of the Spanish–American War. It is the social practice of an expansive political economy which converts humans to exchangeable commodities (African chattel slavery in the South) and commodified labor power, thus requiring for its industrial take-off a huge supply of free labor – hence the need for European immigrants, especially after the Civil War, and the genocidal suppression of the American Indians. It is the expansion of this social formation that recruited Chinese coolies for railroad construction (the ‘‘fathers’’ poignantly described in Kingston’s China Men) and Japanese and Filipino labor (and Mexican braceros later) for agribusiness in Hawaii and California and for the canneries in Alaska. It is this same hegemonic worldview of free monopoly enterprise, also known as the ‘‘civilizing mission’’ of Eurocentric humanism, that forced the opening of the China market in the Opium Wars of the nineteenth century and the numerous military interventions in China and Indochina up to the Vietnam War and the coming of the ‘‘boat people.’’ Of course it is also the power/ knowledge episteme of the modernization process in Kenya, South Korea, Mexico, Indonesia, Egypt, Grenada, and all the neocolonial or peripheral dependencies of the world-system named by Immanuel Wallerstein as ‘‘historical capitalism’’ (1987: 13–43; see Amin 1989). It is now generally acknowledged that we cannot understand the situation of Asian Americans in the US today or in the past without a thorough comprehension of the global relations of power, the capitalist world-system that ‘‘pushed’’ populations from the colonies and dependencies and ‘‘pulled’’ them to terrain where a supply of cheap labor was needed. These relations of power broke up families, separating husbands from wives and parents from children; at present they motivate the ‘‘warm body export’’ of cheap labor from Thailand, the Philippines, and elsewhere. They legitimate the unregulated market for brides and hospitality girls, the free trade zones, and other postmodern schemes of capital accumulation in Third World countries. The discourse of the liberal free market underpins these power relations, constructing fluid georacial boundaries to guarantee the supply of cheap labor. Race acquires sailence in this world-system when, according to John Rex, ‘‘the language of racial difference 280

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. . . becomes the means whereby men allocate each other to different social and economic positions. . . . The exploitation of clearly marked groups in a variety of different ways is integral to capitalism. . . . Ethnic groups unite and act together because they have been subjected to distinct and differentiated types of exploitation’’ (1983: 406–7). The colonization and industrialization of the North American continent epitomize the asymmetrical power relations characteristic of this world-system. The sociocultural formation of global apartheid has been long in the making. Studies like Eric Wolf’s Europe and the People Without History (1982) or Richard Barnet and Ronald Muller’s Global Reach (1974), to mention only the elementary texts, show that the migration of peoples around the world, the displacement of refugees, or the forced expulsion and exile of individuals and whole groups (the Palestinian diaspora is the most flagrant) have occurred not by choice or accident but by the complex interaction of political, economic, and social forces from the period of mercantile capitalism to colonialism, from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century, continuing into the imperialism of the twentieth century. This genealogy of domination, the self-reproduction of its mechanisms and the sedimentation of its effects, is what is occluded in Takaki’s narrative (see Nakanishi 1976). Racial antagonism has marked the progress of US ethnogenesis from the outset. Since the US beginning as Britain’s colonial outpost, its social formation has been distinguished by the violent exclusion and subjugation of the American Indians and the subsequent differential incorporation of various racial groups. Takaki is sensitive to this process but assumes it as normal and inescapable, not as an index to subsequent race relations in the metropolitan center. Historians like Eugene Genovese, Gabriel Kolko, Howard Zinn, and others have pointed out that US society has been discriminative from the very beginning. Alexander Saxton underscores Nathan Glazer’s fundamental mistake in assuming that a policy of equal rights characterized US history from its inception: ‘‘Already in the days of Jefferson and the ‘sainted Jackson’ (to use Walt Whitman’s phrase) the nation had assumed the form of a racially exclusive democracy – democratic in the sense that it sought to provide equal opportunities for the pursuit of happiness by its white citizens through the enslavement of Afro-Americans, extermination of Indians, and territorial expansion largely at the expense of Mexicans and Indians’’ (1977: 145). By privileging ethnic difference (chiefly cultural superficialities) as a key sociological factor and ignoring what Michael Banton and Robert Miles call ‘‘racism’’ – the justification of unequal treatment of groups by deterministic ascription of negative characteristics to them (1984: 228) – US disciplinary regimes subsumed the plight of peoples of color into the European immigrant model. Thus they actualized a racial formation with ideological roots in Puritan doctrine and in Enlightenment humanist-scientific rationality. The concept of racial formation I have in mind originates from the dialectical articulation of state policies, discriminatory practices in civil society, and popular resistance to them. With the rise of the civil rights movement in the 281

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sixties, a new historical consciousness precipitated an understanding of such phenomena as ‘‘internal colonialism’’ imposed by the state on subject populations (as cogently argued by Robert Blauner in Racial Oppression in America) and the segmentation of the labor market. In the eighties, with the renewed assault on civil rights by the particular brand of neoconservatism represented by the Reagan administration, it became necessary to reassess and correct our theoretical perspective in order to grasp the changed configuration of the US racial state and racial politics; this is the signal accomplishment of Michael Omi and Howard Winant’s study Racial Formation in the United States From the 1960s to the 1980s (see my ‘‘Problems’’). Lacking a theory of the changing articulation of racial discourse in different historical stages and the mutations of ‘‘differential exclusion’’ in late capitalism (see Davis), ethnic histories like Takaki’s find themselves undermined by what Etienne Balibar refers to as the ‘‘theoretical racism’’ of liberal democracy. Meanwhile, the subjects interpellated by such discourses find themselves ‘‘decentered’’ by the seemingly gratuitous pathos of living through the accelerated cyclic boom and bust of a postmodern, schizoid, but still profit-centered economy. As we live through the aftereffects of Reagan’s ‘‘authoritarian populism,’’ the rollback of affirmative action programs affecting a wide range of social transfer payments that benefited disadvantaged sectors and the ‘‘underclass,’’ and the recent media euphoria over the debacle of ‘‘actually existing socialism’’ in Eastern Europe, what is in store for Asian Americans at the threshold of the twenty-first century? One thing is predictable: without an alternative or oppositional strategy that can challenge the logic of liberal, possessive individualism and the seductive lure of consumerism (what W. F. Haug calls ‘‘commodity aesthetics’’), I suspect that the only recourse is to revive versions of individualist metaphysics, the most popular of which is ‘‘identity politics’’ – that is, the tendency to base one’s politics on a sense of identity, internalizing or privatizing all issues and thus either voiding them of any meaning or trivializing them (see Fuss 1989: 97–112). From a strategic angle, this tactical move recuperates an autochthonous will, an indigenous Otherness if you like. But what is unfortunately lost in the process is the historical density of collective resistance and revolt, the texture of our involvement in our communities that Takaki attempts to capture, together with the necessary concrete knowledge of society and politics – the mutable and highly mediated field of discourses, practices, institutions – on which our sense of responsibility can be nurtured, on which strategies of parody, satire, and expressive disruption can be anchored. But are such questions as ‘‘Who am I?’’ and ‘‘Why am I writing and for whom?’’ irrelevant or counterproductive? Questions of precisely this sort – interrogating the archaeology of a postmodern, hyperreal auto-da-fe´ – were grappled with by over a dozen Asian American intellectuals (writers, critics, social scientists) joined by a handful of African Americans and Euro-Americans in a three-day symposium on ‘‘Issues of 282

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Identity’’ held at Cornell University in which I was invited to participate as a representative of the Filipino American ‘‘ethnic’’ category. In my view, the event recapitulated the problems and lessons of the Asian American experience memorialized by Takaki. What transpired may be conceived as a case study of the identity politics syndrome complicated by the usual group dynamics of local born/expatriate encounters traversing a range of sexual, ethical, and occupational discourses. Not only was identity reduced to the garden variety of egos striking confessional postures, but the assorted group of writers (none of whom commanded the stature of Kingston, whose absence evoked a peculiar ressentiment from some writers) found themselves privileged somehow as the fountainhead of answers to questions of Asian American personal/collective identity. This privileging of the artist’s status, orchestrated by the Hong Kong-born impresario of the symposium, may have ruined any possibility of dialogue. When the critics (all based in such higher institutions of the Empire as the universities of California, Michigan, and Wisconsin) assigned to comment on the solicited texts (mostly essays by six authors) presented their commentaries in the language of contemporary critical theory, most of the writers immediately reacted with disappointment, incomprehension, anger, disgust, and futile rage: ‘‘Where are you coming from? Speak simply so common people can understand you!’’ (Such reactions were addressed to the reading of the comments, not to the written texts.) It culminated in a quasi-puritanical witch trial where the personal motives of the critics were questioned. One Chinese American poet from Hawaii even derogated Kingston – ‘‘Why is she always quoted as an authority on our community?’’ It reached the point where I was attacked for using obscure, pedantic language; for laying down a political line; for imposing a theory (the vulgar terrorist label to make someone superfluous is, of course, ‘‘Marxist’’); and – to say the least – for not conforming to the unwittingly self-serving identity politics which, by some insidious operation of shame psychology, had by then become the all-purpose weapon of the embattled e´crivains. In fact, the writers’ responses subsided to the crudest debunking accusation that the critics engaged in such activity only for the sake of tenure, fat salaries, prestige, professional vanity, and so forth. How was all this warranted by the ritual of a seemingly cultivated, polite, formally structured academic exchange? Let me venture an explanation. Apart from my criticism of liberal ideology such as that presiding over Takaki’s popularizing effort and also the writers’ self-serving justification of their function, what aroused the most intense hostility was my nuanced indictment of ‘‘multiculturalism,’’ the writers’ solution to the malaise of ‘‘cultural schizophrenia’’ and a pre-Lacanian hyphenated identity. A Filipino American writer inter alia observed that, for her, multiculturalism in the white media was ‘‘just mindblowing’’: witness those black rappers, Asian ethnic fashions and technology, Zen car commercials, etc. To this now hackneyed glorification of consumer society as the site of creative freedom, spontaneity – you can be whatever you want to be – and seemingly infinite libidinal 283

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gratification, I countered that the self-indulgence in this fabled cornucopia of simulacra, replicas, commodified spectacles – the pastiche offered by yuppie catalogues and antiseptic supermalls cloned from postmodern Las Vegas – is a hallucinatory path not to discovering one’s creative alterity, but leading to the suppression of the imagination’s potential and unrelenting submission to the monolithic law of a racist dispensation. That cornucopia is really the emblem of what Henri Lefebvre describes as ‘‘the bureaucratic society of controlled consumption’’ (1968: 68). The Asian American citizen who articulates her subjecthood, her subalternity, through multiculturalism (assimilation via acculturation lurks not far behind) betrays an ignorance of the lopsided distribution of power and wealth in a racially stratified society. And so, in what might be a postmodern aporia, binary opposites turn out to be double binds (I am both American and Asian, and many other things) – virtually disabling ruses of complicity, selfincriminating games of co-optation. Recent scholars have documented the growing mass appeal of a new racist practice based on the language of diverse cultures, life-styles, personal tastes and free choices, articulated with issues of class, gender, age, and so forth. What the advocates of multiculturalism are innocent of is the concept of hegemony (of which more later), which allows a latitude of diverse trends and tendencies in a putative laissez-faire market system provided these operate within the monadic framework of contractual arrangements and hierarchical property relations. Corporate hegemony precisely thrives on your freedom to shop – until your credit runs out and the right to be bankrupt is invoked. In lieu of moralizing, probably the best retort to this rather premature celebration of the postmodern orgy of the Emersonian self is from the manifesto of one of its high priests, JeanFranc¸ois Lyotard: Eclecticism is the degree zero of contemporary general culture: one listens to reggae, watches a western, eats McDonald’s food for lunch and local cuisine for dinner, wears Paris perfume in Tokyo and ‘‘retro’’ clothes in Hong Kong; knowledge is a matter for TV games. It is easy to find a public for eclectic works. By becoming kitsch, art panders to the confusion which reigns in the ‘‘taste’’ of the patrons. Artists, gallery owners, critics, and public wallow together in the ‘‘anything goes,’’ and the epoch is one of slackening. But this realism of the ‘‘anything goes’’ is in fact that of money; in the absence of aesthetic criteria, it remains possible and useful to assess the value of works of art according to the profits they yield. Such realism accommodates all tendencies, just as capital accommodates all ‘‘needs,’’ providing that the tendencies and needs have purchasing power. (1984: 76)

My reservation, then, to the assumption by racial subjects of an autonomous identity envisaged by multiculturalism (which I would consider the guilty conscience or ‘‘bad faith’’ of petty suburban liberalism) concerns the orthodox conception of the dominant culture as simply comprising life-styles that you can pick and wear anytime you please. That is unfeasible since this hegemonic 284

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multiculture (practices, discourses), viewed from a historical materialist perspective, is precisely the enabling power of a system produced and reproduced by racial, gender, and class divisions. It coincides with a network of domination and subordination in civil society that prevents one from choosing any life-style, or for that matter refusing alienated work, in order to realize one’s social potential, that is, the ‘‘species-being’’ Marx postulates in The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. In this context, hegemony implies the reproduction of subordinate Others to confirm the hierarchy, but at the same time, sites of contestation open up where desire, fantasy, and the unconscious begin to erode hierarchy. Here is the blind spot which identity politics cannot apprehend, namely, that the contingencies of a hegemonic struggle can generate a variety of subject positions which are neither fixed nor shifting but capable of being articulated in various directions according to the play of political forces and the conjunctural alignment of multilayered determinants (see Williams 1977: 108–11; Hall 1986). Oblivious to this deeper analysis, the exponents of identity politics construe ‘‘identity’’ in an abstract formalist fashion: the consumer as prototype. However, this politics conceals its essentialism in its claim of affirming universalizing, humanist goals – one writer expatriated from the Philippines and now domiciled in Greenwich Village extolled her world citizenship as her credential of entitlement. I believe this escape route of the ‘‘Unhappy Consciousness,’’ this catharsis of a poststoic universalism, harbors a genealogy that can be traced all the way back to the Renaissance. One filiation is Goethe’s vanguard internationalism which, despite its humanitarian intention, exemplifies pure culinary liberalism (to borrow Bertolt Brecht’s term), though one much ahead of its time. In his Conversations with Eckermann, Goethe speculates about the advent of ‘‘world literature,’’ multiculturalism on a planetary scale. After reading one Chinese novel, this archetypal European culture-hero tries to impart his wisdom to us benighted denizens from Asia: The Chinese think, act, and feel almost exactly like ourselves; and we soon find that we are perfectly like them, except that all they do is more clear, more pure and decorous than with us. . . . National literature is now rather an unmeaning term; the epoch of World Literature is at hand, and every one must strive to hasten its approach. But, while we thus value what is foreign, we must not bind ourselves to anything in particular, and regard it as a model. We must not give this value to the Chinese, or the Serbian. . . . [I]f we really want a pattern, we must always return to the ancient Greeks, in whose works the beauty of mankind is constantly represented. All the rest we must look at only historically, appropriating to ourselves what is good, so far as it goes. (48)

And so the Faustian spirit of the Caucasian conscience marches on, with Aphrodite at its vanguard and the postmodern spirit of negation trailing behind. Nonetheless it must be said that Goethe’s internationalist good sense, 285

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in anticipating Hegel’s ‘‘concrete universal,’’ established the groundwork for conceiving Marx’s ‘‘species-being’’ and thenceforth Frantz Fanon’s Third World partisanship and Che Guevara’s ‘‘New Socialist Person.’’ To return to the symposium: aside from inadequate logistics and inexperienced planning, I think the provenance of whatever misrecognitions occurred – the Asian American psyche cannot plead to be exceptional – cannot just be personal or bureaucratic. Causality inheres in the political-symbolic economy of liberal exchange. It inhabits the paradoxical space that syncopates structural constraints and conjunctural opportunities: constraints due to the organizers’ allowing the writers to monopolize the center of attention and the attendant failure to establish an atmosphere of productive conflict by circulating all the texts and distributing occasions for speech in an egalitarian manner. Both failures consequently fostered an attitude of acknowledging differences sublimated in utterly homogenizing repertoires of communication, that is, in commonsense platitudes and pedantic trivia. In the process, novel conjunctural opportunities were missed: for example, my proposal that we distinguish carefully between experience (almost everyone uncritically endorsed the wonderful ‘‘chaos’’ from which writers drew inspiration – a gesture of ‘‘bad faith’’) and knowledge. ‘‘Knowledge,’’ however, was immediately yoked to ‘‘theory’’ and denounced as dogmatic, mechanical, rigid, and obscurantist. The opportunity for exploring why writers, tuned to a different level of discourse, could not understand the critics’ idiom and theoretical formulations was forfeited. Instead of an ambience of genuine national diversity, due to uneven development of consciousnesses, ironically, a leveling temper supervened in which hierarchy was covertly reinstituted: the writer was established as a prophet/ oracle who speaks truth and purveys sacrosanct knowledge. However, because these oracles needed informed readers and intelligent listeners who would confirm their truths, a profound anxiety haunted them. They craved the critics’ attention and approval as though the critics could supply the psychoanalytic cure, thus confirming that they could not find this cure in the mirror images of themselves performing their improvised, minstrel-like roles. And so Narcissus takes revenge in identity politics, which converts dialogue as a pretext for monologue. While the critics in general tried to follow the path of compromise, engaging in a liberal game of balancing negative and positive qualities discerned in their readings, the distinction between knowledge and experience for which I argued (inasmuch as this articulation between the two enables the textualization of identity fought in the battlefields of disciplinary regimes) fell on deaf ears. I argued for the need to posit a wide spectrum of levels of understanding, appreciation, and judgment; for the need to criticize the assumptions of identity politics, which functions as the controlling paradigm in mainstream comparative cultural studies;2 and for the need to guard against anti-intellectualism or a relapse into the banal pragmatic-instrumentalist humanism which preaches that we are all the same, we can all partake of the wealth of the transnational 286

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boutiques, and so on. But all these were missed. A ‘‘rectification of names’’ was thus aborted. In fairness, I should say that what the writers testified to was the enigmatic power of poststructuralist critical discourse, which, to some extent under certain conditions, can be mobilized in the service of an oppositional or alternative politics. Such power perhaps bewildered the writers and provoked defensive panic symptoms. Rejecting the imputation of ill will or narrow self-serving intentions, the critics tried to make the texts of the writers (no one, as far as I can recall, alluded to Jean-Paul Sartre’s What is Literature? or Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault on the authorship function when the writers began to fondle their own texts like private consumption goods) release a virtue that could communicate with the high cultural productions of the establishment elite, with the discourse of the canonical authors and their foundational critiques. Our project (if I may stress the positive) also aimed to unleash the potential reach of their texts by affording their reading a degree of intelligibility that would challenge and even displace the canonical texts of Euro-American hegemonic culture.3 But, unarguably, the writers’ reflex of self-justification took over and converted the symposium into a theater of naive and pathetic self-congratulation, with disagreements ironed out for the moment, ‘‘faces’’ saved, suspicions deflected – another day swallowed up in the mise-en-abyme of ghetto marginality and ethnic vainglory. Liberalism and identity politics have conquered again. Unfortunately, the handful of outsiders in the scene may have carried away with them the wrong impression that Asian American writers and intellectuals (compared to the astute African Americans and the resourceful Chicanos) have a long way to go in ‘‘the long march through the institutions,’’ in forging consensus and solidarity through demonstrated respect for their differences. On the other hand, I think the symposium testified to a recalcitrance and intractability ideal for a counterhegemonic drive against the panoptic, reifying thrust of a ‘‘New World Order’’ managed from Washington, DC. Still, the co-optative seductiveness of identity politics cannot be discounted. One way of circumventing it may be illustrated by the signifying practice of the Filipino American writer Carlos Bulosan (1913–53). Cognizant of the risks of textualizing an illegible Filipino identity enveloped in a culture of silence, Bulosan wrote the only extant epic chronicle of Filipino migrant workers in the US, America Is in the Heart (see my ‘‘Introduction’’). In this quasiautobiographical life history of a whole community, Bulosan invented a metamorphic persona, a self disintegrated by the competitive labor market of the West Coast and Hawaii. At the same time, this persona is also constituted by the itinerary of the seasonal labor hired by the farms and the ritualized forms of excess (Georges Bataille sees in excess and transgression the essence of the sacred, of sociality as such); in those moments, space dissolves into the time of annihilating boundaries together with the ethos of bourgeois decorum. In fiction like ‘‘Be American,’’ ‘‘Story of a Letter,’’ and ‘‘As Long as the Grass Shall Grow,’’ Bulosan successfully projects the ‘‘I’’ of subalternity, a self dispersed 287

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and inscribed across the commodified space of the West Coast – its desire (usevalue) alienated in the exchange-value of commodities expropriated from the time and energies of bodily life. In the classic story ‘‘As Long as the Grass Shall Grow,’’ we witness the condensation of fragments of the protagonist’s identity occurring in the same trajectory of its displacement: the passage through a racialized terrain bifurcates the character, displaces his naı¨vete´, only to reconstitute it as a metaphor for what has been lost: autonomy, security of home, organic happiness. The 18-year-old Filipino boy of this story lands in the US to join a nomadic group of migrant workers hired to pick seasonal crops in the state of Washington. He is befriended by an Irish school teacher, Miss O’Reilly, who volunteers to teach him and the other workers how to read; her excursions to their bunkhouse provoke threats from racist elements in the town. In exchange for her labor and time, translated into the gift of the capacity to read, the workers give her peas and flowers symbolic of their communion with nature. Forbidden to visit the workers – the patriarchs of the town consider the workers’ learning how to read dangerous to the status quo, an attitude reminiscent of that characterizing the antebellum South – Miss O’Reilly invites them to the schoolhouse instead. One evening, the protagonist begins demonstrating his writing skill: ‘‘Suddenly I wrote a poem about what I saw outside in the night [the silent sea and the wide clear sky]. Miss O’Reilly started laughing because my lines were all wrong and many of the words were misspelled and incorrectly used.’’ The protagonist’s ‘‘I’’ then goes through a series of interpellations and substitutions as the woman teacher reads the Song of Solomon from the Bible: I liked the rich language, the beautiful imagery, and the depth of the old man’s passion for the girl and the vineyard. ‘‘This is the best poetry in the world,’’ Miss O’Reilly said when she finished the chapter. ‘‘I would like you to remember it. There was a time when men loved deeply and were not afraid to love.’’ I was touched by the songs. I thought of the pea vines on the hillside and silent blue sea not far away. And I said to myself: Some day I will come back in memory to this place and time and write about you, Miss O’Reilly. How gratifying it will be to come back to you with a book in my hands about all that we are feeling here tonight! (101)

Immediately after this, the boy is beaten up by racist thugs on his way home to the bunkhouse; regaining consciousness past midnight, he weeps and reflects: ‘‘Slowly I realized what had happened.’’ Miss O’Reilly disappears; toward the end of the harvesting season, she reappears and tells the boy she is leaving for the big city. The workers celebrate her return with a farewell party lasting through the night, with the moon and stars above the sea and tall mountains surrounding them. Even as she reads the Song of Solomon, however, the boy has already anticipated her disappearance (in the narrative diegesis) and staged her fictional 288

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resurrection here in this text. His ‘‘I’’ fuses narrator-participant and narratorartist. The narrative voice synthesizes in the circuit of reading/listening the subject of the text’s enunciation and the speaking subject. This semiosis engenders a dialogic persona, not a monadic ego. Synchrony and diachrony, the paradigmatic and the syntagmatic axes, coalesce as memory is transported to the future in order to recuperate the present moment of narration. The ‘‘I’’ becomes a site for registering the present as resistance to forgetfulness, loss of pleasure, reification. Dispersed and sublimated into the predicament of the Filipino community (about 45,000 strong in the mid-thirties), the ‘‘I’’ of Bulosan’s story maps its own itinerary, its recursive passage. It maps a pre-World War II rural geography that urgently evokes the provincial landscape of the homeland (the Philippines, the only Asian colony of the US, then about to be ravaged by the Japanese) and induces an uncanny vision, a moment when the repressed returns, when the maternal and educative function of Miss O’Reilly preempts the space once tabooed by racist violence. At this point her figure, metonymically tied to the cyclic fruitfulness of the land, condenses into a metaphor of home: ‘‘One morning I found I had been away from home for twenty years. But where was home? I saw the grass of another spring growing on the hills and in the fields. And the thought came to me that I had had Miss O’Reilly with me all the time, there in the broad fields and verdant hills of America my home’’ (104). In all of Bulosan’s fiction, the migrant folk’s residual memory of the national liberation struggle of millions of Filipinos against Spanish colonialism and US imperialism mediates the adolescent protagonist’s rite of passage from the archaic ways of the feudal countryside to the modern site of metropolitan commodity fetishism, the brute facticity of racist America, where the labor of colored bodies is reduced to abstract exchange-value (the cash-nexus) and wasted away. The adventure of the youthful narrator, whose nascent selfawareness is fixated on traumatic experiences in childhood, suffers a displacement: US business society is not as it was presented in the colonial textbooks. In effect, the rational Cartesian ego inhabiting the utilitarian ethos of liberal society never really materializes in the Filipino worker’s psyche, shrouded as it is with a nostalgic alterity, branded by an irrecuperable loss. On the whole, intertextuality overdetermines the ‘‘I’’ of Bulosan’s fiction. We see the stark contrast between the pastoral locus of the worker’s origin and the alienated milieu of the labor camps on the West Coast; this hiatus decenters the native psyche for which a strategy of refusing self-definition by the racist order and its official, homogenizing monoglossia is the only hope of survival. Bulosan’s art refuses identity politics as a refuge because the reality of life for an immigrant cannot be legitimated or rationalized by it. In its indigenous cunning, Bulosan’s writing registers the ambiguity of freedom, of democratic opportunity, in the US by inventing the unrepresentable mutant ‘‘I’’ who exercises the sensibility of the pariah, the incorporate outcast, in discriminating between what is merely beguiling appearance and what is suffered daily by the worker’s body. 289

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Another strategy of creative disruption that can outflank the lure of identity politics, the lure of the romantic totem of the liberal imagination for writers who overvalorize its demiurgic capacity, is that mobilized by Kingston in The Woman Warrior (1976) and China Men (1980). Suffice it to cite here the ludic, witty colloquium in the last chapter of China Men to illustrate Kingston’s mode of problematizing racial identity in the US. In ‘‘On Listening,’’ the narrator questions a Filipino scholar (wandering from the Philippines to nowhere, Georg Simmel’s amphibious ‘‘stranger’’) who captivates her with the quite implausible report that Chinese mandarins came to the Philippines in March 1603 looking for the Gold Mountain, specifically a gold needle in a mountain, with a chained Chinese prisoner as guide. Kingston asks: ‘‘Gold needle? What for?’’ A Chinese American ventures the opinion that a Chinese monk also traveled to Mexico looking for the ‘‘Gold Mountain.’’ ‘‘Gold Mountain’’ is the mythical name given to the US by the Chinese in China to symbolize familial aspirations for wealth, freedom, happiness, etc. But in this playful exchange, the rubric ‘‘Gold Mountain’’ becomes detached from the aura of myth owing to the presence of painful, dehumanizing experiences undergone by generations of sojourners and settlers from the 1860s on; it becomes a floating signifier, a charisma-laden mana, which then can be affixed to the Philippines, Mexico, Spain, or to wherever the imagination or Eros cathects its adventurous utopian drive. So the pursuit of truth is distracted, rechanneled, and left suspended as the coordinates of the mountain shift, depending on the speaker’s focalizing stance relative to the questioner, the fictive narrator of China Men. Another Chinese American reports that cowboys in California watched mandarins floating in a ‘‘hot air balloon,’’ index of technology and sci-fi fabulation. When the narrator returns to questioning the Filipino scholar, the Chinese fortune-seekers have already drained swamps, raised families, and built homes, roads, railroads, and cities – in other words, accomplished a civilizing task on their way to the Gold Mountain, where they then sifted dirt and rocks. But the upshot of this is that although ‘‘they found a gold needle . . . [t]hey filled a basket with dirt to take with them back to China.’’ To which Kingston replies: ‘‘Do you mean the Filipinos tricked them? . . . What were they doing in Spain?’’ Places are reshuffled, confusion ensues; dirt, not the gold needle, is transported to China. The positions of speaker and listener are scrambled; signifiers lose their referents. The Filipino scholar wryly promises to distill the facts and mail them to Kingston: truth/knowledge-production aborts further exchange. In conclusion, Kingston says: ‘‘Good. Now I could watch the young men who listen.’’ The joke of reversing positions and demythologizing the ‘‘Gold Mountain’’ explodes the metaphysics of success, the work ethic, stereotyped images of the US. We recall how, in the novel, the labor of generations of Chinese immigrants culminated in their being ‘‘Driven Out’’ (decreed by the 1882 Exclusion Act) and subsequently victimized in pogroms and lynchings. Veteran workers become fugitives, temporizing or permanent exiles in the belly of the metropolis. ‘‘On Listening’’ 290

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refuses the centralizing intelligence that would mediate discrepancies or reconcile opposites into a hypostatized moment of discovering the truth. What Kingston executes very subtly in her anecdotal montage is the act of undercutting the formula of the American dream of success by presenting heterogeneous versions of what the Chinese did in pursuit of the Gold Mountain; none of these versions is privileged so that the questions posed by the ‘‘I’’ who seeks an authoritative, official version never receive a definitive answer. Hence, the only recourse is to appreciate the virtue of listening, of being open to the possibilities created by our persevering struggles to subvert a monologic political economy. Kingston’s maneuver of disrupting any answer that claims to be authoritative, whether it is the narcissistic speech of liberalism or the assimilationist speech of conservative populism (‘‘E pluribus unum’’), is one which, I suggest, can serve as a foil to the seduction of multiculturalism in our postmodern milieu. As Hazel Carby puts it, the politics of multicultural difference can effectively neutralize the response of a racialized subject, thus repressing criticism of a social order structured in dominance by race (‘‘Politics’’). The politics of difference is what underwrites the ghettoization and apartheid in pluralist America. Recently, in line with the deconstructionist trend in the discourse of the humanities and the recurrent if transitional vogue of revitalizing individualist ‘‘habits of the heart,’’ the notion of inventing one’s ethnic identity has been broached as an alternative to a modernized scheme of integration. One writer participant in the Cornell University symposium, for example, mused about the supposed ‘‘multiple anchorages that ethnicity provides’’ amid the color-blind tolerance of the proverbial marketplace of ideas. This celebrates the form, not the substance, of bourgeois individualism retooled for a ‘‘post-revolutionary’’ era. But can one really invent one’s identity as one wishes, given the constraints de jure and de facto enforced by the racial state? She confesses: ‘‘I can make myself up and this is the enticement, the exhilaration. . . . But only up to a point. And the point, the sticking point is my dark female body.’’ Identity betrays its lack in the crucible of difference. Here is where I would finally foreground the phenotypical marker, the brand of the racial stigma, as the politically valorized signifier that cannot be denied in spite of the rules of formal juridical equality. The colored body and its tropes may be the uncanny sites where the repressed – history, desire, the body’s needs – returns. I would like to underscore here the nexus between the constraints on selfidentification and the theoretical import of hegemony introduced earlier. In a field of force where the liberal episteme is deeply entrenched, the key principle for the maintenance of a stable, self-reproducing hierarchical order of capital is hegemony, a concept first developed by Antonio Gramsci (see 1971: 206–76). Hegemony signifies the ascendancy of a historic bloc of forces able to win the voluntary consent of the ruled because the ruled accept their subordinate position for the sake of a degree of freedom that indulges certain libidinal drives, sutures fissured egos, and fulfills fantasies. In exchange for such limited 291

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gratification, the subalterns submit to the status quo on the condition that they have access to ‘‘individual freedoms,’’ varied life-styles, differential rewards, and so forth. In the context of the US racial order, this arrangement is known as normative pluralism. A social system presided over by normative pluralism thrives precisely because it ignores the institutional differentiation of interests – we are all equal, each one can do her or his own thing. It also displaces onto quarantined terrain those incompatible, discrepant interests that in fact construct our individual and group positions synchronized to the hierarchical imperatives of the system. Everything is normal: I’m OK, you’re OK. It might be useful to recapitulate certain propositions formulated earlier in order to highlight the contextual nature of what I would propose as an agenda for the committed imagination of peoples of color. This agenda would challenge pluralism as the discourse and practice of atomistic liberalism. This hegemonic pluralism operates most effectively in the guise of multiculturalism, alias ethnic diversity, within the parameters of a unifying national consensus that privileges one segment as the universal measure: the Euro-American elite. To secure its reproduction together with its basis in existing property-relations, the hegemonic racial formation elides the conflictive relations of domination and subordination. It substitutes parallelism, synchrony, or cohesion of interests. It negotiates the acceptance of a compromise, a homogeneous national life-style (innocent of gender or class or racial antagonisms) into which other generalized cultures – Asian, American Indian, Latino, African-American – can be gradually assimilated. This liberal approach fails to recognize that the reality of US institutional practices of racism is grounded in the unequal possession of wealth. Such inequality extends to the exercise of politico-economic control over resources and authority over institutions. Predicated on the uneven but combined development of political, economic, and ideological spheres of society, such inequality engenders forms of resistance to the power of the dominant social bloc and its ideology of plural identities.4 In this arena of struggle, what can be a realistic but also prophetic agenda for the subalterns, the borderline dissidents, the migrant insurgent intellects?5 I acknowledge the concern that it may be exorbitant, even presumptuous, to draw any kind of guideline for ‘‘unacknowledged legislators.’’ Whatever the risks, a heuristic call for organized initiatives may be broached to spark reflection and debate. And so, taking inventory of the problems, misrecognitions, even ‘‘false consciousness’’ and alibis plaguing our ranks, I hazard the following ‘‘untimely’’ proposal: What Asian American writers need to do as a fulfillment of their social responsibility is to pursue the ‘‘labor of the negative,’’ that is, to problematize the eccentric ‘‘and/or’’ of their immigrant; decolonizing heritage and of their conjunctural embeddedness in the world-system. Such problematization would insist that their signifying practice dovetail with the emergent strategies of resistance devised by all peoples of color to the US racial state and its hegemonic instrumentalities. Such linkage demands a radical critique of the politics of both dichotomous (private versus public) and unitary identity. It requires a rigorous 292

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self-critique of one’s vocation catalyzed by a staging of its internal contradictions, contradictions that surface when writer and text are contextualized in specific times and places. In art this may assume the shape of what Brecht calls allegorical distancing, modalities of alienation crafted to trick and destroy the enemy: defamiliarizing the customary modes of expression, baring the devices of ordinary commonsense behavior, exposing the artificiality of the contrivance behind the mystery, unveiling the stigmata behind the transcendental flag of the Empire. It requires foregrounding the adversarial, the contestatory, the interrogative. Demystify the normal order, the shopper’s everyday routine – ‘‘c’est la vie!’’ Defetishize the imperial self. In pursuing this duplicitous labor of the negative, we can perhaps forge in the process an Asian American vernacular that will inscribe our bifurcated or triangulated selves on emerging postnational cosmopolitan texts – shades of Goethe’s Weltliteratur! – with restorative, galvanizing effect. In the womb of these vernaculars we hope a dialectics of the utopian power of the imagination and emancipatory social praxis can materialize in, through, and beyond the boundaries of race, class, and gender.6 Notes 1 Marx, in Capital, criticized bourgeois political economists for taking Robinson Crusoe as their theoretical model of the ‘‘natural man’’ or homo economicus – the classic ideological move to claim universal objectivity for a particular interest (see Tucker 1978: 324–8). 2 See, for example, Sollors (1986). In the work of Sollors and other ethnicity experts, the whole Asian American experience and its prototypical expressions exist as gaping lacunae. For a critique of the prevailing ethnicity paradigm, see Wald (1987). 3 The debate on the relevance of poststructuralist theory for the study of ethnic writing has been going on for some years now primarily among African-American scholars. I find the controversy surrounding the critical practice of Henry Louis Gates, Jr., provocative and useful in weighing the strengths and liabilities of poststructuralist methodology for a research program investigating racist discourse and practices. 4 I paraphrase here statements from Carby’s ‘‘Multi-Culture.’’ 5 The category of the ethnic intellectual is still open to further analytic specification, for which the most suggestive beginning has been made by Georg Simmel’s essay ‘‘The Stranger.’’ For germinal insights on the phenomenology of immigration and homelessness, see Berger (1984). 6 A provisional example of the ‘‘and/or’’ strategy of disruption may be exemplified by David Henry Hwang’s M. Butterfly, where the mystique of the exotic Oriental, and its material base, is exploded and the binary opposites East/West deconstructed within certain limits. However, I question the ‘‘We’’ of the playwright’s statement in the ‘‘Afterword’’: ‘‘We have become the ‘Rice Queens’ of realpolitik.’’ As for Brecht’s Verfremdungseffekt and his anti-Aristotelian poetics, see Willett (1964); and Benjamin (1978: 203–38).

References Amin, Samir Eurocentrism (New York: Monthly Review, 1989). Baker, Jr, Houston A. Blues, Ideology and Afro-American Literature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984).

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E. San Juan, Jr. Balibar, Etienne ‘‘Paradoxes of Universality.’’ Anatomy of Racism, ed. David Goldberg (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1990), 283–94. Banton, Michael, and Robert Miles ‘‘Racism.’’ Dictionary of Race and Ethnic Relations, ed. E. Ellis Cashmore (London: Routledge, 1984), 225–9. Barnet, Richard J. and Ronald E. Muller Global Reach (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1974). Bataille, Georges Visions of Excess: Selected Writings, 1927–1939 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1985). Benjamin, Walter Reflections (New York: Harcourt, 1978). Berger, John And Our Faces, My Heart, Brief as Photos (New York: Pantheon, 1984). Blauner, Robert Racial Oppression in America (New York: Harper, 1972). Bulosan, Carlos Bulosan: An Introduction with Selections, ed. E. San Juan, Jr. (Manila: National Book Store, 1983). Carby, Hazel ‘‘Multi-Culture,’’ Screen Education 34 (1980): 62–70. Carby, Hazel ‘‘The Politics of Difference,’’ Ms. (Sept.–Oct.) (1990): 84–5. Davis, Mike ‘‘The Political Economy of Late-Imperial America,’’ New Left Review 143 ( Jan.– Feb.) (1984): 6–37. Fuss, Diana Essentially Speaking (New York: Routledge, 1989). Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von ‘‘Conversations with Eckermann.’’ In Modern Continental Literary Criticism, ed. O. B. Hardison, Jr., trans. John Oxenford (New York: Appleton, 1962), 48–59. Gramsci, Antonio Selections from the Prison Notebooks (New York: International Publishers, 1971). Grigulevich, I. R., and S. Y. Kozlov, eds, Races and Peoples (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1974). Hall, Stuart ‘‘Gramsci’s Relevance for the Study of Race and Ethnicity,’’ Journal of Communication Inquiry 10(2) (1986): 5–27. Harvey, David The Condition of Postmodernity (London: Blackwell, 1989). Haug, W. F. Commodity Aesthetics, Ideology and Culture (New York: International General, 1987). Hwang, David Henry M. Butterfly (New York: NAL, 1986). Kingston, Maxine Hong China Men (New York: Vintage, 1989). Krupat, Arnold The Voice in the Margin: Native American Literature and the Cano (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989). Lee, Thea ‘‘Trapped on a Pedestal,’’ Dollars and Sense March 1990: 12–15. Lefebvre, Henri Everyday Life in the Modern World (New York: Harper, 1968). Lyotard, Jean-Franc¸ois The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, trans. Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984). Nakanishi, Don T. ‘‘Minorities and International Politics,’’ in Counterpoint, ed. Emma Gee (Los Angeles: UCLA, 1976), 81–5. Omi, Michael, and Howard Winant Racial Formation in the United States from the 1960s to the 1980s (New York: Routledge, 1986). Rex, John ‘‘Race.’’ In Dictionary of Marxist Thought, ed. Tom Bottomore (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983. Saldı´vor, Ramo´n Chicaro Narrative: The Dialectics of Difference (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1990). San Juan, E. ‘‘Introduction,’’ AmerAsia Journal 6(6) (1979): 3–29. San Juan, E. ‘‘Problems in the Marxist Project of Theorizing Race,’’ Rethinking Marxism 2(2) (1989): 58–80. Saxton, Alexander ‘‘Nathan Glazer, Daniel Moynihan and the Cult of Ethnicity,’’ AmerAsia Journal 4(2) (1977): 141–50. Simmel, Georg ‘‘The Stranger.’’ On Individuality and Social Forms, ed. Donald Levine (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971), 143–9. Sollors, Werner Beyond Ethnicity (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986). Spivak, Gayatri ‘‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’’ Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, ed. C. Nelson and L. Grossberg (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988), 271–313.

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Beyond Identity Politics Takaki, Ronald ‘‘Reflections on Racial Patterns in America,’’ From Different Shores (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 26–37. Takaki, Ronald Strangers from a Different Shore (Boston: Little, Brown, 1989). Thernstrom, S. ‘‘Ethnic Pluralism: The U.S. Model,’’ Minorities: Community and Identity, ed. C. Fried (Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 1983), 247–54. Tucker, Robert, ed., The Marx–Engels Reader (New York: Norton, 1978). Wald, Alan ‘‘Theorizing Cultural Difference: A Critique of the Ethnicity School,’’ MELUS 14(2) (1987): 21–33. Wallerstein, Immanuel Historical Capitalism (New York: Monthly Review, 1987). Willett, John Brecht on Theater (New York: Hill and Wang, 1964). Williams, Raymond Marxism and Literature (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977). Wolf, Eric R. Europeand the People Without History (University of California Press, 1982).

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SEVENTEEN

Filipinos in the United States and Their Literature of Exile* Oscar V. Campomanes

Is there a ‘‘Filipino American’’ literature? Current and inclusive notions of Asian American literature assume the existence of this substratum without really delineating its contours. There is no sustained discussion of how ‘‘Filipino American’’ literature, if shaped as such a substructure, problematizes some of the claims of Asian American literature as a constitutive paradigm. Although developed unevenly as a category and distinctive body of writing,1 ‘‘Asian American’’ literature now commands a significant presence in the American academy and the movement to revise the national literary canon. The imperative, then, is to test the descriptive and explanatory powers of this general paradigm in light of its as yet undetermined but nominally acknowledged tributary formation of ‘‘Filipino American’’ writing. To leave this area unmapped is to create exclusion, internal hierarchy, and misrepresentation in the supposedly heterogeneous field of Asian American cultural production.2 The informal but long-standing directive to align ‘‘Filipino American’’ literature with the Chinese and Japanese American mainstream of Asian American literature has had its own consequences. When asked to construct ‘‘a literary background of Filipino-American works’’ for a founding Asian American anthology, the writers Oscar Penaranda, Serafin Syquia, and Sam Tagatac declared: ‘‘We cannot write any literary background because there isn’t any. No history. No published literature. No nothing’’ (49). Their statement proved not only to be quite precipitate but also uncritical of the limiting assumptions foisted on their project by the anthologists.3 Already implicit in this view was their disconnection from the exilic literature created by N.V.M. Gonzalez and *Oscar V. Campomanes ‘‘Filipinos in the United States and Their Literature of Exile.’’ In Shirley Geok-lin Lim and Amy Ling (eds.), Reading the Literatures of Asian America (Philadelphia: Temple University Press), 49–78. Reprinted by permission of Temple University Press. ß 1992 by Temple University. All rights reserved.

A Filipino American Literature of Exile

Bienvenido Santos or, in more recent times, by Ninotchka Rosca and Linda TyCasper. Perhaps, rather than the veracity of its claim, what remains compelling is how this declaration expresses the incommensurable sense of nonbeing that stalks many Filipinos in the United States and many Americans of Filipino descent.

Without Names: Who are We? Indeed, one cannot discuss the (non)existence of ‘‘Filipino American’’ literature without interrogating the more decisive issues of self and peoplehood, of invisibility. This combined problematic certainly shapes the available expressions. For example, the Bay Area Filipino American Writers titled their first collection of poetry after Jeff Tagami’s historically textured piece, ‘‘Without Names’’ (in Ancheta et al. 1985). ‘‘Who are we? / What are we?’’ (230) asks public historian Fred Cordova in his picture book and oral history on Filipino Americans. In a 1989 essay, the journalist Cielo Fuentebella pointedly observes that even with the group nearing the one-million mark, ‘‘our numbers don’t add up to visibility in business, media and the cultural field. And all these at a time in history that is being dubbed as the Asian/Pacific Century’’ (17). From these various expressions, one detects some hesitance to claim the name ‘‘Filipino American’’ unproblematically. The term ‘‘Filipino American’’ itself seems inadequate, if oxymoronic. ‘‘The Filipino American cannot be defined without elucidating what the problematic relationship is between the two terms which dictates the conditions of possibility for each – the addition of the hyphen which spells a relation of subordination and domination’’ (San Juan, ‘‘Boundaries’’ 125). There is some recognition, in other words, of the irreducible specificity of the Filipino predicament in the United States and, corollarily, of the literary and cultural expressions that it has generated. Although one finds many self-identified Filipino Americans and Filipino Americans works (the preferred term is ‘‘Pilipino American’’), their relationship to this provisional term seems to be ambivalent and indeterminate, shored up only by its roots in 1960s ethnic identity politics.4 Hence, I choose the formulation ‘‘Filipinos in the United States’’ for this discussion while also tactically deploying the conditional but meaningful category ‘‘Filipino American.’’ The task of my essay is to characterize the available writings by Filipinos in the United States and Filipino Americans in light of community formation and Philippine-American (neo)colonial relations. I seek to describe a literary tradition of Filipino exilic writing and an exilic sensibility that informs both the identity politics and the cultural production of this ‘‘community-in-themaking’’ (San Juan, ‘‘Filipino Artist’’ 36). As does any preliminary account, this essay has several limitations. Because of the urgency of the task and space considerations, the survey of some of the available writings is only suggestive, if incomplete, and the arguments of 297

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propositions (along with the bases) for constituting them as a tradition are abbreviated. That the writings and the history of the group codify their own theoretical claims is a question to which I pay the most attention, for ‘‘each literary tradition, at least implicitly, contains within it an argument for how it can be read’’ (Gates xix–xx). I concentrate on the older writers whose works have reached a certain consolidation and then suggest some beginning orientations with which to steer future readings of the work of the younger writers who are in several stages of emergence. Motifs of departure, nostalgia, incompletion, rootlessness, leave taking, and dispossession recur with force in most writing produced by Filipinos in the United States and by Filipino Americans, with the Philippines as either the original or terminal reference point. Rather than the United States as the locus of claims or ‘‘the promised land’’ that Werner Sollors argues is the typological trope of ‘‘ethnic’’ American writing (40–50), the Filipino case represents a reverse telos, an opposite movement. It is on this basis that I argue for a literature of exile and emergence rather than a literature of immigration and settlement whereby life in the United States serves as the space for displacement, suspension, and perspective. Exile becomes a necessary, if inescapable, state for Filipinos in the United States – at once susceptible to the vagaries of the (neo)colonial US–Philippine relationship and redeemable only by its radical restructuring. The intergenerational experience will certainly dim this literary/historical connection to the Philippines for many Filipino Americans. But the signifiers ‘‘Filipino’’ and ‘‘Philippines’’ evoke colonialist meanings and cultural redactions which possess inordinate power to shape the fates of the writers and of Filipino peoples everywhere. These considerations overdetermine their dominant sense of nonbelonging in the United States, the Philippines, and other places. The word ‘‘overdetermine’’ adequately describes the complex of historical inscriptions, developments, processes, interventions, and accidents in which their present predicament is embedded. For Filipinos in the United States and their history of community formation, it is not enough to examine immigration policies (symptomatic of a US-centric approach to which most sociologists/historians are prone) that by themselves fail to account for the diversity of immigration patterns. ‘‘The historical, economic, and political relationships between the United States and the country of origin, as well as the social and economic conditions in the source country, have to be examined to explain the major differences in immigration streams’’ (Carino and Fawcett 305). Robert Blauner’s point that the status of any Asian American group should roughly equal the status of its country of origin in relation to the United States bears remembering (Takaki, Race and Ethnicity 159). Conceptually useful for the Philippine case, both of these views also expand American immigration, ethnic, and cultural studies beyond their parochial purviews of American nation building, acculturation, and settlement.5 298

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Invisibility and (Non)Identity: The Roots in History Among the various Asian countries of origin, the Philippines holds the sole distinction of being drawn into a truly colonial and neocolonial relation with the United States, and for this reason it has been absorbed almost totally into the vacuum of American innocence. It was the founding moment of colonialism, ‘‘a primal loss suffered through the Filipino–American War (1899–1902) and the resistance ordeal of the revolutionary forces of the First Philippine Republic up to 1911 that opened the way for the large-scale transport of cheap Filipino labor to Hawaii and California [and inaugurated] this long, tortuous exodus from the periphery to the metropolis’’ (San Juan, ‘‘Boundaries’’ 117). Hence, while rooted in the earlier period of Spanish rule, the spectre of ‘‘invisibility’’ for Filipinos is specific to the immediate and long-term consequences of American colonialism. The invisibility of the Philippines became a necessary historiographical phenomenon because the annexation of the Philippines proved to be constitutionally and culturally problematic for American political and civil society around the turn of the century and thereafter. (A consequent case in the point was the anomalous status of migrant workers and students for much of the formal colonial period when they were considered American ‘‘nationals’’ but without the basic rights of ‘‘citizens.’’) To understand the absence of the Philippines in American history, one faces the immense task of charting the intense ideological contestation that developed in the United States around the Philippine question at the point of colonial conquest, and the active rewriting of American historical records from then on that articulated and rearticulated the verities of ‘‘American exceptionalism.’’6 As Amy Kaplan suggestively notes, ‘‘The invisibility of the Philippines in American history has everything to do with the invisibility of American imperialism to itself.’’7 Discursively, the unbroken continuity of this historic amnesia concerning the Philippines has had real invidious effects. Note the repetitious and unreflective use of the modifier ‘‘forgotten’’ to describe, even renew, this curse of invisibility which may be said to have been bestowed on the Philippines as soon as the bloody war of conquest and resistance began to require stringent official/ military censorship in the United States around 1900. No one has bothered to ask some of the more unsettling questions: Who is doing the forgetting? What is being forgotten? How much has been forgotten? Why the need to continue forgetting? Contemporary examples abound. An essay by the American historian Peter Stanley bears the title ‘‘The Forgotten Philippines, 1790–1946’’ and sticks out in a retrospective survey of American–East Asian studies, a field which has always revolved around China and Japan (May and Thomson 1972: 291–316). Quoted in Russell Roth’s journalistic account of the long and costly Filipino–American War, one writer admits that ‘‘our movement into the Philippines is one of the 299

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least understood phases of our history, one of those obscure episodes swept under the rug, and forgotten’’ (1981). In a truthful exemplification of the workings of hegemony, a chapter of Takaki’s Strangers from a Different Shore is devoted to ‘‘The Forgotten Filipinos’’ (314–54), and one Filipino American documentary work itself, Filipinos: Forgotten Asian Americans, finds the term as unproblematic and adequate (Cordova 1983).

Genealogies of Exile and the Imagined Community So it is that ‘‘in the Philippine experience, History has provided its own despotism’’ (Gonzalez, Kalutang 32). It is in the various forms and manifestations of this despotism that one can locate the productive conditions of possibility for Filipino writing and the making of Filipino identities. For something as specific as Filipino writing in the United States, the banishment of the Philippines and Filipinos from history, the global disperal of Filipinos, the migrant realities of Pinoy workers and urban expatriates, and ‘‘the alienation of the English-speaking intellectuals from workers and peasants speaking the vernacular’’ (San Juan, Ruptures 25) must constitute the set of tangled contexts. They amount to a common orientation of the experiences, writings, and identity politics toward a ‘‘national mythos,’’ following the creation of a ‘‘Filipino diaspora . . . the scattering of a people, not yet a fully matured nation, to the ends of the earth, across the planet’’ by the colonial moment (Brennan, ‘‘Cosmopolitans’’ 4; San Juan, ‘‘Homeland’’ 40). Through a coordination of the expressive tendencies and impulses of Filipino and Filipino American writers in the United States, a ‘‘literature of exile and emergence’’ can be constructed from the normally separated realms of the old and new countries. I see the obsessive search for identity that marks Philippine literature in the colonial language (and in the vernacular, which is not possible to cover here), and the identity politics articulated by firstand second-generation Filipino American writers (after the social and ethnic movements of the 1960s and 1970s) as specific streams with certain points of confluence. In recognizing the intimate connection between Filipino nation building and the problematics of Filipino American community formation and, hence, the radical contingency of both processes, the seeming scarcity of ‘‘published literature’’ (sometimes attributed to the smallness of the Filipino American second generation) ceases to be a problem. That ‘‘we still don’t have anyone resembling Maxine Hong Kingston for the Filipino immigrant community here’’8 begins to make sense and points us to the many writers who write about the situation in the Philippines and the Filipino American writers who may be US grounded yet articulate this same ancestral focus. The orientation toward the Philippines prevents prevailing notions of Asian American literature from reducing Filipino writing in the United States to just another variant of the immigrant epic, even if 300

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this in itself must be seen as an ever-present and partial possibility as time passes and Philippine–American relations change. In what follows, I examine some expressions of exile and gestures toward return – either explicit or latent – that typify the available writings. How do they characteristically respond to, or even embody, the experience of exile and indeterminacy and the question of redemptive return? Put another way, what are the intersections between historical experience and literary history, between subjection and subject positions? I organize my review around several interrelated issues: exilic experience and perspective, exilic identity and language, and exilic sensibility and attitude toward history and place, all of which account for the forms of indeterminacy and visionary resolutions in the writings. The writers may be clustered into three ‘‘cohorts’’ that need not necessarily coincide with the migration and immigration patterns or cycles documented by historians and sociologists (see, for example, Carino and Fawcett 1987: 305–25; and Pido). There is the pioneering generation consisting of Bienvenido Santos, N. V. M. Gonzalez, Jose´ Garcı´a Villa, and Carlos Bulosan for the period of the 1930s to the 1950s; a settled generation that matures and emerges by the 1960s who, after Penaranda, Tagatac, and Syquia, may be called the ‘‘Flips’’;9 and the politically expatriated generation of Epifanio San Juan, Linda Ty-Casper, Ninotchka Rosca, and Michelle Skinner from the 1970s to the present. These writers whom I have specifically mentioned must be taken as demarcating, rather than definitive, figures for each group. This periodization has obvious limits. Bulosan died in 1956 and Villa ceased to write nearly three decades ago, while Santos and Gonzalez continue to be prolific and have exhibited significant shifts in their perspectives and writings after extended residence in the United States as professors. Bulosan, with the intervention of US cultural workers, has earned some critical attention and student readership in ethnic studies courses, yet to be matched in the cases of Santos and Gonzalez, whose exilic writing did not fit with the immigrant ethos. Villa has languished in self-selected obscurity even as Sollors recently and curiously recuperated him as an ‘‘ethnic modernist’’ (253–4).10 My concern here is much more in comparison than in contemporaneity, since these writers’ works are uneven in quality, their developments divergent in pattern, and their influence diffuse in reception. By ‘‘comparison’’ I mean their styles of coping with the experiential reality of exile – given their initial and subsequent ties with, or alienation from, each other – and their relevant self-definition and development of certain forms of writing on this basis. I also make the Flips assume a kind of corporate existence, although this is suggested itself by their self-designation as ‘‘Bay Area Pilipino American Writers’’ and their networks that are rooted in the ethnic movements of the late 1960s and 1970s. Of these writers (mostly poets), I find a few who exhibit tendencies to outgrow the agonized temporizings associated with that historic juncture, namely Jeff Tagami, Virginia Cerrenio, and Jaime Jacinto. What concerns me here is their search for kinship with their predecessors in the 301

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pioneering generation and their symbolic appropriations of Philippine history and identities from the perspective of a second, or consciously American, generation (hence, ‘‘Pilipino American’’). Not all those who may belong to the ‘‘politically expatriated’’ were literally so, by the yardstick of martial law politics and the sensibility of nationalism that grew out of the social and political turmoil of the late 1960s and the subsequent period of authoritarian rule in the homeland. It is the peculiar elaboration of the theme of exile from a more troubling historical moment and its consequent suspension of Filipinos within a more ideologically and politically bounded sphere that distinguish the actions and predicament of this group. San Juan shifted to Philippine and Third World literary and historical studies from traditional literary scholarship and creative writing in the conjuncture between his initial residence in the United States as an academic, and the politicizing movements in the United States and the Philippines in the early 1970s. Skinner came to the United States with the sensibility of her martial law generation back home but did not exactly flee from political persecution as Rosca did. And yet again, their relationships of affinity and alienation as a group, and with the other two, may be divined in what they have written and how they have defined themselves. My groupings are not chronological but synchronic, concerned with what Benedict Anderson has called ‘‘the deep horizontal comradeship’’ that enables profoundly dispersed populations to imagine peoplehood and community, to overcome historically disabling differences, and to occupy new spaces of historical, literary, and cultural possibility (1983: 15–16). Writers can find a home in the relevant pattern or cohort of affinity specific to their own origins in any of these three historical moments of colonial generation, ethnic identity politics, and political expatriation. The groupings need not be rigid, since certain movements between them are possible, within defensible bounds, and depending to some extent on the stronger sentiment of the writer or reader.

Exile and Return: Literary and Experiential Parallels In looking at the plurality of Filipino experiences, positions, and writings in the United States as a generalized condition of exile, I refer to the ensemble of its many relations, degrees, and forms, and not to its easy reduction to a single thematic. One cannot succumb to the homogenizing assertion that ‘‘immigration is the opposite of expatriation’’ (Mukherjee 1988: 28) or the tendency to construe the West as only a base for ‘‘cosmopolitan exiles’’ and not a place ‘‘where unknown men and women have spent years of miserable loneliness’’ (Said 1990: 359). The need is to ‘‘map territories of experience beyond those mapped by the literature of exile itself’’ (Said 1990: 358) and, if I might add, the areas of exile and writing overlap. Sam Solberg notes that ‘‘if there is one indisputable fact about FilipinoAmerican writing nurtured on American shores that sets it apart from other 302

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Asian American writings, it is that it is inextricably linked with indigenous Filipino writing in English’’ (50). He adds that Carlos Bulosan, Jose´ Garcı´a Villa, Bienvenido Santos, and N. V. M. Gonzalez did not find the distinction between writing in the Philippines and the United States meaningful. Yet, also, their common experiences of migration to the United States and the vicissitudes of their careers in this setting consigned them to the same state of indeterminacy and limbo of invisibility as their less noted kinfolk. Bharati Mukherjee posits that ‘‘exiles come wrapped in a cloak of mystery and world-weariness [and in] refusing to play the game of immigration, they certify to the world, and especially to their hosts, the purity of their pain and their moral superiority to the world around them’’ (28). Aside from making exile sound like a choice, this view fails to consider that there is nothing to romanticize about this condition even if it might sometimes generate romantic visions of one’s origins. ‘‘Exile is a grim fate and its recourses equally grim’’ (Seidel 1987: x). Although exile gives birth to varieties of nationalist sentiment, even imagined communities and unlikely kinships among peoples with enduring differences, ‘‘these are no more than efforts to overcome the crippling sorrow of estrangement . . . the loss of something left behind forever’’ (Said 1990: 357). Just as it has been for similarly situated peoples, the exilic experience for Filipinos and Filipino Americans has engendered such ‘‘enormously constructive pressures’’ (Gurr 1981: 9) as self-recovery and the critical distance from a putative homeland whose outlines are sharpened from the perspective of their new or ‘‘other’’ home in the metropolis. More, for Filipinos as ‘‘colonial exiles,’’ the ‘‘search for identity and the construction of a vision of home amount to the same thing’’ (Gurr 1981: 11). In turn, this ‘‘identity’’ (now in the sense of specular experiences and visions), condenses itself in the institution of creative genealogies, mythic reinterpretations of colonial history, and reevaluations of the linguistic and cultural losses caused by colonialism. These may be seen as notations of redemptive return to a ‘‘home’’ in the imagination, with specific inflections for Filipinos and Filipino Americans. When Bienvenido Santos declares that ‘‘in a special sense I, too, am an oldtimer’’ (‘‘Pilipino Old Timers’’ 89) and a Flip poet like Jeff Tagami (1987) memorializes these migrant workers (also called Pinoys’’ or Manongs’’) in his work, there is already this particular reciprocity of self-representations among unlikely ‘‘allies.’’ Distances are being bridged here among generational locations, social classes, and particular experiences, from the pioneering experiences and enduring ties to the native territory of such workers in the Pacific Coast states as the privileged point of origin. Documentary works have described the exilic conditions of these Pinoys in paradigmatic terms because of the complexity of their displacements: ‘‘Between themselves and their homeland, between themselves and their children who have known only America, and between themselves and recent arrivals whose Philippines is in some ways, drastically different from their own’’ (Santos, Apples xiv). 303

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Santos’s claim of affinity with the ‘‘survivors of those who immigrated in the 1920s or even earlier, through the 1940s’’ (‘‘Pilipino Old Timers’’ 89) may seem ill-considered because of the large wedge in class, migratory pattern, and education between this former ‘‘pensionado’’ or colonial government scholar and resident writer of a Kansas university and the faceless, nameless ‘‘Manongs.’’ Carlos Bulosan – valorized as the supreme chronicler of the Pinoy story and claimed as an immigrant writer even while moved to state once that ‘‘I think I am forever an exile’’ (Falling Light 198) – particularly lamented this great divide. Regarding the pensionados of his time (and the ruling/middling classes they helped form in the Philippines) with suspicion and contempt, Bulosan foregrounded his shared peasant origins with the oldtimers in his identity as a writer. Among many expressions of affiliation with them are his controversial letter to a friend concerning his critique of Filipino writers in English and their ‘‘contrary feelings’’ for him (Falling Light 228) and his narrator Allos’s discovery of the estranging and demarcating stance of this social class in regard to the Philippine peasantry in America Is in the Heart (1946), in the humiliating encounter between the narrator’s mother and a middle-class girl (Bulosan 1946: 37–8). This great wedge partly originated in the institution of education as a form of social hierarchy in the Philippines during the colonial period (the pensionados were sent to the United States to train in government and cultural administration) and threatened Bulosan’s own close kinship with the migrant workers as his writing career took off in the 1930s and 1940s. He obviated this successfully with a symbolic return to their ranks and their lives in his writing and by articulating a Pinoy critique of upper/middle-class conceit: ‘‘There is no need for Filipino writers to feel that . . . they are educated because they went to colleges, nor should they think that I am ignorant because I lack formal education’’ (Falling Light 228). If Bulosan’s ‘‘return’’ to the oldtimers is warranted by an original class affinity, this makes Santos’s gesture from the other side toward this group striking. The sense of indeterminacy conveyed by Santos in his many stories and essays, and in interviews, resonates with the Pinoy’s suspension in eternal time and alien place, ‘‘deracinated and tortured by the long wait to go home’’ (Gurr 1981: 18). Like Bulosan, he has codified this linkage in his work, as in the symbolic kinship between the Michigan farmworker Celestino Fabia and ‘‘the first class Filipino’’ in the moving story ‘‘A Scent of Apples’’ (Apples 21–9). Especially revealing is Santos’s juxtaposition in an essay of his fictional transfiguration of the oldtimers’ characters and lives with their documentation in oral and social history to illustrate his point – when asked ‘‘to explain the difference between the old timer as character in fiction and in real life’’ – ‘‘that there is nothing to explain because there is no difference’’ (‘‘Pilipino Old Timers’’ 91). These heroes with all their little triumphs and tragic losses as exiles but ‘‘survivors’’ populate Santos’s tightly crafted stories, endowing his identity as a writer and his writing with a pointed specificity. One detects the origin of 304

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Santos’s notion of the struggling exilic writer as a ‘‘straggler’’ – doomed into irrelevance and hermitage for writing in English – in the condition of the migrant worker as a ‘‘survivor [who] lives through years of hiding [and waits] until a miracle of change happens in the homeland and in this, our other home’’ (‘‘Personal Saga’’ 404, 399, 405). That the construction of kinship and identity among Filipinos is fraught with difficulty and paradox is also in the foreground of much of the writing, but especially as emblematized in Santos’s ‘‘The Day the Dancers Came.’’ While Santos finds common cause with his Pinoy subjects, he also confronts the tensions of this affiliation on the level of symbolism. Like ‘‘Scent of Apples,’’ this story concerns the re-encounter of the Pinoy with the other-self, a representative of one’s time-bound vision of home, in visitors from the islands. ‘‘Identity,’’ as in similitude, in mutual recognition as Filipinos, is sought by the oldtimer Fil in the young members of a dance troupe from the Philippines who stop by Chicago for a visiting performance. But just as the middle-class girl reduces Allos’s mother to humiliation in Bulosan’s America Is in the Heart, the visiting dancers reduce Fil to an ‘‘ugly Filipino’’ (Santos, Apples 116), subtly spurning his attempts to communicate with them and his offer to entertain them in his humble abode (an eventuality foreseen by his fellow oldtimer and roommate Tony, who is dying of cancer). There is none of the natural affinity that develops between Fabia and the visiting lecturer in ‘‘Scent of Apples,’’ only the edge of class hierarchy and generational or experiential difference. While making his overtures to the dancers in the Chicago hotel lobby where they milled after the performance, ‘‘All the things he had been trying to hide now showed: the age in his face, his horny hands. . . . Fil wanted to leave, but he seemed caught up in the tangle of moving bodies that merged and broke in a fluid strangle hold. Everybody was talking, mostly in English’’ (120). The frequent impossibility of ‘‘identity’’ (as similitude) between Filipinos expatriated by colonialism, placed in different social/historical rungs, and separated by transoceanic timelines, is figured by this story in specular instances. Focused on the predicament of Fil, these compounded mirrorings of the otherself reflect the many dimensions of Filipino exilic identity and perspective. A memory that Fil associates with one of his many jobs – as ‘‘a menial in a hospital [where] he took charge . . . of bottles on a shelf, each shelf, each bottle containing a stage of the human embryo in preservatives, from the lizard-like fetus of a few days, through the newly-born infant, with its position unchanged, cold, and cowering and afraid’’ – is of ‘‘nightmares through the years of himself inside a bottle’’ (114). This reflection of himself in these aborted, disowned, and arrested lives, mediated by the figure of the ‘‘bottle’’ that both exhibits and encloses them, is a powerful statement on the utter disconnection of the old timer from the flow of time and from a Philippines whose birthing as a nation itself has been aborted by American colonialism. (Perhaps it is significant that his name is ‘‘Fil,’’ almost ‘‘Filipino,’’ but attenuated into an American nickname.) The relationship between Fil and Tony also takes this form of allegorical doubling. When Fil castigates Tony in one of their playful spats: ‘‘You don’t 305

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care for nothing but your pain, your imaginary pain,’’ Tony retorts: ‘‘You’re the imagining fellow. I got the real thing.’’ Tony’s skin not only ‘‘whitens’’ from the terminal ailment that is inexplicably but slowly consuming him, but he also feels ‘‘a pain in his insides, like dull scissors scraping his intestines’’ (115). Yet, if Tony’s pain is indeed excruciatingly physical, it only seems to be the correlative for Fil’s pain which, in a sense, is more real. For after being denied his last few memories of home by the dancers’ disavowal, the pain that guts him is similar but more keen: ‘‘Was it his looks that kept them away? The thought was a sharpness inside him’’ (121); and then again, in recounting their rebuff to Tony, ‘‘The memory, distinctly recalled, was a rock on his breast. He gasped for breath.’’ (124) The identity between Fil and Tony (they are both oldtimers wrapped in pain and warped in time) stands for the singular problem of constructing Filipino American identity in light of colonialism. The doubling of colonizer and colonized, its conflictedness, is signified in Fil’s specular but contrastive relationship with Tony, even as this is also kinship forged by their history of shared banishment. Tony stands for one’s translation into a colonial: ‘‘All over Tony’s body, a gradual peeling was taking place. . . . His face looked as if it was healing from severe burns. . . . ‘I’m becoming a white man,’ Tony had said once’’ (114). Note also that Tony is figured as looking young. ‘‘Gosh, I wish I had your looks, even with those white spots,’’ Fil says to him (116) – Fil, who feels and looks old and ugly in the company of the young dancers. Where Tony ‘‘was the better speaker of the two in English,’’ Fil displayed ‘‘greater mastery’’ in the dialect (117), although Fil’s prepared speeches for inviting the dancers ‘‘stumbled and broke on his lips into a jumble of incoherence’’ in their presence (120). If Tony is his other-self, a desired ideal of being, then even turning to him for identity is unsuccessful as the reader knows that Tony will die to signify Fil’s own rebirth. As the dancers board their bus for the next destination and Fil imagines or sees them waving their hands and smiling toward him, Fil raises his hand to wave back. But wary of misrecognition one more time, he turns to check behind him but finds ‘‘no one there except his own reflection in the glass door, a double exposure of himself and a giant plant with its thorny branches around him like arms in a loving embrace’’ (122). Here, the reader is being alerted to the strength of an identity that is reflected in and by the constituted self, the spectral but appropriate figure being a ‘‘a giant plant with its thorny branches.’’ In vowing to commit the performance and memory of the dancers to a tape recording in what he calls ‘‘my magic sound mirror’’ (he loses the ‘‘record’’ by accidentally pushing the eraser near the end, symbolizing the fragility of his ‘‘memories’’ of home), Fil wonders if the magic sound mirror could also keep ‘‘a record of silence because it was to him the richest sound?’’ (117) This implicit recognition of himself as the supreme record, the actual referent of his identity, is brought to the fore at the conclusion of the story when he exclaims: ‘‘Tony! Tony! . . . I’ve lost them all.’’ The last glimpse the reader has is of Fil ‘‘biting his 306

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lips . . . turn[ing] towards the window, startled by the first light of dawn. He hadn’t realized till then that the long night was over’’ (128). Looking through the bottle at ‘‘frozen time’’ early in the story, Fil looks through a window at ‘‘time unfolding’’ by the end. Fil is somehow restored to history, to the sufficiency of his silence and resilience. The interposition of ‘‘English’’ in the story (Tony speaks better English, he is turning into a ‘‘white’’ man; the dancers talk mostly in English, they are all beautiful) as the radical mode of difference for and among ‘‘Fils’’ (Filipinos) implies the organizing relation between exilic identity and language. Recall the symptomatic link or parallelism in Solberg’s argument between the exile experienced by Filipino writers of English in the Philippines and that expressed by the ‘‘writing nurtured on American shores’’ – or between literary and experiential exile, generally. But this historically interesting nexus, this ‘‘inextricable link,’’ is usually disarticulated in universalizing formulations like ‘‘the human condition’’ or the ‘‘alienation of the soul’’ (Gonzalez, Kalutang 64–5). Language has a historical specificity in relation to the development of ‘‘indigenous writing,’’ ‘‘writing nurtured on American shores,’’ and the migratory movements of writers and laborers to/in the United States that these careless oversimplifications flatten out. The result has been to compound these literatures and experiences imperceptibly or to explain them away in terms of the inescapable alienations that afflict the dislocated, as if there were nothing more to say about their historic concurrence or recurrence. As Santos’s work suggests, writing in English, the colonizer’s language, and migrating to the United States, the colonizing country, are analogous and fundamentally imbricated processes, or are parallel while related forms of cultural translation and historical exile. Carlos Bulosan’s consummate piece ‘‘The Story of a Letter’’ starkly embodies such relationships in aesthetic form and supplies another paradigm for beholding these various writings and experiences together. In this allegory of the epic of migration and expatriation, the narrator is a peasant son who finds himself heading for the United States with the migratory waves of workers in the late colonial period, partly as a consequence of a letter to his father written in English – a language alien in history and social class to his father and his people – by the narrator’s brother Berto who had migrated earlier. Simply, the letter remains unread until the narrator himself has gone through the linguistic, cultural, and historical translation necessary for him to decode the letter for his father and himself. The letter reads: ‘‘Dear father . . . America is a great country. Tall buildings. Wide good land. The people walking. But I feel sad. I am writing to you this hour of my sentimental. Your son. – Berto’’ (Bulosan Reader 44). It is an attempt by an exiled son to bridge the distance between him and his origins in truncated language that aptly mirrors Berto’s and his family’s truncated lives. The narrator’s voyage is propelled by various developments (climaxed by the loss of the family’s small landholding), and prefigured by the father’s plea to the narrator ‘‘to learn English so that [he] would be able to read [the letter] to him’’ 307

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(41). After landing in the United States and being whirled into the vortex of displacement, labor exploitation, and fragmentation of Pinoy life, he accrues the experience needed to make sense of the letter and develops some mastery of the language that it speaks. In this process of personal translation (experientially and symbolically), he sustains a series of losses, for one always risks losing the original matter substantially in the historic passage from one experiential/ cultural realm to another. The father dies before the narrator reaches the point of linguistic and historical competence and therefore before he can read his son’s translation; the narrator himself experiences the deep-seated removal from origin and the past that acquiring such a competence entails; and he is only able to glimpse (not to reunite with) Berto in the United States. With the letter returned to him after a series of disconnected deliveries, the narrator muses: ‘‘It was now ten years since my brother had written the letter to Father. It was eighteen years since he had run away from home. . . . I bent down and read the letter – the letter that had driven me away from the village and had sent me half way around the world. . . . I held the letter in my hand and, suddenly, I started to laugh – choking with tears at the mystery and wonder of it all’’ (44). Being able to decode the simple message of the letter (couched in his brother’s fractured English) endows him with an expansive consciousness, agency, renewed memory, and the sign of redemptive return to his moorings. The story of the letter then can be read allegorically, whereby one’s search for self or identity is enabled and simultaneously codified in the trans-Pacific voyage to the United States, condensed here primarily in the demarcating and analogic role ascribed to ‘‘English.’’ But particular stress must be placed on the symbolic weight of language in the story and in cultural history itself. By viewing English as a material and symbolic mode of alienation and transformation, one can account for the inextricable link as well as the great wedge among various classes, generations, and experiences of Filipino peoples. In surveying the thematic landscape of contemporary writing, David Quemada concludes that the recurrent themes of rootlessness indicate ‘‘a spiritual dislocation which is nurtured by the act of writing in a foreign language’’ (428). ‘‘Spiritual’’ here suggests that one’s translation and transformation through the colonial language is fundamental and all-encompassing. Albert Memmi refers to this phenomenon as ‘‘colonial bilingualism,’’ describing it also as a ‘‘linguistic drama’’ because it is the struggle between the colonizer’s and colonized’s cultures in and through the linguistic sphere (1965: 108). The ‘‘possession of two languages’’ means immersion in ‘‘two psychical and cultural realms’’ that, because ‘‘symbolized and conveyed in the two tongues’’ of the colonizer and colonized, generates an irremediably conflicted and complicated condition for the colonial subject. Memmi qualifies that most of the colonized are spared this condition since their native tongue is not given the same level of circulation and status in the colony itself (1965: 108). This can be extended to mean that not every Filipino can be allowed through the gates of immigration or his/her impossible dream of statehood for the Philippines. Yet, 308

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English becomes a mechanism of social hierarchy and thinking that ensnares the colonial/neocolonial natives or immigrants/citizens into the same circuit of exilic suspension while also segmenting them from each other in class or experiential terms. In his many creative and scholarly works, N.V.M. Gonzalez has dwelt extensively on the linguistic alienation of Filipino English writers from their people and what he calls its ‘‘national and historical dimension’’ (‘‘Drumming’’ 423). He specifies the period ‘‘when English was adopted as a national language’’ in the Philippines as the inaugural moment for the complicated American reconstruction of the Filipino, recalling Frantz Fanon’s metaphor of consequent ‘‘changes in the flesh, even in the composition of the body fluids’’ of the colonized (Kalutang 32, 34). Quoting the writer Wilfrido Nolledo, Gonzalez avers that with the ‘‘receiving’’ (the term he uses to reckon with the American imposition) of English, the Filipino writer was converted into a ‘‘domestic exile, an expatriate who has not left his homeland’’ (‘‘Drumming’’ 418–19).11 Yet this also locates the writer at a particular remove from his subject since, as Raymond Williams argues, ‘‘To be a writer in English is already to be socially specified’’ (193). For Gonzalez, writing in English about the kaingineros, the peasant folk of Mindoro and the other islands of his imagination, ‘‘separated each actuality from me at every moment of composition. . . . Rendered in an alien tongue, that life attained the distinction of a translation even before it had been made into a representation of reality through form. . . . The English language thus had the effect of continually presenting that life as non-actual, even as it had affirmed the insecurity of its making’’ (Kalutang 40–1). Like Santos, however, Gonzalez shortcircuits these multiple determinations of linguistic/cultural exile and seeks identity with and in the ‘‘poor folk going from clearing to clearing, island to island, working in the saltwater sweat of their brows for whatever the earth will yield’’ (Guzman 1984: 111). Consequently, his writing has been critiqued for creating a literary brand of nativism and ethnography about a ‘‘bygone rural Philippines . . . no longer mapped by American anthropologists . . . but by insurgents’’ (San Juan, Ruptures 31). But like Santos, Gonzalez has also reflected upon the contradictions of his identity claims and codified several important categories of the exilic sensibility. From Seven Hills Away (1947) to his most recent writings, Gonzalez has lyrically valorized the people of the ‘‘backwoods, barrio, and town,’’ graphing their lifeways and folk culture in styles, rhythms, and forms of storytelling that express a pointed fidelity to this point of origin. Like Santos in his oldtimers, Gonzalez mirrors his exilic condition in the patterns of migration, dispersal, and selfhood of these people who populate the past that he re-members: ‘‘Although they might become city folk, I seem to see them at their best against the background to which they eventually return’’ (Kalutang 66). In a parallel vein, Gonzalez re-turns to this life and place by the power of a language that renders his gesture always already imaginative. A very early piece, ‘‘Far Horizons’’ 309

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(Mindoro 23–6), harbors the beginnings of Gonzalez’s model and vision of exile. As in his other stories that feature the sea, voyaging/sailing, and the islandhopping lifestyle of his past as metaphors for exilic distances, departures, and arrivals, this piece involves characters who find themselves ineluctably separated from their habitat by seafaring as a way of life. Juancho, the surviving crew member of a sailboat sunk off Marinduque island, recalls that among the casualties is Gorio, a sailor from a remote barrio in Mindoro. Juancho surmises that the news of Gorio’s death will not have reached his village at all, and this worries him until he meets a fellow sailor, Bastian, who turns out to be Gorio’s brother. Bastian finds himself making an unintended homecoming after so long, but as a bearer of sorrowful news for his mother and kinfolk. When the sailboat (suggestively called Pag-asa or ‘‘hope’’) bound for southern Mindoro comes to lie at anchor off the coast leading to his village, Bastian convinces Ka Martin, the piloto, to let him ashore for one night to make this important visit. What sets off this story is a classic scene in exilic writing: the actual and transient return and the first glimpse of home after an absence of many years. When Bastian sees the first familiar landmarks of home, ‘‘A strange feeling swept over him. There came some kind of itching in the soles of his feet and his heart began to throb wildly as though trying to get out of his mouth. . . . Then it occurred to him that it was some seven or eight years since he had left home’’ (Mindoro 24).12 Yet mindful of the tragic news that he brings with him and the grief it may cause his mother, Bastian reflects: ‘‘Perhaps it would be better to tell her nothing at all. Should she learn of his brother’s death, it might prove difficult for him to go to sea again. And how he loved the sea although it might claim him too’’ (24). Bastian loses his nerve and, at the call of Ka Martin’s horn, stealthily heads out to sea. He entrusts the news of his brother’s death to the boatman who ferries the villagers across the river and trusts him to spread it after he, Bastian, is gone. The mother, Aling Betud, receives the news of the death of one son and the sudden departure of another with a curious response. It occurs to her that ‘‘it must have been Bastian himself who had died and what had come was his ghost’’ (26). In this act of substitution, Aling Betud nurses her ‘‘hope’’ for her other son’s apparition and return, and she irritatedly responds to the villagers’s disbelief: ‘‘We shall know all, we shall know all. For my other son Gorio will come – and we shall ask him, and he will tell us’’ (26). In this instance of ‘‘identity’’ (as similitude), the dream of return as formed from the site of departure reflects back the idea of exile’s loss and gain – signified here in the dialectic between sorrow and hope, when the mother represents to herself the incalculable transience yet worth of her sons’ ‘‘imagined’’ and imaginable returns. Indeed, ‘‘the sea might claim him too,’’ and it is the idea of homecoming as ever deferred for the pleasure and curse of voyaging (miming the ever-deferred nature of representation of loss and gain in language) that Gonzalez suggests here. Still, for Gonzalez, it is place as the locus of rootedness, the islands from 310

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which sailboats and sailors flee and to which they return, and the clearings between which peasant folk shuttle, that supply the coordinates and the orientations for these movements. In many stories, including ‘‘Children of the Ash-Covered Loam,’’ ‘‘Seven Hills Away,’’ and ‘‘Hunger in Barok’’ (Mindoro 49–61, 32–42, 27–31), Gonzalez also foregrounds the tensions of Philippine social relationships, the difficulties of mutuality and kinship. He maps this historical geography by paraphrasing John Kenneth Galbraith’s description of India as not a country but a continent: ‘‘Understanding the Philippines begins in the realization that it is one nation made up of three countries. . . . Manila is the capital of the first country of the City. The second country – the Barrio – has a capital known by many names: Aplaya, Bondok, Wawa, whatever. . . . the third country – the Mountain – by its very nature needs no capital or center, although it shares with the Barrio a calculated distance from the city’’ (Kalutang 29). Whether concerned with the calibrated frictions between the citified and the folk or the benign feudal paternalism of landlords over their tenants and its illusion of reciprocity, Gonzalez recognizes the problems of constructing a unitary notion of national identity. The movements of the folk are defined by the location of gain and loss in the oppositional relationship between places of power and disenfranchisement: ‘‘We of the Barrio – for it is to that country that I belong . . . trudged in the direction of the country of the City’’ (Kalutang 32). By figuring his expatriation as always already determined by the uneven development of the colonized homeland, Gonzalez restores a dimension of internal conflict that gets lost in the accustomed antinomy between colony and metropole. His memorialization of ‘‘the country of the Barrio’’ (a particular re-vision of the Philippines) constitutes what Said calls a ‘‘cartographic impulse,’’ since ‘‘for the native, the history of his or her colonial servitude is inaugurated by the loss to an outsider of the local place, whose concrete geographical identity must thereafter be searched for and somehow restored’’ (Eagleton et al. 1990: 77). Yet the dispossession creates a rhetoric of placelessness, nostalgia, and wandering, and in Gonzalez’s case, one drawn from the ‘‘local place,’’ the kaingin: ‘‘It is enough that solid ground, whether illusory or real, lies under our feet, and that not too far away is the next clearing, and the next, and the next’’ (Kalutang 74). These pioneering writers have constructed literary analogues of the national mythos that are not without their dangers. The mythic tropes of native and native territory in Gonzalez’s work, like the sense of suspension endemic to the oldtimers of Santos or Bulosan’s uneven idealization of peasant folk, stop short of becoming ‘‘demagogic assertions about a native past, history, or actuality that seems to stand free of the colonizer and worldly time itself’’ (Eagleton et al. 1990: 82). What these gestures sketch is a ‘‘new territoriality’’ that recovers or repossesses the colonized land imaginatively, and from which, in turn, the countercolonial ‘‘search for authenticity, for a more congenial national origin than provided by colonial history, for a new pantheon of heroes, myths and religions’’ should emerge (Eagleton et al. 1990: 79). 311

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It is to the younger and more recent writers that one must turn for an extension of these suggestive tendencies in the exilic identities and writings of the pioneering writers. Recent writers (nearly all women) are turning their own exilic condition into a powerful stance, an engagement with the reality of invisibility that is doubled by the absence of the appropriation of woman as a metaphorical presence in the historical antecedents and models of the pioneers. (Here I have in mind Bulosan’s dualized representations of women characters or even, specifically, the gendering of the homeland as female in Santos’s ‘‘Scent of Apples,’’ among countless instances.) The Flip poets are writing from an alienation that is double-sided as they address their own historical absence in the United States and remain implicated in the historic invisibility of the nation that permanently identifies them. With a set of concerns and questions determined by their own historical conjunctures and different from the pioneers, recent writers view ‘‘history [as] the rubbish heap in which lie hidden the materials from which self-knowledge can come’’ (Gurr 1981: 10). This is a disposition that the Flips share with politically expatriated writers because their politics of emergence builds from a dialectic between past and present, not ‘‘a past sealed off from the vigorously altering effects of contemporary events’’ (Brennan 1989: 17). For example, although the oldtimers continue to serve as figures of origin for many Flip poets, there is a re-search into their social history for a stronger genealogical link. It is an attempt to ‘‘turn over the rubbish heap of history by studying the past and in that way fixing a sense of identity’’ (Gurr 10). This is an impulse codified in Virginia Cerenio’s ‘‘you lovely people’’: ‘‘ay manong / your old brown hands / hold life, many lives / within each crack / a story’’ (Bruchac 1983: 11). History is inscribed in, is an imprint on, the appropriated Pinoy body: ‘‘and it is in his hands / cracked and raw / that never heal. / Shotgunned stomach. One-kidney Franky. / One hot day he revealed / that stomach to me, slowly raising / his T-shirt, and proclaimed it the map of California’’ (Tagami 1987: 13). The probing of history for Flip poets also takes the form of social analysis, but of the conditions in a country as alien to them as they are to it. Perhaps this critical distance is what allows Jaime Jacinto to dramatize, in measured tones of grief and tension, the enduring inequities of Philippine life as sanctioned by the Church and the semifeudal order, and as symbolized by the burial of a peasant woman’s little daughter: ‘‘As the blonde Spanish priest / anoints you, touching your / lips and feet with oil, / your mother wonders if ever there was enough to eat or / if only she had given in / to the landlord’s whispers, / that extra fistful of rice / might have fattened the hollow / in your cheeks’’ (Ancheta et al. 1985: 48–9). Nearly all the emergent writers are women, and this amplitude of women’s writing is a development observable for other emergent literatures in the United States and the postcolonial world. Compared to the two other groups, it is the women or Filipina writers who recognize that ‘‘the relationship to the inherited past and its cultural legacy has been rendered problematic by the violent 312

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interference of colonial and imperial history’’ (Harlow 1987: 19). As Filipino historical crises are intensified by the authoritarian rule of Ferdinand Marcos and its aftermath, history and its countermythic writing become their own forms and visions of return, identity building, and self-recovery. Linda Ty-Casper returned to early colonial Philippine history and showed the way for this group with The Peninsulars (1964). The novel has been critiqued for its ‘‘ill-advised’’ revisions of some historical documents but also commended for setting ‘‘certain precedents that are bound to subsequent efforts’’ (Galdon 1972: 202). In fact, Ty-Casper went on to handle Philippine historical subjects more boldly, seeking to make material out of the moral atrophy and political intrigues that mark the period of authoritarian rule by Marcos (see, for example, Wings of Stone, 1986; Fortress in the Plaza, 1985). One can profit from examining the intertextuality between Ty-Casper’s and Ninotchka Rosca’s ventures, specifically as borne out by Rosca’s historical novel State of War (1988). This novel alerts the reader to Rosca’s indebtedness to Ty-Casper’s pioneering efforts, establishing certain genealogical links between both writers on the narrative level. In The Three-Cornered Sun (1979), Ty-Casper turns to the Philippine Revolution of 1896 against Spain, creating a somewhat indecisive picture of national identity through the members of the Viardo family, whose individual traits are unevenly endowed with allegorical weight. As N. V. M. Gonzalez notes, the call is for ‘‘a depiction of private lives that would encompass Philippine experience within living memory,’’ and as Rosca herself qualifies, ‘‘The problem is how to tell a story that was not anybody’s story yet was everybody’s story’’ (Gonzalez, ‘‘Filipino and the Novel’’ 962; Mestrovic 1988: 90). In State of War, Rosca revisions the whole stretch of colonial history in the context of the period of Marcos’s dictatorship through a me´lange of dreamy sequences, historical vignettes, and hyperrealized characters and events. She balances allegory with personal history in the triadic relationship of her main characters, Anna Villaverde, Adrian Banyaga, and Eliza Hansen, whose genealogies and symbolic stories intertwine in a series of historical wars and developments that are symbolized by a 24-hour period of festivity and political conspiracies. The interrelated carnivalesque of merrymaking and political conflict is emphasized by narrative pattern and design, as supremely exemplified by the three-part structure of the novel (‘‘Acts,’’ ‘‘Numbers,’’ ‘‘Revelations . . . ’’). An obvious footnote to the triangulated characteristic of Ty-Casper’s Awaiting Trespass as ‘‘a small book of hours about those waiting for their lives to begin . . . a book of numbers about those who stand up to be counted . . . a book of revelations about what tyranny forces people to become; and what, by resisting, they can insist on being’’ (author’s preface, n.p.), Rosca’s organizing stratagem also directs the reader to incremental and interreferential layers internal to the work of either author. In Rosca’s case, for example, Eliza and Anna (along with Colonel Amor, incarnated as the Loved One in State of War, symbol of the authoritarian and military reign of terror) first make their appearance as character sketches in the piece ‘‘Earthquake Weather’’ (see Monsoon Collection 129). 313

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This movement continues outward as Michelle Skinner packs her extremely short stories in Balikbayan: A Filipino Homecoming (1988) with powerful allusion and subtexts concerning the life under dictatorial rule as it was subtended by American neocolonial support for Marcos; or as Cecilia Manguerra-Brainard compresses into a story (‘‘The Black Man in the Forest,’’ in Woman with Horns 21–5) the many historical ramifications of the Filipino–American War, which had concerned Ty-Casper in Ten Thousand Seeds (1987). Experientially, these writers create from the same sense of expatriation from the past and their history that stems quite immediately from the founding moment of American colonization and the cultural translocation through the master’s language. But the distance is not crippling, as they invert its anthropological commonplaces from their perspective as colonized natives or immigrants/citizens who regard from the outside that is also the country of the colonizer the whole spectacle of their transhistorical movements and displacements. Return for them is redefining and rewriting ‘‘history’’ from the perspective of banishment: ‘‘Physical departure from the scene of one’s personal history provides a break in time and separates the present from the past. History then becomes what preceded departure’’ (Gurr 1981: 10–11). For these writers, the pioneers serve as stark examples and models. Either one is disabled and ‘‘waits for miracles to happen’’ – as Santos seems to express when recalling how his writing teacher Philip Roth excised his desired ending image for a short story, that, significantly enough, of ‘‘floating in a shoreless sea’’ (Fernandez and Alegre 1982: 245) – or one is enabled, moving on, as the narrator in Bulosan’s story does, to tell the ‘‘story’’ (history) of the ‘‘letter’’ (one’s transcription or codification of the self-in-history) through the language and experience of one’s subjection.

Notes Many thanks to Epifanio San Juan, Jr., Robert Lee, Roland Guyotte, Barbara Posadas, and Neil Lazarus for their comments and suggestions, and to Yuko Matsukawa for suggesting some important references. 1 Asian American literature is remarkably undertheorized when compared to African American, Chicano, and Native American literatures. Yet one can intuit from existing anthologies, bibliographies, and prevailing notions of Asian American literature a pronounced but unacknowledged focus on Chinese and Japanese American writings and their telos of immigration and settlement, to the unintended exclusion of other Asian American writings and their concomitant logics. The Aiiieeeee! group (1974), David Hsin-fu Wand (1974), Elaine Kim (1982), and many others reflexively include Filipinos or Filipino Americans as part of the Asian American triad of major communities, but because of their preoccupation with Chinese and Japanese American writings, they are hard-pressed to list ‘‘Filipino American’’ writers other than Carlos Bulosan, the ‘‘Flip’’ writers who figured prominently in the identity politics of the 1960s, or the younger California poets. A singular exception to this is Kai-Yu Hsu and Palubinskas (1972). Cheung and Yogi (1988) recognize the problems with this implicit theoretical center of Asian American literature when they note that ‘‘the influence of overseas

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2

3

4

5

6

7

Asians – be they sojourners or immigrants with American-born offspring – cannot be ignored’’ and that there are ‘‘authors who may regard themselves as expatriates or as regional writers rather than as Asian American’’ (v). There has been a similar but related ‘‘neglect’’ or ‘‘invisibility’’ of Filipinos and Filipino Americans in the sociology of American immigration, ethnicity, and communities (Posadas, ‘‘Filipino American History’’ 87–8). The anthology featured a short excerpt from Carlos Bulosan’s America Is in the Heart (1946) and two short pieces by Penaranda and Tagatac. The writers themselves went on to construct a ‘‘literary background’’ from the history of Philippine literature in English, choosing Carlos Bulosan and Bienvenido Santos from ‘‘five authors [who] left the Philippines and wrote about Filipinos in America’’ even as this extremely limited pool consisted of ‘‘already mature men whose psychology and sensibilities were Filipino’’. Compare the essay by Penaranda et al. (44–7) with Bienvenido Santos, ‘‘The Filipino Novel in English’’ (634–8). Here, I certainly do not wish to subsume, even to reduce, the identity and community politics of immigrant and native-born Filipino Americans into a totalizing structure. The historians Roland Guyotte and Barbara Posadas warn against the dangers of this facile move (‘‘Unintentional Immigrants,’’ 26). Rather I am interested in how Filipino Americans and exiled Filipinos are caught in a web of mutual implication with each other and with their groups of affinity in the Philippines when faced with the question of American colonialism within a US context. Recent efforts in various fields recognize the need to coalesce around such possibly comparative issues as American imperialism and orientalism. Mazumdar (1991) calls for a dialogue between Asian American studies and Asian studies on this score and many others, while Cheng and Bonacich (1984) have initiated a parallel dialogue of these fields with studies in political economy. Hunt has called the attention of diplomatic historians to the centrality of the immigration question. He also urges increased attention to ‘‘the intellectual currents among the elite and popular views in the regions intimately involved in trans-Pacific contacts’’ to any fresh work in American–East Asian international relations (1983: 18, 20–30). In historiographical terms, this doctrine was codified in many ways, but most relevant for us here, through the ‘‘aberration thesis’’ of Samuel Flagg Bemis in diplomatic history – the notion that American imperialism was merely a blot in an otherwise spotless and incomparable political tradition. This dominated the literature for many years and (although debunked by subsequent paradigms) continues to assume many lives in different works and cultural expressions. Some prior but exemplary incarnations include the notion of Manifest Destiny, which naturalized the expansive thrust of American nation and empire building, and ‘‘benevolent assimilation,’’ which distinguished American imperialism as ‘‘humanitarian’’ and ‘‘tutelary.’’ For a critique of the historiography, see San Juan, Crisis (1986: esp. 3–5), and Miller (1982: 1–12, 253–67). For recent renewals of this sacrosanct view of American imperialism, see Welch (1979: chap. 10); May (1980: 170–83), and the Pulitzer Prize-winning book by Karnow In Our Image (1989: 12–15, 227 ff, 323 ff). Letter to the author, October 10, 1989. Kaplan’s work on American imperialist discourse announces a much-awaited cultural turn in the study of American imperialism; see, for example, ‘‘Romancing the Empire’’ (1990). Rydell (1984) preceded Kaplan with his ground-breaking work on American world fairs and their focus on the Philippines. Institutional developments that indicate the wholesale submergence of the Philippines in various American historiographies include its erratic and tokenistic positioning in East Asian and Southeast Asian studies and the absence of a strong Philippine studies tradition in the United States. See May’s half-hearted critique of this benign (or active?) academic neglect of the Philippines in Past Recovered (1987: 175–89), but also Alice Mak, ‘‘Philippine Studies in Hawaii’’ (1989: 6, 9), which notes that in instituting a formal Philippine studies program at the University of Hawaii in 1975, the university faculty observed that no other US institution ‘‘had a program focusing on the Philippines.’’ Mak adds: ‘‘After many decades of [so-called] close political, historical and social ties, it seemed odd that no American university had made an effort to encourage research on the Philippines.’’

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Oscar V. Campomanes 8 Letter to the author from Epifanio San Juan, Jr., April 24, 1990. 9 Penaranda et al. use this term to refer to Filipino Americans born and/or rasied in the United States (1974: 49). 10 San Juan critiques Sollors’s uninformed and ahistorical appropriations of Villa in the ‘‘Cult of Ethnicity.’’ For an account of Villa’s autocanonization and self-obsolescence see San Juan, ‘‘Reflections on U.S.–Philippine Literary Relations,’’ 47–50. 11 Or as Memmi describes the situation unambiguously, ‘‘The entire bureaucracy, the entire court system, all industry hears and uses the colonizer’s language. . . . highway markings, railroad station signs, street signs and receipts make the colonized feel like a stranger in his own country’’ (1965: 106–7). 12 Compare with Bulosan, ‘‘Homecoming,’’ where the protagonist Mariano’s first glimpse of his hometown and the family hut after twelve years in the United States evokes a quickness of step and powerful emotions (Bulosan Reader 64).

References Ancheta, Shirley, et al., eds, Without Names (San Francisco: Kearny Street Workshop, 1985). Anderson, Benedict Imagined Communities: Reflections of the Origins and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1983). Brennan, Timothy, ‘‘Cosmopolitans and Celebrities,’’ Race and Class 31(1) (1989): 1–19. Bruchac, Joseph, ed., Breaking Silence: An Anthology of Contemporary Asian American Poets (Greenfield Center, NY: Greenfield Review Press, 1983). Bulosan, Carlos If You Want to Know What We Are: A Carlos Bulosan Reader (Minneapolis: West End, 1983). Bulosan, Carlos America Is in the Heart (1946) (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1973). Bulosan, Carlos Sound of Falling Light: Letters in Exile, ed. Dolores Feria (Quezon City, Phils.: University of Philippines Press, 1960). Carino, Benjamin, and James Fawcett, eds, Pacific Bridges: The New Immigration from Asia and the Pacific Islands (New York: Center for Migration Studies, 1987). Cheng, Lucie, and Edna Bonacich, eds, Labor Immigration Under Capitalism: Asian Workers in the United States before World War II (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984). Cheung, King-kok, and Stan Yogi Asian American Literature: An Annotated Bibliography (New York: Modern Language Association 1988). Cordova, Fred Filipinos: Forgotten Asian Americans (Dubuque, IA: Kendall Hunt, 1983). Eagleton, Terry, et al. Nationalism, Colonialism and Literature (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1990). Fuentebella, Cielo ‘‘What is Filipino American Culture?’’ Philippine News Magazine, August 9–15, 1989. Fernandez, Doreen and Edilberto Alegre The Writer and His Milieu (Manila: De La Salle University Press, 1982). Galdon, Joseph, ed., Philippine Fiction. Quezon City, Phils.: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1972. Gates, Henry Louis. The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African-American Literary Criticism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988). Gonzalez, N.V.M. Kalutang: A Filipino in the World (Manila: Kalikasan Press, 1990). Gonzalez, N.V.M. Mindoro and Beyond: Twenty-One Stories (Quezon City, Phils.: University of Philippines Press, 1979). Gonzalez, N.V.M. ‘‘Drumming for the Captain,’’ World Literature Written in English 15(2) (November 1976): 415–21. Gonzalez, N.V.M. ‘‘The Filipino and the Novel,’’ Daedelus 95(4) (Fall 1966): 961–71.

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A Filipino American Literature of Exile Gonzalez, N.V.M. Seven Hills Away (Denver: Alan Swallow, 1947). Gurr, Andrew Writers in Exile: The Identity of Home in Modern Literature (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1981). Guyotte, Roland and Barbara Posadas ‘‘Unintentional Immigrants: Chicago’s Filipino Foreign Students Become Settlers, 1900–1941,’’ Journal of American Ethnic History 9(2) (Spring 1990): 26–48. Guzman, Richard ‘‘ ‘As in Myth, the Signs Were All Over’: The Fiction of N.V.M. Gonzalez,’’ Virginia Quarterly Review 60(1) (Winter 1984): 102–18. Harlow, Barbara. Resistance Literature (New York: Methuen, 1987). Hsu, Kai-yu, and Helen Palubinskas, eds, Asian American Authors (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1972). Hunt, Michael. ‘‘New Insights But No New Vistas: Recent Work in 19th Century American–East Asian Relations.’’ In New Frontiers in American–East Asian Relations, ed. Warren Cohen (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983). Kaplan, Amy ‘‘Romancing the Empire,’’ American Literary History 3 (December 1990): 556–90. Karnow, Stanley In Our Image: America’s Empire in the Philippines (New York: Random, 1989). Kim, Elaine Asian American Literature: An Introduction to the Writings and Their Social Context (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1982). Mak, Alice. ‘‘Development of Philippine Studies in Hawaii,’’ Philippine Studies Newsletter, October 1989. Manguerra-Brainard, Cecilia Woman with Horns and Other Stories (Quezon City, Phils.: New Day, 1988). May, Ernest, and James Thomson, Jr., eds, American–East Asian Relations: A Survey (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1972). May, Glenn. A Past Recovered (Quezon City, Phils.: New Day, 1987). May, Glenn. Social Engineering in the Philippines (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1980). Mazumdar, Sucheta. ‘‘Asian American Studies and Asian Studies: Rethinking Roots.’’ In Asian Americans: Comparative and Global Perspectives. ed. Shirley Hune, et al. Pullman, WA: Washington State University Press, 1991. Memmi, Albert. The Colonizer and the Colonized (Boston: Beacon, 1965). Mestrovic, Marta. ‘‘Ninotchka Rosca,’’ Publishers Weekly, May 6, 1988. Miller, Stuart Creighton. ‘‘Benevolent Assimilation’’: The American Conquest of the Philippines, 1899–1903 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982). Mukherjee, Bharati. ‘‘Immigrant Writing: Give Us Your Maximalists!,’’ New York Times Book Review, August 28, 1988. Penaranda, Oscar, et al. ‘‘An Introduction to Filipino American Literature.’’ In Aiiieeeee! An Anthology of Asian American Writers, ed. Frank Chin et al. (Washington, DC: Howard University Press, 1974). Pido, Antonio The Pilipinos in America: Macro/Micro Dimensions of Immigration and Integration (New York: Center for Migration Studies, 1986). Posadas, Barbara ‘‘At a Crossroad: Filipino American History and the Old Timers’ Generation,’’ Amerasia 13(1) (1986–87): 85–97. Quemada, David ‘‘The Contemporary Filipino Poet in English,’’ World Literature Written in English 15(2) (November 1976): 429–37. Rosca, Ninotchka State of War (New York: Norton, 1988). Rosca, Ninotchka Monsoon Collection (New York and Saint Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1982). Roth, Russell Muddy Glory: America’s ‘‘Indian Wars’’ in the Philippines 1899–1935 (West Hanover, MA: Christopher Publishing House, 1981). Rydell, Robert All the World’s a Fair: Visions of Empire at American International Expositions, 1876–1916 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984).

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Oscar V. Campomanes Said, Edward ‘‘Reflections on Exile.’’ In Out There: Marginalization and Contemporary Cultures, ed. Russell Ferguson et al. (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1990). San Juan, Epifanio, Jr. ‘‘Mapping the Boundaries, Inscribing the Differences: The Filipino in the U.S.A.,’’ Journal of Ethnic Studies 19(1) (Spring 1991): 117–31. San Juan, Epifanio, Jr. ‘‘The Cult of Ethnicity and the Fetish of Pluralism,’’ Cultural Critique 18 (Spring 1991): 215–29. San Juan, Epifanio, Jr. ‘‘Farewell, You Whose Homeland is Forever Arriving As I Embark: Journal of a Filipino Exile,’’ Kultura 3(1) (1990): 34–41. San Juan, Epifanio, Jr. ‘‘Reflections on U.S.–Philippine Literary Relations,’’ Ang Makatao (1988): 43–54. San Juan, Epifanio, Jr. Ruptures, Schisms, Interventions: Cultural Revolution in the Third World (Manila: De La Salle University Press, 1988). San Juan, Epifanio, Jr. ‘‘To the Filipino Artist in Exile.’’ Midweek, August 19, 1987. San Juan, Epifanio, Jr. Crisis in the Philippines (South Hadley, MA: Bergin and Garvey, 1986). Santos, Bienvenido ‘‘Pilipino Old Timers: Fact and Fiction,’’ Amerasia 9(2) (1982): 89–98. Santos, Bienvenido Scent of Apples (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1979). Santos, Bienvenido ‘‘The Personal Saga of a ‘Straggler’ in Philippine Literature,’’ World Literature Written in English 15(2) (November 1976): 398–405. Santos, Bienvenido ‘‘The Filipino Novel in English.’’ In Brown Heritage: Essays on Philippine Cultural Tradition and Literature, ed. Antonio Manuud (Quezon City, Phils.: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1967). Seidel, Michael Exile and the Narrative Imagination (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987). Skinner, Michelle Maria Cruz Balikbayan: A Filipino Homecoming (Honolulu: Bess Press, 1988). Solberg, Sam ‘‘Introduction to Filipino American Literature.’’ In Aiiieeeee! An Anthology of AsianAmerican Writers, ed. Frank Chin et al. (Washington, DC: Howard University Press, 1983). Sollors, Werner Beyond Ethnicity: Consent and Descent in American Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986). Stanley, Peter ‘‘The Forgotten Philippines, 1790–1946.’’ In American–East Asian Relations: A Survey, eds Ernest May and James Thomson (Cambridge: Harvard University Press). Tagami, Jeff October Light (San Francisco: Kearny Street Workshop, 1987). Takaki, Ronald Strangers from a Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans (Boston: Little, Brown, 1989). Takaki, Ronald, ed., From Different Shores: Perspectives on Race and Ethnicity in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987). Ty-Casper, Linda. Ten Thousand Seeds (Manila: Atenco de Manila University Press, 1987). Ty-Casper, Linda. Wings of Stone (London: Readers International, 1986). Ty-Casper, Linda. Awaiting Trespass (London: Readers International, 1985). Ty-Casper, Linda. Fortress in the Plaza (Quezon City, Phils.: New Day, 1985). Ty-Casper, Linda. The Three-Cornered Sun (Quezon City, Phils.: New Day, 1979). Ty-Casper, Linda. The Peninsulars (Manila: Bookmark, 1964). Wand, David Hsin-fu, ed., Asian American Heritage (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1974). Welch, Richard. Response to Imperialism: The United States and the Philippine–American War, 1899–1902 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1979). Williams, Raymond. Marxism and Literature (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977).

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CHAPTER

EIGHTEEN

Los Angeles, Asians, and Perverse Ventriloquisms: On the Functions of Asian America in the Recent American Imaginary* David Palumbo-Liu

We can perhaps do better than to take stock directly of the ideological contents of our age; by trying to reconstitute in its specific structure the code of connotation of a mode of communications as important as the press photograph we may hope to find, in their very subtlety, the forms our society uses to ensure its peace of mind and grasp thereby the magnitude, the detours, and the underlying function of that activity. [roland barthes]1

How does one derive peace of mind from an image of utter chaos and violence? One of the most conspicuous figures of the Los Angeles rebellion of late April 1992, which circulated among popular radio talk shows, television news reports, and daily and weekly print media, was that of the ‘‘vigilante Korean.’’ In this essay I will argue that the image of Koreans, and, by extension, Asians in general, formed an integral part of a powerful homology of race, property, violence and ‘‘justice’’ that significantly reinforced white hegemonic identifications.2 At the same time, it allowed the effective absence of whites within the framework of representation, thereby effecting the pacification of social trauma remarked upon by Barthes.3 This essay offers a set of readings of one news photo * David Palumbo-Liu ‘‘Los Angeles, Asians, and Perverse Ventriloquisms: On the Functions of Asian America in the Recent American Imaginary.’’ Public Culture 6 (1994): 365–6; 368–81. ß 1994 by University of Chicago. All rights reserved. Used by permission of the publisher, Duke University Press.

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that I will argue emblematizes the function of Asian-Americans, both in the specific public discourses surrounding the Los Angeles rebellion and within the late twentieth-century American political economy. Let us examine closely a color photograph that appeared in the 11 May 1992 issue of Newsweek: a young Korean-American male in the foreground looks askance toward the left of the frame, holding a semiautomatic handgun upright. He is wearing a Malcolm X T-shirt with the caption, ‘‘By any means necessary . . . ’’ Beneath that caption on the shirt is a print of black and white photograph of a black man in a suit and tie holding an automatic rifle, looking down to the right of the frame, peering through a set of blinds out a window. In the background of the Newsweek photograph, two red fire engines spray jets of water on a smoldering building; a street sign tells us this is Olympic Boulevard. Newsweek’s caption, quoting a Korean-American witness to the riots, reads. ‘‘This is not America.’’ How can we decipher this intensely overdetermined set of signifiers? The pose seems (too deliberately)4 to cast the Asian figure into ironic dialogue with the figure of Malcolm X, with reverse angles of vision, of perspective, and inverted objects. Malcolm X guards against the attack of the white police state, while the young Korean-American stands in for a police force that withdrew its protection of his property in order to protect white property against (predominantly) black and Latino looters and burners. The photo in turn engages the caption, ‘‘This is not America,’’ for although the caption would attempt to explain, to rationalize the content of the photographic image, the photo gestures toward a discursive space beyond and outside it. The semiotic density engendered by the conjunction of the Malcolm X T-shirt with that Asian body, set within a complex social, economic, and political history which is commonly reduced into the abstract arena of ‘‘race relations’’ in the United States, opens up a number of questions which evince the inadequacy of our usual paradigms of interpretation. Indeed, any interpretive strategy not open to the mutual disruptions of narrative and image, representation and history, goes only so far in teasing out the crosscurrents of signification at work. We could ask, among other things, How has an icon of Black Power been uprooted from its historical specificity and appropriated, so that it now seems to sanction and even prescribe counterviolence against blacks and others who might threaten the dominant ideology? That is, How have the words of Malcolm X, aimed to free African-Americans and arm them against the intrusive violence of the state, come to legitimize protecting property from blacks and other groups consistently disenfranchised from the judicial and economic machineries of the state, as evinced most emphatically in those days of late April 1992 by the acquittal of the assailants of Rodney King? Furthermore, we could ask, How, in this rescripted context of racial violence and counterviolence, has Asian-American property come to stand in for white property? And how can we account for the incommensurateness between the Korean-American ‘‘vigilante’’ and the ‘‘legitimate’’ police force to which the vigilante is symbolically correlate? 320

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Finally, what exactly are the absent referents beyond the frame of the photograph (since the metonymies of the photo gesture toward other buildings. other victims, other agents of violence)? Most importantly, the text implicates a reader/viewer whose moral sense is assumed to be represented (both mimetically, and in the sense of ideologically speaking on behalf of those absent)5 in the simple declarative, summary recitation of another Korean-American’s enunciation (‘‘This is not America’’), which now speaks back to the photo, creating the illusion that it is articulating the mentality of the photographed subject.6 But most compelling and confusing in this frame are the particular double inscriptions of the image and caption on that T-shirt with the body that displays it, and of the body with the shirt that augments the representation of that multiply significant body (Asian, American, male, merchant, vigilante, etc.) – and their specific materializations in this historical moment. The questions posed above map out a set of trajectories into the density of this image, a density which, I would stress, is linked intimately to the liminal position of Asian-Americans in the United States. This photograph ‘‘documents’’ a crucial, interstitial element that breaks apart the black/white dichotomy that was the simple image retained in the general account of the events of May, 1992.7 In this photograph, indexes of the violence are eclipsed by the figure in the foreground, a seemingly ancillary player – neither a black, nor a white, nor a Latino, but an Asian. Why did Newsweek select an Asian for this focal space? The obvious reason is that, supposedly, the main targets of black and Latino rage were KoreanAmerican businesses. This was in part explained in the press by the longstanding animosity between Korean-Americans and (particularly) blacks, the latter being especially bitter over the slaying of a black teenage girl by a KoreanAmerican grocer over the alleged theft of a bottle of orange juice, and the extremely light sentence meted out to the grocer.8 The hierarchy of presence is significant here: an Asian body occupies the foreground in this narrative; blacks are present as second-level images (Malcolm X on the T-shirt) – however, whites are invisible, somehow not part of ‘‘this’’ America. Thus what is missing in the narrative implicated by this photo/text is any inquiry into the structure of an economic system that historically has pitted Asians against blacks and Lations, and which exploits that antagonism in order to construct a displaced rehearsal of a simplified white/black, purely ‘‘racial’’ antagonism. To begin to account for this elision of whites and the restaging of race relations without whites (but nonetheless containing the function of a white supremacist ideology channeled through the historically convenient body of Asian America), one must understand the continuity of the function of AsianAmericans in the recent American imaginary. Many have pointed up the parallels between the Watts riots of 1965, and the recent riots in Los Angeles and elsewhere over the verdict delivered in the trial of four Los Angeles police officers for the videotaped beating of Rodney 321

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King – one such parallel is the ideological function of images of AsianAmericans. Between 1966 and 1992 the key elements persist: hard-working, persevering, and not dependent upon state or federal largesse, Asian-Americans serve as emblems of the inherent logic of laissez-faire capitalism and the inconsequential nature of race and ethnicity before such a logic.9 It has been nearly a quarter of a century since the first articulation of the model minority thesis was made in an article by William Petersen entitled, ‘‘Success Story, Japanese American Style,’’ which was published in the New York Times Magazine on 9 January 1966, less than six months after the Watts riots in Los Angeles. Several other journalists picked up this theme, which focused on the high educational achievement levels, high median family incomes, low crime rates, and the absence of juvenile delinquency and mental health problems among Asian-Americans, and juxtaposed this ‘‘success’’ with the failure of blacks in America. The message was clear: patient and quietlydetermined hard work brings success; welfare dependence and sheer ‘‘laziness’’ bring economic disaster. Asian-American scholars have since questioned the data from which this myth was created; nevertheless, the predominance of the image of the quietly hardworking Asian-American has persisted in the popular imagination.10 While there is obviously nothing wrong with hard work, what is important here is how the model minority myth reifies Asian-American identity, and how it has been deployed in an eminently programmatic way against other groups, mapping out specific positionings of minorities within the US political economy. In 1992, a little over a quarter of a century after Watts, in another ‘‘race riot’’ in the same city, Korean-Americans were represented as the frontline forces of the white bourgeoisie. Not only were they successful even under the most oppressive circumstances, they were not afraid to arm themselves against blacks and Latinos to protect what is not only their territory, but also the buffer-zone between the core of a multiethnic ghetto, and white middle-class America. The locating, real and figurative, of Asians in between the dominant and minor is made less tenuous and even rationalized by a particular element which situates Asians within the dominant ideology, and frees them of the burden of their ethnicity and race while retaining (for obvious ideological purposes) the signifier of racial difference: the notion of self-affirmative action. During the late twentieth century, minorities in the United States have been told to stop complaining about oppression and to start drawing upon inner strengths. This formula conveniently absolves the state of any continued responsibility toward social justice, transferring it instead to (only) those groups affected negatively by injustice. The specific brand of self-affirmative action that is the linchpin of the model minority myth uses an exaggerated representation of Asians as embodying those ‘‘traditional family values’’ whose lack brought about the Los Angeles riots, according to Dan Quayle and the Bush administration.11 Here, the ‘‘Asian family structure’’ represents the perfect apparatus for the reproduction of the ethos of diligent hard work, self-denial, and political 322

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quietude. Instead of collective activism ‘‘without’’ the family, Asians enjoy selfsupporting family units whose ‘‘traditional values’’ (often traced back to Confucian pragmatic education) ultimately triumph over whatever difficulties might lie in their way. As such, Asian families reaffirm the values of conformity, of deference to civil and familial authority. This representation, of course, writes out a substantial history of social resistance and protest as well as the wide range of familial structures evident in the multiple Asian cultures whose insertion into American society has been extremely uneven and varied. Instead, the Newsweek photograph ends up specifically implicating ‘‘traditional family values’’ within the moral imperative to protect the sanctity of private property that is viewed as the reward for the practice of those values within a market economy. The notion of ‘‘traditional family values’’ is, of course, an impossibly vacuous one, since it has no purchase outside of specific ideological practices. In this case, Newsweek’s representation of Korean-Americans creates a frame that sketches out the endpoints of a particular narrative linking the personal, the familial and the communal to the material objects around which negotiations between and across those three take place. Just as the photograph we have discussed places the viewer in the middle of an ongoing activity, eliding any representation of the structural causality of the riots and picking up instead at the point after which causality can be taken as relevant (the critique of structural causes now being secondary to the higher and more immediate imperatives of the protection of life), so does the photograph that concludes Newsweek’s discussion of the riots. Published in the subsequent issue (18 May 1992, page 30), it shows three Korean-American women in mourning, weeping at a funeral.12 This photograph fills in the end point of ‘‘this’’ America. This juxtaposition of photographs of Korean-Americans, seeming to outline the essential parameters of their involvement in the Los Angeles uprising, becomes a convenient speculum of the tragic narrative of how the ‘‘traditional family values’’ of the dominant culture come up against those who are popularly represented as severely lacking such virtues. This ‘‘drama’’ is scripted within an unproblematized idealization of Asians (who, thus configured, stand in for dominant white ideologies, to which they have a tenuous and contingent relation) and an equally essentialized depiction of the black family as ‘‘pathological’’ (and therefore bereft of the property earned by Asians), always on the margins by dint of some inherent resistance to the ethos so well exemplified by Asians. Both these formations are the products of a process of reification that exculpates the dominant ideology from its role in setting the stage for the mutual antagonism of ethnic communities. That Asian-Americans are thus used as a defamiliarized, and hence all the more compelling, image of the ‘‘traditional American’’ is confirmed in a talk by Elaine Kim. In it, Kim recounts how Newsweek magazine solicited from her an opinion piece on the subject of Korean-Americans and the Los Angeles riots. The editor insisted that Kim work into her essay some reference to ‘‘Korean-American cowboys,’’ wishing to dramatize the ‘‘resistance’’ of 323

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Korean-Americans to black violence.13 Although Kim explained that the carrying of firearms would be something relatively unfamiliar to Koreans (since guns are outlawed in Korea), the opportunity was simply too great for Newsweek to pass up. What Newsweek perceived was a ‘‘photo op’’ that would neatly draw upon and intensify the model minority myth (self-affirmation, individual initiative, and, now most important, an overriding will to protect the fruits of the free enterprise system). As was the case in 1966, in the contemporary coverage of the Rodney King incident Asians are again used as a fulcrum inserted between ethnic groups to leverage hegemonic racist ideology. A particular homology is set in place – Asians stand against blacks and Latinos as white settlers stood against ‘‘pillaging’’ Indians. The Korean-American ‘‘cowboy’’ thus serves as a defamiliarized image of white America’s manifest destiny.14 The intense materialism behind this idealization of the Korean-American ‘‘cowboy’’ and self-affirmative action is revealed in Newsweek’s picturesque prose, which blends a calculatedly limpid style with references to inventive American know-how, to the signs of Korean-American success being sacrificed to protect the stores, to the adaptation of high-tech personal communications devices to paramilitary purposes, and to a relentlessly practical entrepreneurial spirit: With the police in disarray, some Koreans formed their own vigilante groups for self-defense. They strapped metal grocery carts together [Newsweek’s thinly veiled allusion to ‘‘circling the wagons’’?] in a line across the parking lot at the Korean Supermarket on Olympic. Then they drew their Volvos, Mercedeses and other high-end cars into a Maginot line. Behind the cars crouched a dozen men with shotguns and pistols. Some had cellular phones strapped to their belts; others set up fields of fire from a supermarket roof. ‘‘No trouble,’’ said one of the defenders with a wave. ‘‘Come back tomorrow.’’15

In some way, this image serves as a twisted corollary to the image of the beating of Rodney King. If white America16 was repulsed by the image of the anti-black violence of the King beating, it could by contrast react positively, immediately, and with ethical purity when viewing Asian-Americans defending themselves against black and Latino looters. And just as Rodney King’s beating was supposedly the result of his ‘‘controlling the action,’’ so too do black Americans bear responsibility for violence aimed against them by KoreanAmericans. Only here, there seems to be no ambiguity about the justness of the accusation. In this photograph, it is doubly inscribed – by indices of black and Latino violence such as burning buildings, by a series of articles on the riots, but most immediately by the words of Malcolm X himself – ‘‘By any means necessary’’ – which now come to endorse repression of African Americans ‘‘by any means necessary.’’ The movement of repression/rebellion comes full circle by means of this appropriation and inversion of the term ‘‘necessity.’’ 324

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While it is difficult to condemn acts of self-defense, one should note that what was at stake in the images of Korean-American vigilantes guarding their shops was not just life, but as I have been arguing throughout, property, and particular property (against a particular threat) – hence the evocativeness of the image.17 For the riots were as much about the material conditions of economic survival as they were about police brutality – the verdict set into relief the ‘‘justice’’ of Reaganomics as much as the racism of the judicial system. To sum up: The property so stalwartly guarded thus operated as a signifier. It was the product of a particular regime of capitalism seemingly unfettered by the obstacles of racism and allowed for by political quietism, self-denial, and discipline and condensed in the image of the model minority. As such, nonethnic viewers could sympathetically identify with particular property, and assume the role of one who had (likewise) acquired such property – for example, a middle-class readership could look at the often-mentioned ‘‘high-end’’ automobiles used by Korean-Americans and then look into their own garages, imagining that their own cars were trophies of similar arduous labor and selfsacrifice. And, by extension, they could sympathize with the urge to protect such hard-earned objects against those Latino and black rioters whose pathological laziness prevented them from earning such objects ‘‘honestly.’’ Thus, even more than any abstract ‘‘spirit’’ of free enterprise, what draws the viewer to identify with the image is the notion of the protection of private property. The protection of private property creates a strong identificatory bond precisely between both those who have it in abundance and those who may not, but who have nonetheless accepted the validity of the mechanisms whereby one is to acquire it in US society, and therefore view themselves as deserving it.18 In the use of private property as a sign of racial and moral superiority, the ‘‘representation’’ of Asian-America(ns) overtly coincides with the vested interest of dominant American ideology – in Asian-America(ns) it finds a speculum of the function of white dominance. The representation of Asian-American protection of property achieves particular weight exactly because it appears to be another ‘‘case,’’ different from white supremacist ideology. It involves a racially different group, and therefore vindicates the ‘‘neutrality’’ of American capitalism. The supremacy, the ultimate ‘‘soundness,’’ of the capitalist economics that have disproportionately favored whites over racial and ethnic minorities now seems color-blind because ‘‘yellows’’ have found it to work in their favor, too. And thus the underlying mechanisms that continue to work against blacks, Latinos, and Asians as well, are made invisible by the inflationary symbolic of the ‘‘model minority.’’ In US history the Asian has served as a powerful signifier – at first, as a local illustration of European orientalist mythologies, and more than a century later as a ‘‘model minority’’ used to vindicate American ideology. Nevertheless, there is a hard residue of old-style orientalism – the notion that Asians have no concept of the sanctity of human life (as articulated endlessly during the Vietnam War), plays a crucial role in the representation of the Korean-American ‘‘cowboy.’’ For 325

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if whites are too ‘‘refined,’’ too attached to western Enlightenment notions of law and order, then Asians, genetically bereft of such encumbrances, can act out the primal imperatives of capitalism.19 Asian-Americans provide the prescribed body for the pristine strain of violence that America would euphemize in itself but exploit in others. (One final note: in April 1993, when the federal trial of the Los Angeles police officers was near its end, the media coverage of the event resurrected the ‘‘vigilante Korean.’’ So invested was the media in this image that it was used by the Oakland Tribune for a story entitled, ‘‘Judge Chastises Media for Reporting about Possible Hung Jury’’. The photo and its caption [‘‘David Chu, manager of the Western Gun Shop in the Koreantown section of Los Angeles, says sales have been brisk as a verdict approaches in the Rodney King beating trial’’], at first appear to have nothing to do with the story. Instead, they seem only to add ‘‘excitement’’ to it. Yet we are actually revisiting exactly the same terrain as mapped out above.) The obvious inversion of property and propriety that takes place across that homology is striking, and forces us to return to the caption and its implied question: What is ‘‘America’’? What legitimates such relations of property and race? Or better yet, What have ‘‘we’’ come to be? And this query is both prompted by articulated within the caption chosen for the photograph, which sets off a quest for a narrative capable of representing ‘‘America.’’ This narrative is generated precisely in a double function, twice articulated in the photo/caption. In his early essay on ‘‘The Photographic Message,’’20 Barthes explains how the press photo inverts the ‘‘traditional’’ relation between text and image: ‘‘The text constitutes a parasitic message designed to connote the image, to ‘quicken’ it with one or more second-order signifieds. In other words, and this is an important historical reversal, the image no longer illustrates the words; it is now the words which, structurally, are parasitic on the image . . . Formerly, the image illustrated the text (made it clearer); today, the text loads the image, burdening it with a culture, a moral, an imagination.’’ (Barthes 1977: 25–6).21 However, in this particular case, the ‘‘texts’’ and ‘‘images’’ are exactly doubled – there is a scene quoted within the image, comprised itself of photo/caption. Moreover, in both instances there is as well a significant rupture (instead of collusion) between image and text precisely along the grain of history and ideology. The Newsweek photo/caption exploits both what Barthes calls the ‘‘traditional’’ direction of commentary (the image does, in fact, give illustration to the impossible-to-visualize declaration, ‘‘This is not America’’), and the ‘‘modern’’ relationship between text and image – the text ‘‘burdens’’ the photograph with meaning. In the embedded image as well. we find a similar doubling – the text (‘‘By any means necessary’’) functions as the designator of the scene, and the image of Malcolm X particularizes the universal instrumentality referred to in the caption. In the two text/images at hand, this reciprocal effect produces 326

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‘‘clarity’’ through its transparent illustrative designation – e.g., the raised gun superesedes the now-vacant generalization ‘‘By any means necessary.’’ Yet it also points to that which it cannot designate: the chaotic scene at Olympic Boulevard eclipses the verbal statement, ‘‘This is not America,’’ betraying an inability to articulate that which is America – an object perhaps only recoverable through another mythic construction. And such a construct is found within the interstices of the quotation, made significantly more compelling by coming from an ‘‘immigrant’’ perspective. It again accentuates the difference between the idealistic (and successful) Asian-American and the cynical, destructive black or Latino, who denies the ‘‘America’’ envisioned by the other. Nevertheless, despite this seeming ‘‘racial saturation,’’ what this photograph actually performs is an evasion of racial terms, rather than their instantiation and confirmation. And as such, this photo/caption serves as an exemplary text of pacification: ‘‘Certainly situations which are normally traumatic can be seized in a process of photographic signification but then they are indicated via a rhetorical code which distances, sublimates and pacifies them’’ (Barthes 1977: 30). Having set up this problematic of the pacification of photographic ‘‘trauma’’ via the specifics of text/image rhetoric, I can begin to unpack more precisely the narrative that informs the composition of both the inset photo/text and its frame. I return to the photograph within the Newsweek photo, the photograph of Malcolm X reproduced on the T-shirt, which was originally published in Ebony magazine. Peter Goldman asserts that this photograph was part of a series of staged photographs that Malcolm X set up to deter assaults by both white racists and his black enemies.22 Malcolm X’s best-known pronouncement on blacks arming themselves regards such acts as necessary for self-defense against racist attacks in an era when the police refuse to grant blacks equal protection: I must say this concerning the great controversy over rifles and shotguns. The only thing I’ve ever said is that in areas where the government has proven itself either unwilling or unable to defend the lives and the property of Negroes, it’s time for Negroes to defend themselves. Article number two of the constitutional amendments provides you and me the right to own a rifle or a shotgun . . . If the white man doesn’t want the black man buying rifles and shotguns, then let the government do its job. It is constitutionally legal to own a shotgun or a rifle (Malcolm X 1964).

Now the context for Malcolm X’s endorsement of arms does not completely coincide with the caption chosen for the T-shirt, which uses his general statement regarding the liberation of blacks to endorse specifically violent means. Goldman recounts a conversation between Malcolm X and a black reporter that provides a specific context for that enunciation: ‘‘I’m for the freedom of the 22 million Afro-Americans by any means necessary. By any means necessary. I’m 327

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for a society in which our people are recognized and respected as human beings, and I believe that we have the right to resort to any means necessary to bring that about.’’ (Goldman 1973: 222) The marketing production of the T-shirt (and I suspect this must be a poster as well) uses the vagueness of the original quotation and the unmarked context of the photograph to create a highly provocative endorsement of armed selfdefense. (This T-shirt, incidentally, predates the riots by several years.) Ironically, set in the context of Newsweek’s photo, Malcolm X’s comments on why and when blacks should arm themselves now legitimize Korean-Americans arming themselves against blacks: the police were drawn back from Koreatown by Daryl Gates, leaving it to burn. Hence, Korean-Americans faced the necessity of protecting their property themselves ‘‘by any means necessary.’’ But however complex, fragmented, and twisted the crosscurrents of violence and oppression may be, staged in this photograph as involving the opposition black/Asian, the condensation of this ideology in this overdetermined representation neatly elides the key agent of this antagonism, and leaves it free both to stand apart as spectator, and to enjoy a vindication of its political economy. This distantiation and identification is reproduced in the formal structure of the photograph – there are no whites, there is one Asian, and an image of a black torn out of its historical context and appropriated to speak for another, who in turn serves the function of the absented dominant. We find an eerie convergence in the double captions – the decontextualized voice of Malcolm X meets the voice of the Korean-American ventriloquized through the Asian body in the photograph. But any investigation into the ‘‘origin’’ of this enunciation must take into account the apparatuses of production outlined by Barthes that, in this series of displacements, shift the trauma of racial violence onto Asian America.23 Now by saying this I am not suggesting that the ‘‘actual’’ protagonists in this siege were or are simply passive, manipulated subjects. Nor do I wish to suggest that this very real event was somehow only an illusionary construct. And, perhaps most important, I do not want to suggest that the ‘‘shift’’ of violence onto Asian-Americans is only symbolic – far from that. However, I do want to widen the scope of our inquiry to see how the narratives that are set into motion by these text/images implicate as well the mechanisms by which the dominant ideology comes to account for, pacify, and use to its own advantage a seemingly inexplicable event, while apparently standing outside and beyond violence. The photograph before us both solicits and constructs a narration of cause and effect, agency and rationale, that allows the political, economic, and ideological apparatuses that set the stage for the Los Angeles uprising of the spring of 1992 to obscure their own workings. In particular, what is at stake here is not only the recovery of the specific histories that are written out of the picture, but also the unmasking of the programmatic effects of such representations as this photograph, which draw upon and in turn solidify (in their powerful silences) structures of feeling around the issues of race, ethnicity, class, capital, and human justice. 328

Perverse Ventriloquisms Notes 1 Barthes (1977: 31). 2 I want to underscore that I will be discussing the image of Korean-Americans. As Elaine Kim notes, Koreans were essentially not heard from within the mass media’s coverage of the rebellion, except for highly selective and fragmented representations. I want to make clear that I am arguing for a particular understanding of their functionality, and not assuming that Koreans themselves endorse any specific representation or are complicit with that functionality. Kim conducted a number of interviews with Korean-Americans shortly after the rebellion, and incorporated these interviews into her film, ‘‘Sa-I-Gu.’’ See her essay, ‘‘Home is Where the Han Is: A Korean-American Perspective on the Los Angeles Upheavals,’’ in GoodingWilliams (1993). Another useful article is Sumi Cho’s contribution to the same volume, ‘‘Korean Americans vs. African Americans: Conflict and Construction.’’ 3 The police officers, the actual perpetrators of the beating, I would argue, were curiously disembodied – their status as ‘‘human’’ obviated by the constant reiteration, by both their attorneys and by sympathetic media, of their mental disorientation at the ‘‘scene,’’ their fear for their lives. They were, for all intents and purposes, transformed into phantasmal forces, (merely) reacting to a situation, ‘‘incited’’ by King, who, we were told, was ‘‘controlling the action.’’ 4 Barthes points out that the press photograph ‘‘benefits from the prestige of denotation: the photograph allows the photographer to conceal elusively the preparation to which he subjects the scene to be recorded’’ (Barthes 1977: 21). 5 This double-semiotic of ‘‘representing’’ is of course the formulation of Gayatri Spivak in Spivak (1988: 271–313). 6 The caption as commentary thus functions both as an objectivized mentality within the frame and a subjective response to the larger context – both ostensibly representative of ‘‘the’’ Korean-American perspective when in fact both are subsumed beneath the editorial coupage of photo and essay editors ‘‘representing’’ that ‘‘community.’’ 7 The minimal attention awarded to the predominance of Latino ‘‘involvement’’ in the rebellion, and, more important, to the essential part the Latino community plays in race relations in the United States, particularly in Southern California, is noteworthy. I would argue that just as the representation of Asian-Americans in this event served as a ‘‘positive’’ surrogate for dominant white ideology, so did the media’s representation of Latinos serve to underwrite the basic premises of dominant ideologies – the presence of Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) agents engaged in sweeps of Latino neighborhoods after the rebellion rivaled the presence of the Los Angeles Police Department. without comment from the mainstream news media. The INS used the riots as a pretext to round up any ‘‘suspicious’’ Latinos and detain them without warrant or charge. Thus, we have the Asian-American as white surrogate in the battle of capitalism against chaos, and Latinos as deportable surrogates for a black population that cannot be ‘‘legally’’ disenfranchised because of their birthright. This essay is a preliminary attempt to account for the various symbolic displacements of racial ‘‘functions’’ distributed among different groups. 8 Here I am referring to the killing of 15-year-old Latasha Harlins, who was accused of stealing a bottle of orange juice by a Korean-American grocer. Upon being accused, Harlins shouted back at the grocer, who then tried to detain her. Harlins broke free and struck the woman. When she turned to leave the store, the grocer reached under the counter, pulled out a handgun, and shot Harlins. The entire event was caught on the videotape of the store’s security camera. 9 The other side to this image – a rising number of ‘‘gang-related crimes.’’ as well as the not-soappreciative response to Asian success: Asian-bashing – is left out of the picture. Interestingly,

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10

11

12 13 14

15 16

17 18

19 20

the recent hysteria over ‘‘illegal Chinese immigrants’’ has forced a radical reassessment and repoliticalization of the representation of the ‘‘Asian immigrant.’’ Some argue this hysteria foretells a return of anti-Asian sentiment in a time of economic crisis. This issue promises to intensify the tension between the bourgeoisified, ‘‘assimilated’’ class of Asian-Americans and the more recent immigrants, and to demand a rethinking of the ethos of the model minority. Asians as the model minority now come into contradiction with Asians who, within the context of a post-Fordist late capitalism, have helped place the ‘‘native’’ US economy in crisis either by economic ‘‘aggression’’ (i.e., Japan), or illegal infiltration (thereby glutting the labor pool and draining the welfare state). For a critique of this thesis, see Chan (1991: 167–83). See also Suzuki (1977: 23–51), and Osajima (1988: 165–74). Colleen Lye also has spoken of the liminal status of Asian-Americans within the hegemonic ideology in her talk, ‘‘What is an Asian American Minority Discourse?’’ presented at the convention of the Modern Languages Association, December 1991. For a comparable case in Britain, see Lawrence (1982: 95–142). This element is transposed to other minority groups as well, as was clearly seen in the confirmation hearings of Clarence Thomas, and the tremendous success of Shelby Steele’s and Steven Carter’s books. The caption read: ‘‘While mourning their dead, Koreans were living proof that the old vocabulary of race no longer applies.’’ See Kim, in Gooding-Williams (1993). Her Newsweek piece appears in the 17 May 1992 issue. In my essay on ‘‘Closure as Capitulation’’ (included in Abdul JanMohamed’s forthcoming anthology on minority discourse and ideological containment) I again treat the doubleness of defamiliar/familiar found in the interpolation of Asian-America into the US imaginary. The image of the ‘‘cowboy,’’ and particularly, the lone cowboy, as depicted in this photograph, of course resonates with the imaginary of Reagan/Bush (television and film cowboy Texas urban cowboy). Newsweek 11 May 1992, p. 38. Here and throughout the essay, I want to admit the generalization ‘‘white,’’ but retain it provisionally to denote the dominant’s constitution of a majority consensus which, as is clear from this essay, can be bought into by any number of individuals of varying racial and ethnic identities. It was standard journalistic practice to couple the body count of the riots with statistics regarding the damage to property in millions of dollars. Patricia Williams points out the economic basis for our notions of private and public: ‘‘I have been thinking about the unowning of blacks and their consignment to some collective public state of mind, known alternately as ‘menace’ or ‘burden’ – about the degree to which it might be that public and private are economic notions, i.e., that the right to privacy might be a function of wealth’’ (Williams 1991: 21–2). Films such as Sam Peckinpah’s Straw Dogs (1971) play out this notion of the American male’s impotence and reluctance to engage in violence until his ‘‘property’’ is threatened. Barthes (1977: 15–31). Barthes attempts to account for the semiotic structure of press photographs: The press photograph is a message. Considered overall, this message is formed by a source of emission, a channel of transmission, and a point of reception. The source of emission is the staff of the newspaper, the group of technicians certain of whom take the photo, some of whom choose, compose, and treat it, while others, finally, give it a title, a caption, and a commentary. The point of reception is the public which reads the paper. As for the channel of transmission, this is the newspaper itself, or, more precisely, a complex of concurrent messages with the photograph as center and surrounds constituted by the text, the title, the caption, the lay-out and, in a more abstract but no less ‘‘informative’’ way, by the very name of the paper.

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Perverse Ventriloquisms 21 This notion of the ‘‘naturalization of the cultural’’ is of course developed more fully in Barthes 1972. 22 Goldman (1973: 155–6). This text reproduces the photo (insert following page 170). Clayborne Carson documents the numerous threats to his life Malcolm X reported to the police, and their response. See Carson (1991). 23 There is something here that reminds one of Foucault’s famous analysis of Velasquez’ Las Meninas, in which he notes how the orienting point of view, the ‘‘human subject,’’ is everywhere implicated but radically absented from the painting (Foucault 1973). I would argue that here we have an allegory of the way that dominant ideology is inscribed everywhere in this photograph, but made invisible by the way Asian America has been used as its stand-in.

References Barthes, Roland ‘‘The Photographic Message.’’ In Image, Music, Text, trans. Stephen Heath (New York: Hill and Wang, 1977), 15–31. Barthes, Roland Mythologies, trans. Annette Laver (New York: Hill and Wang, 1972). Carson, Clayborne Malcolm X: The FBI File (New York: Carroll and Graf, 1991). Chan, Sucheng Asian Americans: An Interpretive History (Boston: Twayne, 1991). Foucault, Michel The Order of Things (New York: Random House, 1973). Original Les mots et les choses (Paris: Gallimard, 1966). Goldman, Peter The Death and Life of Malcolm X (New York: Harper and Row, 1973). Gooding-Williams, Robert, ed., Reading Rodney King, Reading Urban Uprising (New York and London: Routledge, 1993). Lawrence, Errol ‘‘In the Abundance of Water the Fool is Thirsty: Sociology and Black ‘Pathology’.’’ In Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, The Empire Strikes Back: Race and Racism in 70s Britain (London: Hutchinson in association with the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, University of Birmingham, 1982). Osajima, Keith ‘‘Asian Americans as the Model Minority: An Analysis of the Popular Press Image in the 1960s and 1980s.’’ In Gary Okihiro et al., eds, Reflections on Shattered Windows: Promises and Prospects for Asian American Studies (Pullman, WA: Washington State University Press, 1988), 165–74. Spivak, Gayatri ‘‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’’ In Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg, eds, Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988), 271–313. Suzuki, Bob H. ‘‘Education and the Socialisation of Asian Americans: A Revisionist Analysis of the ‘Model Minority’ Thesis,’’ Amerasia Journal 4(2) (1977): 23–51. Williams, Patricia The Alchemy of Race and Rights (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991). X, Malcolm ‘‘The Ballot or the Bullet.’’ Speech made in 1964. In George Breitman, ed., Malcolm X Speaks: Selected Speeches and Statements (New York: Merit Publishers, 1965).

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CHAPTER

NINETEEN

Colonial Oppression, Labour Importation, and Group Formation: Filipinos in the United States* Yen Le Espiritu

This article examines the changing scope of identities of Filipino immigrants in the United States – from smaller, localistic identifications to a larger nationalistic one. Although not well-studied, internal ethnicity – ethnic diversity within a national origin group – is not a new phenomenon nor is it unique to Filipinos (Bozorgmehr 1992). The literature on ethnicity indicates that immigrants often arrive fragmented, evolving into ethnic groups in response to the challenge of the host society (Yancey, Erickson, and Juliani 1976). For example, upon arrival in the United States, Chinese immigrants organized by surname, place of origin and dialect (Lyman 1986). Similarly, Italians clustered around immigrants from their hometowns and provinces (Vecoli 1983). Their sense of nationality – of being Chinese and being Italians – grew only in the adoptive country. In explaining ethnicization – the process whereby ethnic groups come into being in the first place – scholars have focused primarily on two factors: categorization and external threats (Horowitz 1975; Sarna 1978; Portes 1984). Categorization refers to situations in which a more powerful group ascriptively classifies another; and external threats can be defined broadly as ‘outside pressure – social, political, or economic – exerted against a group because of its ethnicity’ (Espiritu 1989: 52–3). Though important, this approach fails to recognize that the identities of immigrants (particularly of immigrants of colour) have been shaped not only by the social location of their group within *Yen Le Espiritu ‘Colonial Oppression, Labour Importation, and Group Formation: Filipinos in the United States’. Ethnic and Racial Studies 19 (1) ( January 1996): 29–48. Reprinted by permission of Taylor & Francis Ltd http://tandf.co.uk./journals

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the host country but also by the position of their country within the global racial order. The history of US colonialism in the Philippines raises new conceptual issues about how the worldwide context of differential power and inequality shape migrant identities. Couching the study of Filipino American ethnicity within the wider context of US–Philippine relations, this article argues that US colonial rule, recruitment practices and labour conditions have shaped the regional and socioeconomic composition of Filipino immigrants and thus have profoundly affected their process of group formation and differentiation in the United States. I do not suggest that this is a complete explanation. My intention is to position Filipino American ‘ethnic reorganization’ (Nagel and Snipp 1993) within the context of international political economy; and in so doing, to advocate for the study of ethnicity from an international perspective. This is not a study of the origins of regionalism in the Philippines nor is it an analysis of the cultural process involving the synthesis of Filipinos from different ethnoregional backgrounds. Though important, both questions are beyond the scope of this article. Rather, the intent of this article is to analyse the influences of demography, or compositional effects, on ethnicity. Following Lieberson and Waters (1988) and Alba (1990), I argue that the demographic composition, in this case the regional and socioeconomic composition, of a given immigrant cohort modifies and affects that group’s process of community formation. Even though Filipino migrants are present in 117 countries (International Labour Organization 1988: 1), the vast majority of the permanent emigrants have come to the United States. The others, estimated to be around one million, are scattered around the world, earning a living primarily as short-term contract workers (Chan 1991: 149–50). Given the temporary nature of Filipino communities in most other countries, this article focuses on Filipinos in the United States. Specifically, I compare the ethnic organization and reorganization of three different cohorts of Filipino immigrants: the pre-World War II agricultural labourers to Hawaii; the pre-1970 Filipino sailors in the US Navy; and the post-1965 family reunification and occupational immigrants. I argue that in the first two cohorts, the regional divisions among Filipinos were largely minimized by their similar class position. In contrast, in the post-1965 period, regional divisions are often compounded by class divisions, making it more difficult for the Filipino immigrant population to build a comprehensive group consciousness.1

Regionalism in the Philippines In the Philippines, family, district and region are the most important demarcations (Anderson 1984: 105). According to Filipino historians Agoncillo and Guerrero (1970: 12–13), the Filipino ‘does not think in terms of national 333

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boundaries but in regional oneness. . . . So strong is this regionalistic feeling that the Filipino of one region looks down upon his countrymen of another region’. In urban centres and on college campuses in the Philippines, Filipinos often segregate themselves by language group or regional origins (Agoncillo and Guerrero 1970: 12; Pido 1986: 17). In part, the physical composition of the Philippines, with its 7,000 islands and islets, its riparian geography, and its mountain barriers, fosters regional consciousness and sustains linguistic differences among its people (Phelan 1959: 17–18). Although all the Philippine tongues go back to a common Malayo-Polynesian root form, the present Filipinos belong to eight major ethnolinguistic groups, comprising approximately 200 dialects (Pido 1986: 17).2 Since the 1930s, English-language advocates and non-Tagalog-speaking communities have consistently opposed governmental efforts to adopt Pilipino (a Tagalog-based language) as the national language (Sibayan 1991). Regionalism in the Philippines also needs to be traced to Spanish and US colonialism. Throughout three centuries of their colonial rule (from 1565 to 1898), the Spaniards routinely mobilized the manpower from one region of the country to crush the revolts and uprisings in another. This ‘divide and conquer’ policy separated the Filipinos ‘by appealing to their regionalistic pride and prejudice’ (Agoncillo and Guerrero 1970: p. 13). It was only during their struggle for independence from Spain and their resistance to US occupation (from 1896 to 1901) that Filipinos first forged a common national identity (Steinberg 1990: 36). However, subsequent US rule stifled this emerging national consciousness. Under a policy of ‘benevolent assimilation’ and political tutelage, US colonialists transformed the Philippines into a quasi-American society – one which bore the imprint of US values, institutions and outlook (Constantino 1975: 308). As Americanization penetrated the Filipino consciousness, the nascent Filipino national identity ‘receded as a result of the virus of subservience and dependence which was inculcated in the people’s minds’ (Constantino 1974: 52). Overseas, regional loyalties and provincial ties influence the immigrants’ choice of residence, their network of friends, and their patterns of organization. The apparent ‘disunity’ among Filipinos in the United States – reflected in the multitude of hometown and regional associations and the intra- and interorganizational conflicts over leadership, goals and activities – is widely reported not only by the Filipino American press but also by returning Filipinos and the Philippine press (Pido 1986: 106; Posadas and Guyotte 1990: 41–2).3 However, like other components of culture, the relative salience of regionalism varies with time and context. Since their arrival in the United States in the 1900s, regionalism among Filipinos has either been minimized or exacerbated by their class competition. Below, I compare the effect that regional and class composition have had on the process of group formation and differentiation among three major Filipino immigrant cohorts to the United States. Because very little sound research has been published about either the history or the contemporary life of Filipinos in the United States, this article is necessarily exploratory. 334

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Filipino Farm Labourers in Hawaii (1906–1946) Filipino migration to Hawaii was tied to the fortunes of the islands’ sugar companies. By the last decade of the nineteenth century, the sugar industry had become so massive that the prosperity of Hawaii depended largely upon its continued expansion and prosperity. Because sugar-cane cultivation is so labourintensive, plantation owners needed a constant flow of cheap and compliant labour to work their expanding properties (Takaki 1983). The last immigrant group to arrive to labour on Hawaii’s plantations, Filipino agricultural workers were vital to the continued existence of the sugar industry. Until the passage of the Tydings–McDuffie Act in 1934,4 Filipinos migrated freely to the United States and its territories, protected by the colonials’ legal status as US nationals. After US immigration laws had barred the entry of Chinese and Japanese labourers,5 Filipinos – because of their unusual legal status – became the favoured source of labour (Vallangca 1977). Through the aggressive and often deceptive recruiting efforts of the sugar industry, by 1946 over 125,000 Filipinos had sailed to Hawaii to labour on the sugar plantations (Sharma 1984a: 337).6 Given the paucity of materials regarding the social structure of Filipino immigrant communities on the mainland, this section reviews only the experiences of the Filipino communities in Hawaii. Moreover, unlike plantation workers in Hawaii who remained in one place and were thus more able to establish permanent communities, Filipinos on the mainland were a migratory labour force, following the harvests and the salmon fishing and canning seasons. Of the major waves of Filipino immigration to the United States, this cohort, the early farm labourers in Hawaii, comprised immigrants who were most similar along class and regional lines: the vast majority were lower socioeconomic individuals from the rural Ilocano region (Agbayani 1991: 78). This pattern was not accidental; rather, it reflected the deliberate recruitment practices of the Hawaiian sugar industry as well as the uneven economic development on a regional basis within the Philippines. Prior to 1915, attempts to recruit Filipinos were concentrated in the vicinity of Manila City in central Luzon and of Cebu City in central Visayas; accordingly, the Tagalogs and Visayans were among the earliest to emigrate. However, living in urban areas, these recruits frequently lacked agricultural experience; they also had more economic opportunities available to them than their counterparts in rural areas (Melendy 1977: 35; Anderson 1984: 3–4). Given the poor results, Hawaiian Sugar Planters’ Association (HSPA) agents shifted their recruiting efforts temporarily to the Visayan Islands and then to the Ilocano region in northwestern Luzon. Largely due to the HSPA’s intensive labour recruitment in the Ilocano provinces, this rural region became the main supplier of Filipino labour to Hawaii. As indicated in Table 19.1, from 1919 to 1928 two-thirds of the Filipino labourers migrating to Hawaii were from the Ilocano region.7 Visayans, primarily from the 335

Yen Le Espiritu Table 19.1 Number and proportions of Filipino labourers migrating to Hawaii from different regions, 1919–1928 Region Ilocos Abra Ilocos Norte Ilocos Sur La Union Pangasinan Total Visayas Bohol Cebu Leyte Oriental Negros Total Others Total

Number of emigrants

Percentage

1,476 21,400 11,307 3,031 6,296 43,510

2.22 32.21 17.02 4.56 9.48 65.49

4,592 9,121 1,317 2,769 17,799 5,127 66,436

6.91 13.73 1.98 4.17 26.79 7.72 100.00

Source: Lasker (1931: 167).

hard-pressed eastern Visayan provinces, comprised the second largest group.8 Today, Ilocanos comprise 70–90 per cent of the Filipino population in Hawaii (Agbayani 1991: 78). The recruiters’ shift to Ilocos Norte, Ilocos Sur and their adjoining provinces was not a random move. A rural people who toiled in the least developed region in the Philippines, the Ilocanos fitted the needs of the HSPA recruiters: they were impoverished and unskilled labourers ‘who wouldn’t be too unhappy to do manual work in the plantation, ten hours a day’ (Cordova 1983: 28).9 To understand the long history of outmigration from the Ilocano region, one also needs to examine the changes in the Philippine national economy instituted by the Spaniards and continued by the Americans. Foremost among these shifts was the turn to an agricultural export economy, with sugar in the lead, and the growing dependence upon imports for the basic necessities of rice and textiles (Legardo y Fernandez 1967: 1). The US-imposed export/import policy significantly dislocated the Philippine economy (Sharma 1984a: 349–53). Until the last decades of Spanish rule, the Ilocano region had been a thriving agricultural and textile-manufacturing area. The shift to an agricultural export trade destroyed the region’s important textile industry, thus retarding its economic development. Because there was no investment in other manufactured exports to take the place of textiles, ‘the main industry in the area then became the production, reproduction, and subsequent export of human resources’ (Sharma 1984a: 350). By 1910, when HSPA agents scouted the Philippines for labourers, the Ilocanos, having suffered severe economic displacements and dislocations, willingly emigrated (Melendy 336

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1977: 36). As San Juan (1991: 1) argues, it was US colonialism that inaugurated ‘this long weary, tortuous exodus from the periphery to the metropolis’. Largely of peasant origins from the rural countryside of the Ilocano and the Visayan regions, these immigrants were accustomed to relating mainly to their own extended families and their town mates, and not to the larger Filipino community (Alegado 1991: 33).10 Moreover, separated by linguistic and cultural differences, both Ilocanos and Visayans ‘talk as though they feel slightly superior to the other’ (Anderson 1984: 97).11 As a Filipino sociology professor who visited Hawaii in 1926 commented, ‘There is no union among [the Filipinos.] The Visayans would not support the Labour Commissioner because he is an Ilocano. On the plantations, the Ilocanos prefer to work with their own groups and the Visayans do the same’ (cited in Cariaga 1974: 86). Instead of developing community-wide organizations, each group initially formed its own social club, comprising those who originated from the same town, province or region and who spoke the same dialect (Lasker 1931: 122). These hometown and regional associations provided financial and social support to their members and contributed monetarily to their home communities in the Philippines (Okamura 1983: 344).12 Although regionalism initially divided the Ilocano and the Visayan immigrants, their similar class status – both in the Philippines and in the United States – minimized these divisions and led to eventual cooperation (Alegado 1991: 33). Because HSPA recruiters sought cheap and compliant labour, the vast majority of the 125,000 Filipinos who migrated to Hawaii were uneducated, landless tenants in their home provinces in the Philippines (Wallovitts 1966: 21). In Hawaii, they again shared a similar class position, that of an ‘agri-industrial proletariat’ (Sharma 1984b: 594). The sugar planters segregated the labour force along racial and ethnic lines with whites (or haoles) as the managers, Spanish and Portuguese as the lunas (foremen) and plantation overseers, Japanese as the skilled workers, and Filipinos as the unskilled labourers (Cordova 1983; Takaki 1983). This segregation system was so entrenched that throughout this forty-year period (from 1906 to 1946), the vast majority of Filipinos in Hawaii remained as unskilled workers, dependent upon the plantations. Their slow rates of urban migration and of upward mobility eventually levelled intergroup differences and quickened the formation of group solidarity (Sharma 1984b: 594). Other HSPA policies also contributed to the formation of a national consciousness among Filipinos in Hawaii. For example, to induce the ethnically diverse labour force to toil more willingly and productively, HSPA officials appealed to their nationalistic consciousness and ethnic pride. Thus, Filipino foremen were instructed to appeal to the Filipinos’ sense of nationalism, urging them to ‘do a good job and show the people of other nations what we can do. Let us not shame our skin’ (cited in Takaki 1983: 69). Segregated living arrangements, with separate camps for the ‘haoles,’ Spanish, Japanese, Koreans and Filipinos, further reinforced this sense of nationalism (Cordova 1983: 31). As 337

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late as 1932, the quarters allotted to Filipinos were still of poorer quality than those furnished to other plantation workers (Lawcock 1975: 230). The poor living and working conditions of Filipinos on Hawaiian plantations must be viewed within the context of US colonialism. As US nationals, Filipinos had no benefits of citizenship and thus had little protection from the exploits of the plantation managers. Whereas other nationalities theoretically could appeal to their government representatives for assistance, the Filipinos, as colonial subjects, had no representation either in the Philippines or in Hawaii (Sharma 1984b: 604–9). Residential segregation and occupational stratification based on national origin indicated to Filipinos that outsiders perceived and treated them as a single group. This realization united the immigrants around class issues, leading to the formation of all-Filipino unions and militant labour struggles (Takaki 1983). It also increased their sense of being Filipino, and not only Ilocano or Visayan. By the late 1940s, to provide a united front, Filipinos consolidated many of the smaller township or regional groups into plantation, island-wide, and even territorial or statewide organizations (Alegado 1991: 33). Visayans and Ilocanos also intermarried, producing Hawaiian-born Filipinos for whom ‘the distinction between Visayan and Ilocano . . . is almost of no importance’ (Anderson 1984: 98).

Filipinos in the US Navy (1920s–1970s)13 Filipino nationals are the only Asians who have served in the US Armed Forces in sizeable numbers without possessing US citizenship (Yu 1980: 80). This arrangement emerged out of the colonial process, specifically out of the extensive US military presence in the Philippines. It was during the Philippine– American war at the turn of the century that the United States established its first three military bases in the Philippines. Since then, the Philippines has housed, at times unwillingly, some of the United States’ largest overseas air force and naval bases. Formal independence in 1946 did not remove US military installations from the Philippines. Instead the following year, the two countries signed the Military Bases Agreement, allowing the United States to lease five major bases and at least twenty minor military installations for ninety-nine years at no cost (Berry Jr. 1989). Because its preliminary terms were sealed prior to World War II, the Military Bases Agreement was made between the United States and its colony – and not between two sovereign states (Simbulan 1989: 16). Despite the official pretext that the bases served the security interests of both the United States and the Philippines, they primarily protected US economic and political investments in the region (Simbulan 1989). In the era following World War II, these bases served as springboards as well as training and supply stations for US military interventions in China, Indonesia, Korea and Vietnam. 338

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With the ‘fall’ of China to Mao Zedong’s forces in 1949 and the outbreak of war in Korea in 1950, the bases in the Philippines became critical to the United States’ security in terms of ‘containing’ Communism. After the war in Vietnam, they symbolized US commitments to remain a power in the Asian-Pacific region (Berry Jr. 1989: x).14 Not only did the bases permit the United States to exert undue influence in the internal affairs of the Philippines, they also allowed the US Armed Forces, particularly the Navy, to benefit from Filipino labour. Soon after the United States acquired the Philippines from Spain in 1898, its Navy began actively to recruit Filipinos. From a total of nine persons in 1903, the number of Filipinos in the US Navy grew to 6,000 by World War I and hovered around 4,000 (or 5 per cent of the total naval manpower) during the 1920s and 1930s (Lasker 1931: 62; Yu 1980: 80). After the Philippines achieved full independence in 1946, the United States could no longer unilaterally authorize recruitment of Filipino nationals, since the latter had become citizens of their own country. To side-step this obstacle, US officials inserted a provision in the 1947 Military Bases Agreement (Article 27) granting its Navy the right to continue to recruit Filipino citizens (Quinsaat 1976: 96–7). With the onset of the Korean War in the early 1950s, the US Navy allowed for the enlistment of up to 2,000 Filipinos per calendar year for terms of four or six years (Special Study Subcommittee 1973). For many young Filipino men, a career in the US Navy has been a life-long dream. In some towns (and in many families), joining the US Navy had become a tradition. During the 1960s, some 100,000 Filipinos applied to the US Navy each year; but few new enlistees were admitted due to a high re-enlistment rate of 94–99 per cent among Filipinos (Special Study Subcommittee 1973: 3). By 1970, in large part due to the grave economic, political and social problems besetting the Philippines, there were more Filipinos in the US Navy (14,000) than in the entire Philippine Navy (Melendy 1977: 96). In 1973, when the US Navy reduced the number of Filipino recruits from 2,000 to 400 per year, approximately 200,000 applied for the few coveted slots. According to the US Navy Chief of Legislative Affairs, in the 1970s about 40,000 potential enlistees were available as volunteers at any given time (Special Study Subcommittee 1973: 15). The economic incentive to join the US Navy was high: the salary of a Filipino enlistee often placed him among the top quarter of his country’s wage earners. Filipino recruits also used their service in the Navy to gain US citizenship – the springboard to escape from poverty (Quinsaat 1976: 102).15 But the economic disparity between the United States and the Philippines did not, by itself, account for the presence of so many Filipinos in the US Navy. This push– pull explanation overlooks the ‘special relationship’ that existed between the United States and the Philippines, particularly the presence of US-controlled bases in the Philippines. Beside serving as recruiting stations, these bases – centres of wealth amidst local poverty – exposed the native populace to US 339

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money, culture and standards of living, generating a strong incentive for enlistment (Chan 1991: 149).16 Though Filipino enlistees in the US Navy hailed from all regions of the Philippines, most came from the Tagalog-speaking region. In San Diego, the home of the largest US naval base, the majority of Filipino navy men originated from Cavite and Zambales, two Tagalog provinces (Castillo-Tsuchida 1979: 97). This is because these two provinces housed two major US naval recruiting stations: Sangley Point Naval Base (Cavite) and Subic Bay Naval Station (Zambales). While Filipinos from any region could and did apply to the US Navy, the Tagalogs had a distinct advantage. Living near the recruiting stations, these Filipinos benefited from their first-hand contacts with US naval personnel as well as from ‘coachings’ by Filipinos already in the US Navy. In Cavite, for example, Filipino enlistees or retirees regularly conducted seminars on how to join the US Navy to paid audiences.17 Although more regionally diverse than the agricultural labourers, the Filipino sailors also shared a similar socioeconomic status, both in the Philippines and in the US Navy. United States naval regulations specified that eligible enlistees must be high-school graduates, fluent in English, and must have an IQ of at least 90. Individuals with technical training, such as engineering, were discouraged from enlisting (Duff and Ransom 1973: 203). These regulations meant that Filipino recruits shared a similar class and educational background. This class similarity was reinforced by their shared status in the US Navy – that of a ‘brown skinned servant force’ (Quinsaat 1976: 108). Prior to and during World War I, the US Navy allowed Filipino enlistees to serve in a range of occupational ratings. However, after the war, the naval authorities issued a new ruling restricting Filipinos, even those with a college education, to the ratings of officers’ stewards and mess attendants (Lawcock 1975: 473). Barred from admission to other ratings, Filipino enlistees performed the work of domestics, preparing and serving the officers’ meals, and caring for the officers’ galley, wardroom and living quarters. Ashore, their duties ranged from ordinary housework to food services at the US Naval Academy mess hall (Newsweek 1970; Melendy 1977: 96). Unofficially, Filipino stewards have also been ordered to perform menial chores such as walking officers’ dogs and acting as personal servants to officers’ wives (Quinsaat 1976: 101). Even when they passed the relevant qualifying examinations, few Filipinos were allowed to transfer to other ratings, unless they were the personal favourite of high-ranking officials who agreed to intervene on their behalf (Quinsaat 1976: 107). In 1970, of the 16,669 Filipinos in the US Navy, 80 per cent were in the steward rating (Ingram 1970). Their shared experiences in the US Navy – their training, their job duties, their living arrangements – bonded Filipinos from different ethnoregional backgrounds. As newcomers in a foreign country, Filipino enlistees sought out each other in recruit training centres and in stewards’ schools where they comprised the majority of the students (Duff and Ransom 1973). On graduating, they entered the fleet, often clustering in kitchen-help services. Because the 340

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stewards’ division lived and ate together and because there was usually little social mixing with their American shipmates, Filipinos in the US Navy developed a camaraderie which often transcended regional boundaries (Newsweek 1970; Duff and Ransom 1973: 203). In the early 1970s, responding to the demands of the Civil Rights Movement and to a senatorial investigation on the use of stewards in the military, the US Navy amended its policies to grant Filipino nationals the right to enter any occupational rating. In 1973, the first year of the new naval policy, Filipino nationals served in fifty-six of the eighty-seven ratings available for enlistees (Special Study Subcommittee 1973). However, they were not distributed evenly among these ratings. In 1973, according to naval statistics, a large proportion of Filipino men (over 40 per cent) remained in the steward rating. Of the balance, the majority congregated in the clerical ratings: personnel clerks, disbursing clerks, storekeepers, and commissarymen (Special Study Subcommittee 1973: 16). This rating concentration – the result of job availability and ethnic clustering – suggests that Filipinos in the US Navy continue to share common experiences. These navy-related immigrants form a distinct segment of the Filipino American community. Because of their shared experiences in the US Navy, these Filipino men and their families cultivate informal but lasting social networks among each other. In fact, many Filipino navy retirees prefer living near their ‘old Navy comrades with whom they spent a great deal of time while in the service’ (Quinsaat 1976: 101). Consequently, in US cities which have large naval facilities, one can find sizeable Filipino communities made up largely of Filipino navy families.18

Post-1965 Immigrants The 1965 Immigration and Naturalization Act, which abolished the nationalorigin quotas and permitted entry primarily on the basis of family reunification or occupational characteristics, dramatically increased the number of immigrants from Asia.19 In the twenty years following the passage of the 1965 Act, about 40 per cent of the legal immigration to the United States has come from Asia (Bouvier and Gardner 1986). The Philippines has been the largest source, with Filipinos comprising nearly one quarter of the total Asian immigration. In the 1961–65 period, fewer than 16,000 Filipinos immigrated to the United States; in the 1981–85 period, more than 221,000 did. Since 1979 more than 40,000 Filipino immigrants have been admitted annually, making the Philippines the second largest source of immigration to the United States after Mexico (Carino et al. 1990: 2). The 1965 Immigration Act alone does not explain why so many Filipinos have come to the United States in the last quarter century. The ties forged between the United States and the Philippines during ninety years and more of colonial 341

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and postcolonial rule have also contributed to this influx. Besides creating strong military and business connections between the two countries, this colonial heritage has produced a pervasive cultural Americanization of the population, exhorting Filipinos to regard the US culture, society, political system and way of life as superior to their own (Pomeroy 1974: 171). This ‘colonial mentality’ is one of the major catalysts behind the contemporary ‘brain drain’ of educated, trained Filipinos to the United States (Pomeroy 1974: 192). In addition, US-trained Filipinos mastered advanced skills which seldom matched the needs, demands or resources of the local Philippine populace (Glaser and Habers 1974). Frustrated by scarce or inappropriate employment opportunities (and also by overpopulation and deteriorating political conditions), and infected with images of US abundance peddled by the educational system, the media and relatives and friends already in the United States, many Filipino professionals seized the opportunity provided by the 1965 Act to emigrate. Since the 1960s the Philippines has sent the largest number of professional immigrants to the United States. Due to an existing shortage of medical personnel there, particularly in the inner cities and in rural areas, doctors, nurses, and other healthrelated practitioners are overrepresented among the post-1965 Filipino immigrants (Portes and Rumbaut 1990: 18). Not all contemporary immigrants from the Philippines are professionals, however. Instead, the dual goals of the 1965 Immigration Act – to facilitate family reunification and to admit workers needed by the US economy – have produced two distinct chains of emigration from the Philippines: one comprising the relatives of Filipinos who had immigrated to the United States prior to 1965; the other of highly trained immigrants who entered during the late 1960s and early 1970s (Liu, Ong and Rosenstein 1991). As indicated in Table 19.2, during the period 1966–75, about the same proportion of Filipino immigrants (subject to numerical limitation) came under the occupational preference categories as under the family preference categories. However, in the 1976–88 period, the proportion of occupational preference immigrants dropped to 19–20 per cent, while the proportion of family preference immigrants rose to about 80 per cent – the result of tightening entry requirements for professional immigrants in the mid-1970s and their subsequent reliance on family reunification categories to enter the United States (Carino et al. 1990: 11). Because of the dual goals of the 1965 Act, of the three major Filipino cohorts examined in this article, the post-1965 cohort comprises immigrants who are most diverse along regional and socioeconomic lines. A 1986 survey of US-bound Filipinos indicated that the majority (52 per cent) were from Metro Manila and its environs; 15 per cent from the provinces of Zambales and Pampanga; 14 per cent from the Ilocos region; and the rest (approximately 20 per cent) from virtually all regions of the country, but with a few concentrations in urban centres in southern Philippines, such as Cebu and Iloilo (Carino et al. 1990: 26). This regional spread reflects the history of Filipino immigration to the United States. Immigrating primarily through the family 342

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Table 19.2 Family preference and occupational preference immigrants from the Philippines, 1966–1988

1966–70 Total number Percentage 1971–75 Total number Percentage 1976–80 Total number Percentage 1981–85 Total number Percentage 1986–88 Total number Percentage

Occupational preference

Family preference

30,350 49.5

31,090 50.4

49,606 51.5

46,610 48.4

19,035 19.3

78,605 79.8

18,470 19.0

78,431 80.9

11,681 20.3

45,914 79.6

Source: Carino et al. 1990, Tables 4 and 5.

reunification provisions, Filipinos from the Ilocano region and from Zambales and Pampanga provinces continued the migration flow that began with the recruitment of Ilocano agricultural labourers and with the enlistment of Filipinos into the US Navy at Zambales and Pampanga (sites of the former US military bases). In contrast, the high proportion of immigrants coming from urban centres in the Philippines were primarily educated, professional immigrants who entered the United States through the occupational provisions (Carino et al. 1990: 26–7). Because new immigrants tend to be of similar socioeconomic backgrounds as their sponsors (MacDonald and MacDonald 1964), most family reunification immigrants who came prior to the mid-1970s represent a continuation of the unskilled and semi-skilled Filipino labour that had emigrated before 1965. In contrast, professional immigrants originate from the middle to upper social, economic and educational sectors of Philippine society; and they, in turn, sponsor relatives who possess the same background (Liu, Ong and Rosenstein 1991). As a result of these two distinct chains of emigration from the Philippines, the contemporary Filipino American community is more diverse than in the past along both regional and class lines. The 1965 law’s effect on Filipino American society has been mixed. On the one hand, by allowing the ‘old-timers’ to bring in their relatives, the family reunification provisions rejuvenated the old, established Filipino communities. This influx, in turn, has led to a proliferation of not only regional but also hometown and even barrio associations which can potentially divide the community (Okamura 1983: 341). Class differences have also affected community 343

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development, with many professional immigrants settling in urban neighbourhoods beyond the reach of their compatriots who lack comparable economic means (Portes and Rumbaut 1990: 20). Having minimal ties to the pre-1965 Filipinos, most post-1965 professional immigrants have joined voluntary associations which cater primarily to their particular class interests and needs (Liu, Ong and Rosenstein 1991: 501). Besides augmenting the established communities, the post-1965 immigrants have formed essentially new Filipino communities dominated by professionals. Because employer sponsorship, rather than family sponsorship, influences the destination of occupational immigrants, large numbers of post-1965 immigrants have bypassed the Pacific Coast and settled in the northeastern and midwestern regions of the United States. This is particularly true for health care workers who have been recruited to fill the shortage of medical personnel in older metropolitan areas in the northeastern region (Carlson 1983). For example, in 1984 nearly half (46 per cent) of the Filipino nurses who had received their licences within the preceding four years resided in the New York-New Jersey regions (Liu, Ong and Rosenstein 1991). Dominated by professionals who have minimal physical and social ties with the pre-1965 population, these new communities add to the complex nature of contemporary Filipino communities. In Hawaii, the post-1965 immigration has increased both the regional and class diversity of the state’s Filipino population. As discussed earlier, prior to the 1960s the vast majority of Filipinos in the state were peasants from the Ilocano and Visayan regions. Today, the community includes urban, middle-class Filipinos from Metro Manila and its environs who have been arriving in increasing numbers since 1965. Because the class and regional origins of Filipinos in Hawaii tend to overlap (with most working-class Filipinos originating from the Ilocano region and most middle-class Filipinos from the Metro Manila area), class division has become regional division. This class distinction is reflected in the stereotypes each group has of the other. To local Filipinos, the post-1965 Filipinos are ‘uppity’, ‘pushy’, ‘know-it-all’, ‘materialistic’, and ‘clothes conscious’. To the new immigrants, the local Filipinos are ‘passive’, ‘lacking in class’, ‘sloppy dressers’, ‘uncultured’ and ‘lacking in depth’. In fact, the newcomers often use bakya – a Tagalog term meaning country bumpkin, crude, low class – to describe local Filipinos. Although in the Philippines bakya is used to describe anyone who fits the term’s description, in Hawaii the word has become synonymous with ‘Ilocano’, since the vast majority of the local Filipinos are Ilocanos (Teodoro 1981; Awanohara 1991).

Conclusion Unlike European or other Asian immigrants, Filipinos come from a homeland that was once a US colony. The cultural, economic and political relationships between the Philippines and the United States, imposed and maintained for 344

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more than ninety years of colonial and postcolonial rule, have provided and continue to provide the context within which Filipino immigrants construct their identities. In this article I have argued that US colonial policies, recruitment practices and labour conditions have preselected the regional and class composition of Filipino immigrants and have thus indirectly affected their process of group formation and differentiation in the United States. Because of the position of the Philippines within the global racial order and the social location of Filipinos in the United States, Filipino immigrants, regardless of their class status and familiarity with US culture, will continue to be defined as ‘non-white’ and face the attendant consequences of being so labelled. While class and regional differences divide Filipinos in the United States, it is possible that the confrontation with US racism – one that lumps all Filipinos together – will eventually lead to community unity, at least for political purposes. Moreover, instead of being a detriment, the proliferation of organizations may provide the strongest social and political support for Filipino Americans, linking them simultaneously to multiple levels of solidarity. By exploring the effects that US colonial policy, labour recruitment practices and labour conditions have had on Filipino self-concepts and organizational patterns, this article underscores the need to approach the study of ethnic organization and reorganization from an international and historical perspective. By examining the regional and class differentiation among Filipinos in the United States, this article also challenges the homogeneous descriptions of communities of colour and moves the field of race relations away from a black–white emphasis to one that explores relations within racially-defined groups. Notes 1 Of course, these three cohorts do not exhaust the spectrum of Filipino immigration to the United States. Nevertheless, they constitute three major cohorts (in terms of numbers) in Filipino American immigration history and thus offer an informative, albeit incomplete, slice of their social reality. 2 Spanish writers were the first ones to classify and categorize Philippine natives into distinct ethnolinguistic groups (e.g., Tagalog, Ilocano, Visayan . . . ). Certainly, these groups existed before the Spaniards took note of them; yet our ability to speak of them as distinct groups ‘is directly dependent on their having been previously objectified . . . in Spanish accounts’ (Rafael 1988: 16). 3 Among themselves, Filipino Americans refer to this regionalism as ‘the Filipino disease’ (Aquino 1990). As one Filipino American opined in a community newspaper, ‘Over the years, I’ve learned that unity among the Filipinos is far-fetched. Most have come here not as Filipinos but as Ilocanos, Visayans, Tagalogs, etc.’ (Liporada 1990). Another contributor noted that ‘regionalism still dominates our social, political, and cultural life’ (Aranas 1990). 4 The Tydings–McDuffie Act spells out procedure for eventual Philippine independence and reduces Filippino immigration to fifty persons a year. 5 The Chinese Exclusion Law of 1882 suspended immigration of Chinese labourers for ten years. Chinese exclusion was extended for another ten years in 1892 and 1902 and was made

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6 7 8 9

10 11 12

13 14

15

16 17 18

19

indefinite in 1904. In 1907 Japan and the United States reached a ‘Gentlemen’s Agreement’ whereby Japan stopped issuing passports to labourers desiring to immigrate to the United States. Not all the immigrants stayed. By 1935 over 58,000 workers had returned home, while close to 19,000 moved on to the US mainland (Sharma 1984b: 385–6). In December 1906, the first group of Filipino labourers sailed to Hawaii. Although they were recruited in Manila, these fifteen Filipinos came from Ilocos Sur (Cordova 1983: 26). The Visayans mostly came to Hawaii in the first wave of immigration; few arrived after the mid-1920s (Anderson 1984: 97). Due to economic hardships, population density and scarcity of arable land, Ilocanos had had a long history of outmigration, not only to the agricultural frontiers in the Central Plains and to the cities in the Philippines but also to the cane fields of Hawaii (Melendy 1977: 36; Doeppers 1984: 83). They were also the cheapest labourers available in the Philippines, consistently receiving lower wages than workers in any other area (Sharma 1984a: 352). The people of Cebu, Panay, and Rambolin who came to Hawaii became closely integrated as Visayans, regardless of their home provinces (Melendy 1977: 5). Historically, the Spanish-Catholic influence has been stronger in the Cebu area of the Visayan Islands than in the Ilocos area (Anderson 1984: 98). Disputes over leadership and lack of cohesion, both within and between associations, marred the effectiveness of these social clubs. In the 1930s it was often said that ‘one of the unfortunate features of life among Hawaiian Filipinos is their lack of leadership and of unity’ (Cariaga 1974). In fact, Lasker (1931: 124) reported that ‘outsiders point[ed] to the frequent quarrels between Filipino organizations and leaders as evidences of an inherent fault of race character’. This section focuses on the 1920–1970 period because it was during this time that the US Navy restricted Filipino enlistees to the ratings of stewards and mess attendants. In 1992, some ninety-four years after the first US troops landed in the Philippines, the last US-controlled base (Subic Bay Naval Station) was turned over to the Philippine government – the result of a 1991 vote for national sovereignty by the Philippine Senate (Drogin 1992). The Nationality Act of 1940 and its later amendments give aliens who have served three or more years in the US Armed Forces the opportunity to become US citizens without their having to meet normal requirements such as residence. In fact, the US government, via its military bases, is the second largest single employer in the Philippines after the Philippine government (Berry Jr, 1989: 296; Simbulan 1989: 48). Interviews with Leo Sicat, 10 August 1992; and Joe Nicolas, 9 August 1993, San Diego, California. The Filipino community in San Diego County provides such an example. During 1978– 1985, more than 51 per cent of the 12,500 Filipino babies born in the San Diego metropolitan area were delivered in the US Naval Hospital (Rumbaut 1991: 220). Seven of the nine classes in the 1965 Act used kinship to either a US citizen or a permanent resident as the basic qualification for obtaining a visa; the other two allowed for the immigration of professionals and other highly talented persons whose skills were scarce within the US labour market.

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Filipino American Structural Oppression Alba, Richard D. Ethnic Identity: The Transformation of White America (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 1990). Alegado, Dean T. ‘The Filipino community in Hawaii: development and change’, Social Process in Hawaii vol. 33 (1991): 12–38. Anderson, Robert N. Filipinos in Rural Hawaii (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1984). Aquino, Belinda ‘Filipinos in California’, Philippine American News, 1–15 September 1990, p. 4 et seq. Aranas, Agustin ‘Unity among Fil-Ams is possible’, Philippine American News, 1–5 December 1990, p. 13 et seq. Awanohara, Susumu ‘High growth, low profile’, Far Eastern Review, 151 (February, 1991): 39–40. Berry, William E., Jr., U.S. Bases in the Philippines: The Evolution of a Special Relationship (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1989). Bouvier, Leon and Gardner, Robert ‘Immigration to the US: the unfinished story’, Population Bulletin, 41 (1986): 1–50. Bozorgmehr, Mehdi ‘Internal ethnicity: Armenian Bahai, Jewish, and Muslim Iranians in Los Angeles’, PhD dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles, 1992. Cariaga, R.R. The Filipinos in Hawaii: A Survey of Their Economic and Social Conditions (San Francisco: R & E Research Associates, 1974). Carino, Benjamin et al. The New Filipino Immigrants to the United States: Increasing Diversity and Change (Honolulu: East–West Center, 1990). Carlson, Alvar W. ‘The settling of recent Filipino immigrants in midwestern metroplitan areas’, Crossroads 1(1) (1983): 13–19. Castillo-Tsuchida, Adelaida Filipino Migrants in San Diego: 1900–1946, (San Diego: San Diego Society – Title Insurance and Trust Collection, 1979). Chan, Sucheng Asian Americans: An Interpretive History (Boston, MA: Twayne Publishers, 1991). Constantino, Renato ‘Identity and consciousness: the Philippine experience’, paper presented in Symposium 3 of the VIII World Society Congress, Toronto, Canada, 1974. Constantino, Renato The Philippines: A Past Revisited (Quezon City: Tala Publishing Services, 1975). Cordova, Fred Filipinos: Forgotten Asian Americans (Dubuque, IA: Kendall/Hunt, 1983). Doeppers, Daniel F. Manila 1900–1941: Social Change in a Late Colonial Metropolis (New Haven, CT: Yale University, Southeast Asia Studies, 1984). Drogin, Bob ‘Hopeful Filipinos foresee a boom as U.S. exits Subic Bay’, Los Angeles Times, 18 August 1992. Duff, Donald and Arthur Ransom ‘Between two worlds: Filipinos in the U.S. Navy’, in Stanley Sue and Nathan Wagner (eds), Asian Americans (Palo Alto: Science and Behavior Books, 1973). Espiritu, Yen Le 1989 ‘Beyond the ‘‘Boat People’’: ethnicization of American life’, Amerasia Journal 15(2) (1989): 49–67. Glaser, William A. and Habers, Christopher ‘The migration and return of professionals’, International Migration Review 8 (1974): 227–44. Horowitz, Donald L. ‘Ethnic self-identity’, in Nathan Glazer and Daniel Moynihan (eds), Ethnicity: Theory and Experience (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1975). Ingram, Timothy ‘The floating plantation’, Washington Monthly, October 1970, 17–20. International Labour Organization Manual of Migration Statistics: Philippines (New Delhi: United Nations Development Programme, ILO/ARTEP, RAS/85/009, 1988). Lasker, Bruno Filipino Immigration to Continental United States and to Hawaii (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1931). Lawcock, Larry Arden ‘Filipino Students in the United States and the Philippine Independence Movement: 1900–1935’, PhD dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 1975. Legardo y Fernandez, Benito ‘The Philippine economy under Spanish rule’, Solidarity 2 (1967): 1–21.

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Yen Le Espiritu Lieberson, Stanley and Waters, Mary C. From Many Strands: Ethnic and Racial Groups in Contemporary America (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1988). Liporada, Rodolfo D. ‘Filipinization of Americanized Filipinos’, Philippine American News, 1–15 February 1990, p. 21 et seq. Liu, John, Ong, Paul and Rosenstein, Carolyn ‘Dual chain migration: post-1965 Filipino immigration to the United States’, International Migration Review, 25(3) (1991): 487–513. Lyman, Stanford Morris Chinatown and Little Tokyo: Power, Conflict and Community among Chinese and Japanese Immigrants in America (New York: Associated Faculty Press, 1986). Macdonald, John S. and Macdonald, Leatrice D. ‘Chain migration, ethnic neighborhood formation, and social networks’, Milbank Memorial Fund Quarterly, 42(1) (1964): pp. 82–97. Melendy, Brett H. 1977 Asians in America: Filipinos, Koreans, and East Indians (Boston, MA: Twayne Publishers, 1977). Nagel, Joane and Snip, Matthew. C. ‘American Indian social, economic, political and cultural strategies for survival’, Ethnic and Racial Studies 16(2) (1977): 203–35. Newsweek ‘They also serve’, 9 November 1970. Okamura, Jonathan Y. ‘Filipino Hometown Associations in Hawaii,’ Ethnology 22 (1983): 341–53. Phelan, John Leddy The Hispanization of the Philippines: Spanish Americans and Filipino Responses, 1565–1700 (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1959). Pido, Antonio J.A. The Pilipinos in America: Macro-Micro Dimensions of Immigration and Integration (New York: Center for Migration Studies, 1976). Pomeroy, William J. ‘The Philippines: a case history of neocolonialism’, in Mark Selden (ed.), Remaking Asia: Essays on the American Uses of Power (New York: Pantheon Books, 1974). Portes, Alejandro ‘The rise of ethnicity: determinants of ethnic perceptions among Cuban exiles in Miami’, American Sociological Review 49 (1984): 383–97. Portes, Alejandro and Rumbaut, Ruben G. Immigrant America: A Portrait (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1990). Posadas, Barbara M. and Guyotte, Roland L. ‘Unintentional immigrants: Chicago’s Filipino foreign students become settlers, 1900–1941’, Journal of American Ethnic History (Spring 1990): 26–48. Quinsaat, Jesse ‘An exercise on how to join the Navy and still not see the world’, in Jesse Quinsaat (ed.), Letters in Exile (Los Angeles: UCLA Asian American Studies Center, 1976). Rafael, Vicente Contracting Colonialism (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1988). Rumbaut, Ruben G. ‘Passages to America: perspectives on the new immigration’, in Alan Wolfe (ed.), America at Century’s End (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1991). San Juan, E., Jr., ‘Mapping the boundaries: the Filipino writer in the U.S.A.’, The Journal of Ethnic Studies 19(1) (1991): 117–31. Sarna, Jonathan D. ‘From immigrants to ethnics: toward a theory of ‘‘ethnicization’’ ’, Ethnicity 5 (1978): 370–8 Sharma, Miriam ‘The Philippines: a case of migration to Hawaii, 1906–1946’, in Lucie Cheng and Edna Bonacich (eds), Labor Immigration Under Capitalism (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1984a). Sharma, Miriam ‘Labor migration and class formation among the Filipinos in Hawaii, 1906–1946’, in Lucie Cheng and Edna Bonacich (eds), Labor Immigration Under Capitalism (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1984b). Sibayan, Bonifacio P. ‘The intellectualization of Filipino’, International Journal of Social Languages 88 (1991): 69–82. Simbulan, Roland G. A Guide to Nuclear Philippines (Philippine: IBON Data Bank, 1989). Special Study Committee of the Committee on the Judiciary to Review Certain Immigration, Refugee, and Nationality Problems ‘Report of Special Study Subcommittee of the Committee on the Judiciary to Review Immigration, Refugee, and Nationality Problems’, in U.S. House, Committee on the Judiciary House of Representatives, 93rd Congress, 1st session, December 1973.

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Filipino American Structural Oppression Steinberg, Davil Joel The Philippines: A Singular and a Plural Place (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1990). Takaki, Ronald Pau Hana: Plantation Life and Labor in Hawaii: 1835–1920, (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1983). Teodoro, Luis V. ‘Overcoming stereotypes: directions for change’, in Luis V Teodoro (ed.), Out of This Struggle: The Filipinos in Hawaii, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1981). Vallangca, Roberto V. Pinoy: The First Wave (San Francisco: Strawberry Press, 1977). Vecoli, Rudolph J. ‘The formation of Chicago’s ‘‘Little Italies’’ ’, Journal of American Ethnic History 2(2) (1983): 5–20. Wallovitts, Sonia Emily ‘The Filipinos in California’, Master’s thesis, University of Southern California, 1966. Yancey, William, Erickson, Eugene and Juliani, Richard ‘Emergent ethnicity: a review and reformulation’, American Sociological Review 41(3) (1976): 391–403. Yu, Elena S. H. ‘Filipino migration and community organizations in the United States’, California Sociologist 3(2) (1980): 76–102.

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Out Here and Over There: Queerness and Diaspora in Asian American Studies* David L. Eng

Impossible Arrivals For Asian Americans issues of ‘‘home’’ are particularly vexing. Historically configured as either unassimiable aliens or perversely assimilated and thus ‘‘whiter than white’’ (the sojourner thesis versus the ‘‘model-minority’’ myth), Asian Americans have at best a dubious claim to citizenship and place within the US nation-state.1 Sense of membership within the larger US national collective has traditionally followed the political, economic, and cultural incorporation of a Western European ethnic group under the banner of immigration and assimilation, and through the spatial metaphorics of the United States as a point of arrival and melting pot. However, recent debates in Asian American studies about diaspora – its focus on point of departure and on displacement from origin – insist that we (re)think the problematics of home in this field.2 Suspended between departure and arrival, Asian Americans remain permanently disenfranchised from home, relegated to a nostalgic sense of its loss or to an optative sense of its unattainability. Approaching this problem of home from a spatial angle, we might reasonably wonder: Where, after all, is Asian America? Can Asian America finally be located, designated, or pinned down? A quasi-geographical term that gained popularity in the 1970s, Asian America3 continues to be invoked with increasing frequency today. A siteless locale with no territorial sovereignty, the term Asian America underwrites, as Sau-ling C. Wong suggests, ‘‘a yearning for the kind of *David L. Eng ‘‘Out Here and Over There: Queerness and Diaspora in Asian American Studies.’’ Social Text 52/53 15(3 and 4) (Fall/Winter 1997): 31–52. ß by Duke University Press. All rights reserved. Used by permission only.

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containing boundaries and contained site enjoyed by the dominant society, a nation-state’’ – a home.4 To refigure, then, this particular spatial dynamic in relation to Oscar V. Campomanes’s suggestive claims about Filipino American literatures: Asian American identity might well be considered more in conjunction with a discourse of exile and emergence than with one of immigration and settlement.5 In this manner, considering diaspora in Asian American studies works to undermine and to dislodge any smooth alignment of home and nationstate. Moreover, the popular presumption in both Asian American and American studies that our intrinsic fields of inquiry are necessarily grounded in one location – limited to the domestic space of the United States – would merit reconsideration through the lens of a more spatially (that is, diasporically) encompassing theoretical framing. Thinking for a moment outside the traditional borders of Asian American studies, for those of us also invested in the field of queer studies, questions of home prove equally problematic. The often literal ejection of queers from their homes – coupled with their marginalization by pervasive structures of normative heterosexuality – attests to analogous dilemmas around this issue. Traumatic displacement from a lost heterosexual ‘‘origin,’’ questions of political membership, and the impossibilities of full social recognition dog the queer subject in a mainstream society impelled by the presumptions of compulsory heterosexuality. In this particular ordering of the social sphere, to ‘‘come out’’ is precisely and finally never to be ‘‘out’’ – a neverending process of constrained avowal, a perpetually deferred state of achievement, an uninhabitable domain. Suspended between an ‘‘in’’ and ‘‘out’’ of the closet – between origin and destination, and between private and public space – queer entitlements to home and a nationstate remain doubtful as well.6 How, then, might we think about queer notions of home in this particular context of impossible arrivals? To take one example, a film such as Jennie Livingston’s Paris is Burning, which obsessively rescripts house and home in its narrative and thematic content, suggests that anxieties about loss of home remain psychically central to queer cultural projects and social agendas.7 Moreover, the political moniker of activist groups such as Queer Nation, which tenaciously locates questions of membership within a larger national collectivity, proposes that home as a regulating principle might, on reflection, constitute one of queer activism’s organizing conditions of possibility. In its alignment with the nation-state, home becomes the site of validation – the privileged location for the benefits of citizenship. While Paris is Burning and Queer Nation might offer potential ways of disturbing traditional understandings of membership in the US nation-state, their multiple invocations of home nonetheless suggest that queers, like Asian Americans, harbor similar yearnings for the kind of contained boundaries enjoyed by mainstream society. Hence, despite frequent and trenchant queer dismissals of home and its discontents, it would be a mistake to underestimate enduring queer affiliations to this concept. 351

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Taken together, these numerous problems of home urge us to consider the intersection of queerness and diaspora – the implications of their various crossings – in Asian American studies. How might we theorize queerness and diaspora against a historical legacy that has unrelentingly configured Asian Americans as exterior or eccentric to the US nation-state? How might queerness and diaspora provide a critical methodology for a more adequate understanding of Asian American racial and sexual formation as shaped in the space between the domestic and the diasporic? What enduring roles do nations and nationalism play in the delineation of such critical projects? What new forms of community emerge through a diasporic and queer challenge to the linking of home and the nation-state? In approaching diaspora and queerness through this particular set of issues, I hope to create a productive dialogue between Asian American and queer studies, bringing together two disciplines that have remained traditionally unconnected. In considering the material and theoretical intersections of racial and sexual difference for Asian Americans, this essay also engages contemporary debates on the internationalizing of American studies. Investigating American studies in sites outside the immediate borders of the United States offers a new understanding for the current, hateful conservative backlash against people of color as well as queers. While it would be a mistake to align in too homologous a manner the political agendas and intellectual concerns of Asian American, American, queer, or diasporic studies, it does seem clear from the above discussion of home that we must undertake a serious examination of how social relations within our domestic borders inflect, and in turn are inflected by, the diasporic – by framings of transnational capital, immigration, and labor. I offer the following speculations on queerness and diaspora in Asian American studies with the hope of yielding some new methods of thinking about how this rapidly expanding field provides unexplored theoretical paradigms for a crucial evaluation of American identity, home, and nation-state in an age of globalized sexual and racial formation.

Heterosexuality and the Domestic In order to trace what I see as an increasingly important relationship between queerness and diaspora in Asian American studies in the late 1990s, it is first useful to consider a brief history of the Asian American studies movement as it originally formed around the domestic imperative of claiming the US nationstate.8 In the shadow of 1950s and 1960s civil rights struggles, the emerging Asian American studies movement focused much of its political energy and theoretical attention on domestic-based race relations within the geographical boundaries of the US nation-state. Modeled on the cultural nationalism of the Black Power movement, the field during this period largely endorsed a political platform of identity-based politics, racial separatism, and a Marxist-inspired 352

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class critique of American capitalism. The Asian American cultural nationalist project, perhaps best exemplified by Frank Chin’s Aiiieeeee! group, centered its attentions on local Asian American communities as sites of resistance for the mobilizing of political action, the building of alternative economic institutions, and the creation of oppositional nativist culture.9 In the 1975 prefatory manifesto to their now-classic collection of Asian American writings, Aiiieeeee! An Anthology of Asian-American Writers, the editors note that ‘‘legislative racism and euphemized racist love’’ have consigned Asian Americans to a state of ‘‘self-contempt, self-rejection, and disintegration.’’10 As a remedy, the Aiiieeeee! group calls for the assertion of an Asian American identity with its own unique and recognizable parameters. Rejecting the dominant ‘‘either/or’’ conception of Asian American identity as forever divided – split between the ‘‘Asian’’ and the ‘‘American,’’ and between ‘‘Asia’’ and ‘‘America’’ – the editors insist on claiming the domestic sphere as their own, linking entitlement to the (public) nation-state with the (private) prerogatives of home.11 Seizing upon their own self-definition of Asian American, they emphatically state that the myth of being either/or and the equally goofy concept of the dual personality haunted our lobes while our rejection by both Asia and white America proved we were neither one nor the other. Nor were we half and half or more one than the other. Neither Asian culture nor American culture was equipped to define us except in the most superficial terms. However, American culture, equipped to deny us the legitimacy of our uniqueness as American minorities, did so, and in the process contributed to the effect of stunting self-contempt on the development and expression of our sensibility that in turn has contributed to a mass rejection of Chinese and Japanese America by Chinese- and Japanese-Americans.12

In delineating an integrally ‘‘whole’’ Asian American subject against this model of either/or split subjectivity, cultural nationalism’s political project centered squarely on Asian American claims to the space of the US nation-state as enfranchised citizen-subjects. The Aiiieeeee! model worked to configure Asian Americans as a racialized minority group with its own inviolable political needs, economic concerns, and cultural contours.13 Rejecting the mainstream imaging of Asian Americans as anomalous ethnic novelties ill-fitted to the general landscape of the US nationstate, cultural nationalism’s energies focused on not merely defining but prescribing who a recognizable and recognizably legitimate Asian American racial subject should ideally be: male, heterosexual, working class, American born, and English speaking. Noting that it ‘‘is an article of white liberal American faith today that Chinese men, at their best, are effeminate closet queens like Charlie Chan and, at their worst, are homosexual menaces like Fu Manchu,’’14 the Aiiieeeee! group envisioned the prototypical Asian American male as a grassroots activist who would counter dominant mainstream stereotypes of the passive 353

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Asian American male sissy ‘‘devoid of manhood’’15 through his consciously oppositional voice, his militant attitude, and his resistance to bourgeois social convention. Past as well as present Asian American feminist and queer commentators have rightly noted the Aiiieeeee! group’s problematic assumptions in positing such a narrowly defined concept of Asian American identity.16 These critics observe that by staking their cultural nationalist project on such an inflexible notion of identity – on the recuperation of a strident Asian American masculinity and a ‘‘pure,’’ heroic Asian martial tradition – the Aiiieeeee! group reinscribes a dominant system of compulsory heterosexuality with all its attendant misogyny and homophobia. Paradoxically, then, cultural nationalist tenets mirrored back both mainstream heterosexist and racist structures by which stereotypical conceptions of Asian American men as ‘‘efficient housewives’’17 – as effeminate, illegitimate, and divided – were produced in the first instance. This critique of cultural nationalism is by now not only well known but well rehearsed. In criticizing the Aiiieeeee! group’s reliance on this narrow definition of Asian American identity, however, Asian American cultural commentators have failed to remark upon the specific connection between the Aiiieeeee! group’s focus on the domestic and their focus on the heterosexual – that is, their implicit linking of cultural nationalism’s claims on the domestic space of the nation-state as a naturalized function of compulsory heterosexuality. In this instance, the paradoxical double meaning of domestic as both the public space of the masculine (nation-state) and the private realm of the feminine (home) is brought into relief and contradiction, the forced reconciliation of their relationship being contingent on the strict repression and disciplining of the latter to the former. In other words, a public Asian American male identity is purchased through the emphatic possession of a popularly devalued private realm, constituted here as both the feminine and the homosexual. This coupling of the cultural nationalist project with the heterosexual is neither intrinsic nor determined.18 Thus, we must be careful not only to critique vigorously the patriarchal complicities of the Asian American cultural nationalist project, but also to consider how this disciplining of the domestic – the forced repression of feminine and homosexual to masculine, and of home to the nationstate – is a formation in need of queering. How does Asian American cultural nationalism’s claiming of the domestic through the heterosexual preempt a more comprehensive investigation of an Asian American identity and a political platform informed by queerness and diaspora? If the elevation of the domestic and the heterosexual in Asian American cultural nationalism has worked to disavow and to preclude a discussion of the diasporic and queer from the movement’s political and intellectual inception, how might we rethink the historical effects of the Asian American movement’s (heterosexual) desire for the domestic? How might we invoke a queer and diasporic assumption of the domestic to denaturalize any claims on the nation-state and home as inevitable functions of the heterosexual?19 354

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Return of the Repressed: Risking the Hyphen in Asian(-)American Studies The relative success of Asian American cultural nationalism’s (heterosexual) desire for the domestic might perhaps be best examined in light of the continuing debates on Asian American as a hyphenated identity: Asian American versus Asian-American. As I understand the argument, attempts to excise the hyphen from this term reflect on a grammatical level cultural nationalism’s desire to eschew the notion of a split subjectivity, while claiming the uniqueness of Asian American identity as ‘‘whole’’ and wholly viable within the space of the nationstate. Hence, the elimination of the hyphen from this term claims entitlement to Asian American membership within the larger US national collective. If diasporic tenets suggest a suspension between departure and arrival, origin and destination for the Asian American subject – the sustaining of a spatial hyphen – then cultural nationalism’s desire to claim the space of the domestic as our own relies upon the definitive excision of this marker. The hyphen debate remains interesting to me for several reasons. The frequency with which the repressed hyphen returns to mark the term Asian(-) American with utter randomness clearly suggests that Asian American claims to the domestic space of the nation-state as home and as citizen-subjects are far from resolved.20 The difficulty of banishing the hyphen from this term functions, then, as a grammatical symptom vitiating Asian American claims to membership in the US nation-state. Moreover, the slippage of ‘‘Asian’’ and ‘‘American’’ calls to our attention the tenuous coupling of the ‘‘nation’’ and ‘‘state’’ itself, whose own hyphenated stability is secured, among other ways, through the sustaining ambiguity of Asian(-)American as a hyphenated identity.21 The arbitrariness with which the hyphen continues to reappear thus underscores the conceptual and political limits of cultural nationalism’s (heterosexual) desire for the domestic – to challenge effectively enduring historical configurations of Asian Americans as ‘‘aliens,’’ exterior to the nation-state, divided between an ‘‘over here’’ and ‘‘over there.’’22 If the continual return of the repressed hyphen marks the impossibility of cultural nationalism’s naturalizing turn to the domestic and heterosexual – functioning as the enduring symptom of the vicissitudes of this turn – then might we begin to reevaluate the efficaciousness of cultural nationalism’s domestic and heterosexual project against alternative theoretical models and strategies? Can the hyphen in Asian(-)American only ever be a grammatical effect of mainstream prejudice and domination? Might we begin to reconsider the hyphen not just as a grammatical marker of Asian American disenfranchisement from the sphere of the domestic (in both its private and public manifestations), but as a necessary risk for a more sufficient analysis of old and new forms of Asian American racial and sexual formation? Might risking the hyphen yield a theoretical model beyond the domestic and the heterosexual as the presumptive 355

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limits of an efficacious Asian American political project? Are there historical reasons and current political uses that call for a hyperbolization, and not the removal, of the hyphen? It seems to me that one immediate effect of risking the hyphen would be to force Asian American studies beyond the borders of the domestic – to confront the status of Asian in the term Asian American.23 It would be wise to remember at this point that the very genesis of Asian American studies was, as Sucheta Mazumdar points out, international from its inception.24 In configuring a political platform around the domestic, Asian American cultural nationalism relied heavily on the political lessons of Vietnam war protests, Maoist movements in China, and other actions in the Third World. Wong notes that in the early days of the movement, ‘‘transnational concerns had a way of looping back to the domestic once political lessons had been extracted,’’ the linkage between the domestic and the international being ‘‘more in the nature of inspiration and analogy, with ‘foreign’ spheres of struggle lending strength and legitimacy to the American minority political enterprise.’’25 We need to be critical of the ways in which this looping back effaces a certain historical legacy of the international in the Asian American studies movement – a repression mimed by the desire to banish the hyphen in Asian(-)American. This banishing leads to an arrested notion of Asian American identity, while simultaneously closing off alternative possibilities for political resistance, coalition, and organization across multiple constituencies and locations. Asian American immigration and migration from Vietnam, South Korea, and the Philippines cannot be understood, for example, outside of US neoimperialism in these regions – the colonization, disciplining, and ordering of Asian American identities that begin ‘‘over there’’ rather than ‘‘over here’’ within the domestic borders of the United States.26 As such, any serious understanding of Asian American racial formation must be considered in relation to a model of subjection and subordination beyond the real or imaginary borders of the US nation-state. To risk the hyphen in this instance is to recognize the interpenetrations between the diasporic and the domestic in the historical genesis of Asian(-)American as a political identity and oppositional movement. In a contemporary context, the current demand for the use of the hyphen remains significant if we consider the political landscape of the 1990s as one increasingly influenced by the shifting transnational flows of global capital, immigration, and labor. For instance, as many Asian American scholars note, the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act transformed the demographic landscape of the US nation-state. In the thirty years since the bill’s passage, Asians, Central Americans, Mexicans, and Caribbeans have constituted 80 percent of all immigrants to the United States.27 Today, the resulting shift in Asian American identity from American-born to a predominantly foreign-born model calls attention to an emerging group of Asian Americans whose continued political, economic, and cultural ties to and dependency upon the Pacific Rim have produced unprecedented Asian American identities as well as familial 356

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and group configurations in multiple spaces: satellite people, parachute kids, reverse settlers, to name but a few.28 These contemporary phenomena underscore the diasporic within the domestic, calling attention to how global flows of capital not only give rise to new Asian American identities, but also reinforce, renew, and recreate the historical disenfranchising of Asian Americans from the US nation-state in ways we have yet to analyze.29 Taken together, these historical conditions and contemporary phenomena underwrite a reemergence of the hyphen in Asian(-)American through the (re)articulation of Asian American racial formation throughout various global sites and locales. In delineating a contemporary Asian(-)American political project around the hyphen and globalization, we need to remember that arguments characterizing the nation-state as losing significance in diasporic formations fail to recognize the absolute needs of global capital to exert its demands within the concrete, localized space of the nation-state. Global capital, Saskia Sassen reminds us, exerts its demands through effective claims on nation-states to guarantee its economic rights within both a global and a domestic context.30 As such, Sassen’s caveat urges us to think not only of US racisms as they travel through an international arena, but also of the global effects on racial formation as they manifest themselves within the local space of the United States.31 What are the possible new meanings of ‘‘race’’ as it crosses through various national borders and locales? In configuring my concerns in this way, I am not arguing for a diasporic viewpoint that subsumes the domestic. Rather, I am arguing both for a vigilant examination of the diasporic in contemporary considerations of Asian American racial formation and oppositional politics and for a recognition that the diasporic and the domestic were intertwined from the start. Given the historical internationalism of Asian American identities and Asian American studies, and given the contemporary flows of global capital, immigration, and labor, might we risk the hyphen in Asian(-)American to focus attention on the international as a strategy to help us claim membership in the nation? Might we (re)claim and not dismiss the hyphen for its political potentials and oppositional possibilities? Lisa Lowe reminds us in ‘‘Heterogeneity, Hybridity, Multiplicity: Marking Asian American Differences’’ that the 1990s mark a historical moment in the field of Asian American studies in which we can and need to reconsider notions of Asian American identity not only in terms of similarity and unity, but in relation to particularity and difference as the necessary basis for continual, renewed, and efficacious political action.32 Indeed, what might a hyperbolization of the hyphen offer in terms of calling attention to new political practices in various sites and locations and across various identities and sexualities claiming the label Asian(-)American? How might this hyperbolization of the hyphen in Asian(-)American supplement cultural nationalism’s political focus on the domestic and the heterosexual with an explicit consideration – a histrionics, even – of the diasporic and the queer? 357

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Queerness and Diaspora in Asian American Studies To consider the hyphen in Asian American studies requires the investigation of diaspora as a function of queerness – queerness not just in the narrow sense of sexual identity and sexual practices, but queerness as a critical methodology for evaluating Asian American racial formation across multiple axes of difference and in its numerous local and global manifestations. How does queerness as a critical methodology provide a theoretical vantage for thinking out past, present, and future Asian American political practices? I want to approach these questions by juxtaposing two articles from recent issues of Amerasia Journal.33 In the first volume, a special issue on lesbian, gay, and bisexual topics entitled ‘‘Dimensions of Desire: Other Asian and Pacific American Sexualities: Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Identities and Orientation,’’ Dana Y. Takagi notes in her lead article the potentials of gay and lesbian sexual identities to dislodge the ossified masculinist notions of cultural nationalism. She eloquently argues for the need to start recognizing different sexual identities also laying claim to the label Asian American. By doing so, Takagi insists, we can begin to rethink and to reevaluate ‘‘notions of identity that have been used, for the most part, unproblematically and uncritically in Asian American Studies’’ since its inception in the early 1970s around the tenets of cultural nationalism. She suggests that we ought to be talking seriously about the junctures of ‘‘gay and lesbian sexuality and Asian American Studies’’ because of the continued ‘‘theoretical trouble we encounter in our attempts to situate and think about sexual identity and racial identity’’ together.34 Takagi invokes gay and lesbian sexuality (she does not use the term queer35) in the sense of sexual identity and sexual practices. To the extent that Asian American cultural nationalism was dependent on an unexamined notion of the ‘‘ideal’’ subject as male and heterosexual, the introduction of gay and lesbian sexuality into Asian American studies challenges this outdated conception of the ‘‘proper’’ Asian American subject by reconsidering racial formation through the lens of sexual multiplicity. In gesturing, however, toward the possibility of a dynamic relationship between racial and sexual difference, Takagi’s essay also points us in the useful direction of thinking about a potential (albeit unrealized) political project of queerness in Asian American studies, neither restricted to nor exhausted by sexual identity and sexual practices. How might we consider queerness as a critical methodology intersecting Asian American identity formation across multiple axes of difference and in dynamic ways? Let me detour for a moment to Lowe’s recent Immigrant Acts: On Asian American Cultural Politics. Lowe discusses the ways in which nineteenth- and twentieth-century historical processes of immigration exclusion and legal definitions of citizenship link together to form racialized, gendered Asian American subjects before the law. 358

Queerness/Diaspora in Asian American Studies Racialization along the legal axis of definitions of citizenship has also ascribed ‘‘gender’’ to the Asian American subject. Up until 1870, American citizenship was granted exclusively to white male persons; in 1870, men of African descent could become naturalized, but the bar to citizenship remained for Asian men until the repeal acts of 1943–1952. Whereas the ‘‘masculinity’’ of the citizen was first inseparable from his ‘‘whiteness,’’ as the state extended citizenship to nonwhite male persons, it formally designated these subjects as ‘‘male,’’ as well.36

Lowe analyzes the juridical mechanisms by which Asian American immigrant laborers were at once barred not only from institutional and social definitions of ‘‘maleness,’’ but from normative conceptions of the masculinity legally defined as ‘‘white’’ (e.g., normative heterosexuality, nuclear family formations, entitlement to community). Her analysis provides a provocative model of thinking about Asian American sexual and racial formation not as separate processes of identity formation restricted in singular isolation, but as coming into existence only in and through a dialectical relationship to one another. Lowe’s model thus provides a theoretical grounding to focus our attentions on a dynamic relationship of sexuality and gender formations as they frame and are framed by Asian American racialization processes. As such, it provides a way for scholars in Asian American studies to consider queerness as a critical methodology based not on content but rather on form and style. Thinking about queerness in this way highlights the need for those of us in Asian American studies to understand that legal and cultural discourses on ‘‘deviant’’ sexuality affect not merely those contemporary Asian American subjects who readily selfidentify as gay or lesbian (a strict form of identity politics); rather, queerness comes to describe, affect, and encompass a much larger Asian American constituency – whatever their sexual identities or practices – whose historically disavowed status as US citizen-subjects under punitive immigration and exclusion laws renders them ‘‘queer’’ as such. I am sketching a conception of queerness in Asian American studies that far exceeds the limited notion of sexual identity; indeed, I am focusing on a politics of queerness that can function for Asian American studies as a method of wide critique, considering at once a nexus of social differences and concerns as they dynamically underpin the formation of Asian American subjectivities. Let me turn now to my second example from Amerasia Journal in order to consider how this expanded notion of queerness as a critical methodology for the examination of Asian American subject formation works in conjunction with diaspora – in multiple sites and locales. In a special issue on ‘‘Thinking Theory in Asian American Studies’’ on the discipline’s twenty-fifth anniversary in the academy, Takagi and Michael Omi (in their roles as guest coeditors) note in their introduction that the waning of radical political movements in the 1980s had attendant effects on theory and politics within Asian American Studies. We feel that the absence of a 359

David L. Eng sustained and coherent radical theory of social transformation led to a retreat to more mainstream, discipline-based paradigmatic orientations. Contributing to this trend was the increasing ‘‘professionalization’’ of the field in academic settings, the demands of tenure and promotion for faculty members, and the entrance of newcomers to the field trained in specific disciplines who had not participated in the new social movements of the previous decades. The result of this has been the contraction of space for dialogue across the disciplines – one which could have critically interrogated disciplinary boundaries and fostered cross-disciplinary perspectives.37

How does this passage relate to Takagi’s own earlier claims for Asian American gays and lesbinas as well as to my earlier remarks on queerness as a methodology of form and style? How might we evaluate Takagi and Omi’s observations on the ‘‘waning of radical political movements’’ in Asian American studies in the 1980s against the emergence of queer activism and the AIDS movement during this same historical period? That two Asian American critics as perceptive as Takagi and Omi fail to consider the historical contributions of Asian Americans to queer activism and the AIDS movement is indicative of the difficulties we still face in Asian American studies to integrate systematically not only issues of queerness but of sexuality into our critical vocabulary and theoretical discussions. This difficulty, I would also note, results from an intransigent failure on the part of mainstream gay and lesbian scholarship to consider ‘‘queerness’’ in the broader context I have sketched above. In its consistent elision of race as a conceptual category for analysis, mainstream gay and lesbian scholarship fails as well to embrace queerness as a critical methodology for the understanding of sexual identity as it is dynamically formed in and through racial epistemes. (This integration is a crucial project given the alarming ways in which mainstream gay and lesbian political organizations have shaped, for example, current debates on gay marriage as issues of civil and equal rights – in opposition to dominant mainstream attacks on affirmative action for people of color as special rights.)38 Takagi and Omi are certainly correct in their suggestion that the 1980s marked a demonstrable shift in Asian American political activism and the Asian American studies movement. Unquestionably, the apotheosis of global capital under the Reagan and Thatcher administrations, the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, and the dismantling of prolabor movements and unions led to a concomitant shifting away in Asian American studies from a traditional, class-based critique of race.39 Yet this shifting away, I would emphasize, might also be thought of as a displacement of progressive Asian American politics and sustained class-based analyses of racial formation into new realms of struggle, rather than a strict disappearance or ‘‘waning of radical political movements.’’ This is not to say that issues of class should no longer be vigilantly pursued, but that our interrogation of Asian American racial formation must also be mediated by analyzing other forms of domination. 360

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Globalization has shifted current frameworks for resistance. As such, we in Asian American studies cannot ignore the rise of queer activism in the 1980s as a visible and oppositional political movement. If the global restructuring of capital in the 1980s dismantled a traditional, class-based critique of race as the foundation for ‘‘radical political movements’’ in Asian American studies, we must consider how this clearing of the discursive field relates to the rise of queer activism and its critique of the subject as one of progressive Asian American politics’ last stands.40 How does queer studies’ critique of the subject come to function as a displaced marker for more traditional, class-based analyses of race in Asian American studies? To the extent that Takagi recognizes (in the first article) the dislodging of Asian American identity from its cultural nationalist moorings as a function of ‘‘gay and lesbian’’ sexualities, she offers a way for us to reconsider Asian American subjectivity in more capacious ways. Indeed, the now-familiar critique of the subject of Asian American cultural nationalism as equating political efficacy not with particularity and difference but with similarity and unity as the basis for social action traces much of its theoretical roots to work done in queer (as well as feminist) activism and studies during this time. Queerness, then, helps to articulate how Asian American sexual, racial, and class formations come into existence only in relation to one another. To the extent, however, that Takagi and Omi (in the second article) overlook queer activism’s ascendant role as oppositional politics in the 1980s, they miss the opportunity to understand queerness as it intersects with Asian American studies – queerness as a critical methodology promising to open upon a much broader set of Asian American identities as well as a more capacious set of Asian American locations. How does Asian American queerness function not just in terms of identities but in terms of locations? If global restructuring of capital in the 1980s worked to reconfigure the discursive field of oppositional class politics into a queer critique of the subject as progressive politics, then we must recognize and evaluate this displacement – this spatial relationship between globalization and queerness in Asian American studies. This is all to suggest that if earlier Asian American cultural nationalist projects were built on the political strategy of claiming home and nation-state through the domestic and the heterosexual, a new political project of thinking about these concepts in Asian American studies today would seem to center around queerness and diaspora – its rethinkings of home and nation-state across multiple identity formations and numerous locations ‘‘out here’’ and ‘‘over there.’’ In the late 1990s queerness and diaspora should be used not only to reevaluate the past but to orient the future development of Asian American political projects and strategies whose claims on oppositional politics can be acknowledged as such. This is a moment that should be marked by our definitive shifting away from a politics of cultural nationalism to a politics of transnational culturalism. How might these various theoretical speculations on queerness and diaspora in Asian American studies appear in a material context? What might a queer 361

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Asian American in a globalized frame look like? I will end with a brief analysis of Ang Lee’s The Wedding Banquet (1993), a transnational film providing us with one model of thinking the possibilities and limitations of an emergent queer and diasporic Asian America.

Out Here and Over There: Ang Lee’s The Wedding Banquet At first glance Gao Wai-Tung (Winston Chao) in Ang Lee’s The Wedding Banquet provides what might be considered a rather unprecedented portrayal of Asian American male identity within the domestic space of the US nationstate. Considering the immigrant’s queer and diasporic status against his domestic representation yields a startling picture quite divergent from both mainstream stereotypes of Asian American men and dominant portrayals of them in the popular gay press and media.41 In reviewing the film upon its release in 1993, I noted that The Wedding Banquet was the first wide-release motion picture in this country that significantly reconfigured the dominant ‘‘rice queen’’ dynamic so prevalent in the mainstream gay community: the racist coupling of passive gay Asian. American men (the continuous recirculation of Puccini’s Madame Butterfly fantasy) with objectionable ‘‘rice queens,’’ white men attracted to gay Asian American men through their orientalized fantasies of submissive ‘‘bottoms.’’42 That The Wedding Banquet significantly revised this ‘‘rice queen’’ dynamic, depicting a successful, savvy, and handsome Asian male not in a relationship of economic dependence with a homely white man twice his age marks a laudable departure from the pervasive stereotype of the white ‘‘daddy’’ and the Asian ‘‘houseboy’’ endemic to mainstream gay culture. In my mind, Lee’s innovative portrayal inaugurated a potential (but ultimately unfulfilled) shifting of a stereotypical Asian American gay image away from normative domestic representations toward an incipient queer and diasporic formation. In light of our discussion of Asian American claims on home and the nationstate, Wai-Tung’s portrayal in The Wedding Banquet is notable for the fact that he is enfranchised as a US citizen (especially given the long US history of Chinese exclusion from naturalization and citizenship). In this way, Lee’s rendering of Wai-Tung as ‘‘citizen’’ verges on the queer: through his ability to claim the domestic space of the US nation-state as legitimate home – and through his ability to be legally recognized in his claims – queerness and diaspora emerge as a new form of Asian American male subjectivity. Not only is Wai-Tung enfranchised as a citizen of the US nation-state, it is, moreover, through his diasporic queerness that Wei-Wei (May Chin) obtains her coveted green card and her own legal status – a reframing of Asian American identity outside of traditional, heterosexual, domestic familial configurations. Nevertheless, we must remember that it is also precisely because of the conflicted affiliations that constitute Wai-Tung’s queer and diasporic 362

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positioning that he is impelled to accept a staged ‘‘heterosexual’’ marriage to Wei-Wei. Under the constant goading of his heir-demanding parents (Lung Sihung and Gua Ah-la) still residing in Taiwan, Wai-Tung finally acquiesces to the fake marriage (and tax break) with Wei-Wei orchestrated by his white lover Simon (Mitchell Liechtenstein). Ultimately, the creation of a new queer and diasporic Asian American male identity and multicultural queer family based on form and not content is qualified – mired – by normative heterosexual conditionings. In this manner, The Wedding Banquet might be better thought of less as a film that inaugurates a successful queer and diasporic Asian American male subjectivity and more as one that is set in motion by the very question of queerness and diaspora. Queerness and diaspora function as signs for the very confusion of Asian American identity that Lee’s film strives to resolve. How might we think about this rather unprecedented portrayal of Wai-Tung in the realm of the domestic space of the nation-state as one only purchased in the global arena through the rescripting of a quotidian patriarchal narrative? In a compelling reading of The Wedding Banquet, Mark Chiang considers the diasporic representations of the film against its domestic dimensions, noting that the film’s resolution depends most intently upon the disciplining of Wei-Wei as the figure of resistance, so that it is only Wai-Tung’s impregnation of her, which turns out to be the mechanism of his control over her, that allows the ending finally to take place in a configuration that resolves the conflicts between the men. The consolidation of a transnational patriarchy of capital is fundamentally dependent upon the subordination of women and labor, and these are conflated in the film so that woman becomes the very sign of labor.43

Wai-Tung’s position as enfranchised citizen of the US nation-state is thus made possible only through his subordinating the diasporic Third World woman. ‘‘Emancipation’’ for Wei-Wei – her escape from the global underclass of undocumented workers and migrant laborers – comes up against ‘‘emancipation’’ for Wai-Tung, whose fulfilment of his Chinese father’s paternal mandate demands her final acquiescence to keep and not abort their child.44 This purchase of queer Asian American citizenship is brokered on the level of the global, enabled only through Wai-Tung’s complicit relationship to transnational management of capital, resources, and labor.45 Hence, the potentials of a progressive queer and diasporic political project are at odds. After all, only through gaining control over Wei-Wei’s material (Wai-Tung is her slumlord and thus controls her claims on home) and reproductive labor is Wai-Tung able to secure his own claims within the borders of the US nation-state as a legitimate home. As such, queer and feminist discourses are also at odds when considered against the domestic and the diasporic dimensions of The Wedding Banquet. WaiTung’s (potential) ‘‘queerness’’ comes to organize a host of conflicting differences – sexuality, gender, race, class, and locale – shutting down the position of 363

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the Third World woman in its capitalist expansion through both local and global arenas. Like the earlier Asian American cultural nationalist project, Wai-Tung’s access to the domestic space of a public US nation-state finally depends on a ‘‘queer’’ control and possession of a devalued feminine realm – Wei-Wei’s privacy, home, labor, and child. Hence, we might describe queerness and diaspora in The Wedding Banquet as a formation that rescripts a domestic patriarchal narrative of home and nation-state, of private and public on a global scale. To think about the queer and diasporic formation of Asian American identity in The Wedding Banquet is to understand that the domestic tranquility marking the end of the film is purchased at an expensive price, borne by the figure of the Third World woman. This is a model of queer and diasporic Asian American subjectivity that, as Sau-ling Wong offers, might be far more useful if critiqued as ‘‘modes rather than phases’’ of identity, a splitting of queerness and diaspora that cannot be ‘‘lauded as a culmination’’ over the domestic or feminine, as ‘‘a stage more advanced or more capacious.’’46 Ultimately, The Wedding Banquet provides a limited model of a progressive queer and diasporic Asian American male subjectivity; queerness and diaspora in Lee’s film do not finally constitute any inherent challenge to local or global status quos. If The Wedding Banquet provides a new model of thinking about the numerous pitfalls of queerness and diaspora as an integral mode of late 1990s Asian American domestic claims to home and nation-state, this model requires vigilant critical scrutiny for the enabling positions as well as the disabling violences it effects. It is a tortured model that recontextualizes our very notions of Asian American subjectivities in both the larger global arena and the domestic realm of a capitalized US nation-state that is today rapidly and urgently (re)consolidating itself as an unforgiving place of ‘‘straightness’’ and ‘‘whiteness.’’

Notes Multiple interlocutors have proven indispensable to the genesis of this essay: Davina Chen, Mark Chiang, Phillip Brian Harper, Alice Y. Hom, David Hirsch, David Kazanjian, JeeYeun Lee, Sanda Lwin, Susette Min, Rosalind C. Morris, Jose´ Esteban Mun˜oz, Chandan Reddy, Eric Reyes, Leti Volpp, Priscilla Wald, and Alys Eve Weinbaum. I would like to express my gratitude for their helpful comments and support. I would also like to thank Anne McClintock for her solicitation of this article and the Social Text collective for their suggestions for revision. 1 For a summary of the sojourner and the model-minority theses, see Sucheng Chan, Asian Americans: An Interpretive History (Boston: Twayne, 1991). It is worth considering how the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act, which facilitated an explosion in Asian American immigration, contributed to the historical rise of the model-minority myth in the late 1960s. To what extent, one might ask, does 1965 provide a pivotal moment in which the image of Asian Americans as ‘‘alien’’ (sojourners, yellow peril) shifted into a more common stereotyping of Asian Americans as ‘‘whiter than white’’ (model minority)? 2 The diaspora debate in Asian American studies is now a heated one, and the place of transnational issues within the field is the subject of wide deliberation. In the late 1990s, the question of diaspora has become the question gripping Asian American studies on its twenty-

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fifth anniversary in the academy. This essay intervenes by exploring how queerness functions in this debate. For essays on the diaspora debate, see Amerasia Journal 22(1–2) (1995), a special issue on ‘‘Thinking Theory in Asian American Studies’’; and Amerasia Journal 22(3) (1996), a special issue on ‘‘Transnationalism, Media, and Asian American Studies.’’ In this essay I am using diaspora in a rather capacious manner to encompass several meanings and contemporary phenomena: the global scattering of peoples of Asian origins; the shifting critical emphasis from domestic to global in the study of nationalism and nationstates; the transnational movement of both economic and intellectual capital; the global commodification of sexuality; the transnational displacements of flexible labor; and the increasing permeability of national borders through electronic media, communications, and international travel. While recognizing the historical specificities of these various issues and trends, my hope is to provide some preliminary speculations to anchor investigations of diaspora and queerness in Asian American studies. A quick survey of recent book titles in Asian American studies illustrates this ‘‘Asian America’’ phenomenon. See Emma Gee, Counterpoint: Perspectives on Asian America (Los Angeles: Asian American Studies Center, University of California, 1976); Roger Daniels, Asian America: Chinese and Japanese in the United States since 1850 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1988); Bill Ong Hing, Making and Remaking Asian America through Immigration Policy: 1850– 1990 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1993); Karin Aguilar-San Juan, ed., The State of Asian America: Activism and Resistance in the 1990s (Boston: South End, 1994); and Lane Hirabayashi, ed., Teaching Asian America: Diversity and the Problem of Community (Boulder, CO: Rowman and Littlefield, 1997). We might consider the term Asian America along with spatial terminology in other ethnic studies fields. Scholars in ethnic studies do not, for example, use the term African America or Latino/Chicano America with any notable frequency. However, the term Black America in African American studies and Aztla´n in Latino/Chicano studies may gesture toward a similar set of concerns as those invoked by Asian America, warranting a more thorough comparison. Sau-ling C. Wong, ‘‘Denationalization Reconsidered: Asian American Cultural Criticism at a Theoretical Crossroads,’’ Amerasia Journal 21 (1–2) (1995): 4. Against this idea of landlessness and psychic dispossession of home, how might we think about both the history of alien-land laws enacted against Asian Americans from owning property and current stereotypes of Asians and Asian Americans as voracious consumers and collectors of ‘‘prime’’ national real estate? Oscar V. Campomanes, ‘‘Filipinos in the United States and Their Literature of Exile,’’ in Reading the Literatures of Asian America, ed. Shirley Geok-lin Lim and Amy Ling (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992), 51. [Reproduced as chapter 17 in this volume.] If social affirmation is unrealizable for queers, then ‘‘in’’ and ‘‘out’’ of the closet is equally nebulous. The closet becomes an impossibly blurred space of private concern and public regulation. This continual blurring of ‘‘in’’ and ‘‘out’’ – and of public and private space – divests queer subjects of any access to traditional notions of citizenship (e.g., the right to privacy) in a bourgeois ordering of the nation-state and public sphere. See Ju¨rgen Habermas’s Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, trans. Thomas Burger (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1989). See also Bruce Robbins, ed., The Phantom Public Sphere (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993) for critical readings of Habermas and the public sphere in relation to queer and feminist issues. This loss of home is not only a function of queerness but also a function of racism and poverty. Livingston’s film is exemplary insofar as these three axes of social difference are highlighted in their multiple crossings. See Yen Le Espiritu, Asian American Panethnicity: Bridging Institutions and Identities (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992) and William Wei, The Asian American Movement (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993) for their historical accounts of the emergence

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of the Asian American movement and the development of Asian American studies within the academy. Michael Omi and Dana Takagi, ‘‘Thinking Theory in Asian American Studies,’’ Amerasia Journal 21 (1–2) (1995): xii. Frank Chin, Jeffery Paul Chan, Lawson Fusao Inada, and Shawn Wong, preface to Aiiieeeee! An Anthology of Asian-American Writers, ed. Frank Chin, Jeffery Paul Chan, Lawson Fusao Inada, and Shawn Wong (Garden City, NY: Anchor, 1975), x. The key question here is how public agency and the nation-state, constituted as male, are contingent upon the possession and control of the popularly devalued private realm of the home, constituted as female and homosexual. The seamless narration of the nation is thus dependent upon the disciplining of the feminine and homosexual to the masculine. See Nancy Fraser’s gendered analysis of Habermas’s public sphere, ‘‘Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy,’’ in Robbins, Phantom Public Sphere, 1–32. See also in the same volume Michael Warner’s queer analysis, ‘‘The Mass Public and the Mass Subject,’’ 234–56. Chin et al., Aiiieeeee!, x. It is important to remember the historical roots of the term Asian American: it has always served as a coalitional label under which different Asian groups have come together for the promotion of common interests and for the purposes of political representation, economic action, and cultural identification (e.g., in census counts, voting issues, and cultural and social services funding). As a label, Asian American implies a certain unified identity that works to smooth over diverse racial, ethnic, and national backgrounds, languages, sexualities, and religions. Jeffery Paul Chan, Frank Chin, Lawson Fusao Inada, and Shawn Wong, introduction to The Big Aiiieeeee! An Anthology of Chinese American and Japanese American Literature (New York: Penguin, 1991), xiii. Frank Chin and Jeffery Paul Chan, ‘‘Racist Love,’’ in Seeing through Shuck, ed. Richard Kostelanetz (New York: Ballantine, 1972), 68. See King-Kok Cheung, ‘‘The Woman Warrior versus the Chinaman Pacific: Must a Chinese American Critic Choose between Feminism and Heroism?’’ in Conflicts in Feminism, ed. Marriane Hirsch and Evelyn Fox Keller (New York: Routledge, 1990), 234–51, for an excellent discussion of the feminism–heroism debate in Asian American studies. [Reproduced as chapter 9 in this volume.] Chin and Chan, ‘‘Racist Love,’’ 68. The paternal complicities of nationalist projects are most incisively critiqued by feminists in postcolonial studies (e.g., Rey Chow, Chandra Mohanty, Gayatri Spivak). This critique still needs to be largely absorbed in Asian American studies. In highlighting the private/public contradiction of the domestic, I intend to claim for Asian Americans and queers both realms and not privilege one over the other. This issue of private/ public that I engage here in relation to the national terrain is expanded in the final section to include a discussion of private/public in relation to the global arena. In terms of claiming the public sphere on both domestic and diasporic levels, one might consider the concept of oppositional public spheres, what Fraser in ‘‘Rethinking the Public Sphere’’ calls ‘‘subaltern counterpublics.’’ This claim of vexed hyphenation is not a difficult one to substantiate. Pick up any mainstream – even Asian American – newspaper or magazine to see how the hyphen appears with confounding arbitrariness. While many non-Western ethnic groups have tenuous claims on the nation, the persistent mainstream configuration of Asian Americans as exterior to the nation-state takes on particular historical dimensions and distinctions through the orthographic hyphen. This is a debate that has not, to my knowledge, been as widely deliberated in other fields of ethnic studies.

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Queerness/Diaspora in Asian American Studies 22 The mistaken perception of Chinese American Vincent Chin for a Japanese autoworker is only one of many unfortunate manifestations of this phenomenon. In 1982, Chin was murdered by two unemployed Detroit autoworkers who mistook him for a Japanese. 23 Risking the hyphen would also force us to confront the status of American in the term Asian American, making us consider American studies outside of its domestic locale and in multiple spaces. While there has been a long historical antagonism between East Asian studies – perceived as orientalist – and Asian American studies, any serious consideration of the Asian component in Asian American would warrant the theoretical linking of these two fields. 24 Sucheta Mazumdar, ‘‘Asian American Studies and Asian Studies: Rethinking Roots,’’ in Asian Americans: Comparative and Global Perspectives, ed. Shirley Hune, Hyung-chan Kim, Stephen S. Fugita, and Amy Ling (Pullman, WA: Washington State University Press, 1991), 29–44. It might be useful to note that as a group who has experienced the longest and most specific legacy of racial exclusion from the United States, it would be impossible to understand the legal status of Asian Americans outside a transnational model of racialization. How do we bring together current shifts in immigration patterns with the hyphen debate on alienness? The sojourner paradigm of Asian American ‘‘settlement’’ and the status of legal citizensubject of the US nation-state were at odds from the late eighteenth century until 1952–65. Prior to the 1952 McCarran–Walter Act and the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act, race was the determining factor for exclusion laws that prevented the unification of non-European families and the naturalization of Asians. The first of these restrictions, the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, was passed in response to national economic recession and the perception of Chinese immigrants as unassimilable ‘‘coolie’’ labor. The 1882 Act was followed by the 1907 ‘‘Gentleman’s Agreement’’ with Japan to limit emigration. The 1924 Immigration Act extended these provisions indefinitely, while establishing immigration quotas for northern European nations alone. 25 Wong, ‘‘Denationalization,’’ 3. 26 See, for example, Carlos Bulosan’s 1943 novel America Is in the Heart (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1973) for a narrative of American-school missionaries and their teaching of nationalist ideology. In chapter 9, for example, the protagonist learns about Lincoln, ‘‘a Poor boy [who] became President of the United States!’’ and who ‘‘died for a black person’’ (69–70). 27 Jenny Sharpe, ‘‘Is the United States Postcolonial? Transnationalism, Immigration, and Race,’’ Diaspora 4 (Fall 1995): 188. 28 ‘‘Satellite people’’ (a.k.a. ‘‘Astronauts’’) maintain residences in several countries, traveling back and forth in accordance to immigration residency requirements and job demands. ‘‘Parachute children’’ are the kids of satellite people who are left alone in the United States for schooling and thus separated from their parents for long durations. ‘‘Reverse settlers’’ are Asian Americans who are emigrating to Asia for job-related, economic opportunities. 29 The recent September 1996 passage of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (much of which went into effect on 1 April 1997) is but one unanalyzed effect. The increase in Asian American immigration from outside of East Asia (China, Japan, Korea) and the Philippines is another. 30 Saskia Sassen, ‘‘Whose City Is It? Globalization and the Formation of New Claims,’’ Public Culture 8 (winter 1996): 213. 31 The national anxiety produced by contemporary global formations of capital and labor have caused nation-states to clamp down on their borders – literally and figuratively – both in the form of the patrolling of national boundaries and the patrolling of what constitutes good ‘‘citizenship.’’ In the United States this attention to borders, for instance, has resulted in not only an excluding of illegal immigrants and immigrants of color from entering the nation, but

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the criminalization of African Americans, poor people, single mothers (welfare reform), and even Asian/American lobbyists. See Saskia Sassen, ‘‘Beyond Sovereignty: Immigration Policy Making Today,’’ Social Justice 23 (fall 1996): 9–19. Lisa Lowe, ‘‘Heterogeneity, Hybridity, Multiplicity: Marking Asian American Differences,’’ in Immigrant Acts: On Asian American Cultural Politics (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1996), 83. [Reproduced as chapter 15 in this volume.] Amerasia Journal is one of the oldest-running serial publications in the field of Asian American studies. Started at Yale University, it is now housed at UCLA’s Center for Asian American Studies. Dana Takagi, ‘‘Maiden Voyage: Excursions into Sexuality and Identity Politics in Asian America,’’ Amerasia Journal 20(1) (1994): 2. I use gay and lesbian to describe the largely identity-based political and academic movements that arose post-Stonewall in response to the dominant, pathologizing medicolegal discourse of the ‘‘homosexual.’’ In its publicness, as Rosalind C. Morris suggests in this issue, the notion of gay is often conflated with the issue of same-sex practices – practices which are often thought to be symptomatic of identity. I differentiate gay and lesbian from the term queer, which I consider to eschew a political platform based exclusively on sexual identity and sexual practices and on the polarization of homo- and heterosexuality. The use of the term queer is not just generational but, as Michael Warner points out, ‘‘‘queer’ gets a critical edge by defining itself against the normal rather than the heterosexual’’ (introduction to Fear of a Queer Planet: Queer Politics and Social Theory, ed. Michael Warner [Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993], xxvi). Initially a designation of terror and shame, queer in contemporary usage has been resignified in a rather open and capacious context – one that can be used simultaneously to discuss the politics of the personal, to question a spectrum of personal identities, to act against normalizing ideologies, and to resist the historical terror of social phobia and violence. We must remember that gay and lesbian and queer are not mutually exclusive terms. Gayness might provide ideal, though not exclusive, grounds for queer practices; and queers can often be ‘‘lesbians and gays in other contexts – as for example where leverage can be gained through bourgeois propriety, or through minority-rights discourse, or through more gender-marked language (it probably won’t replace lesbian feminism)’’ (Warner, Queer Planet, xxviii). While queer has been used as shorthand to name a population of individuals with a stake in nonnormative, oppositional politics, the term also harbors homogenizing impulses that serve to erase certain racial and gendered differences (lesbian feminism being one example), which I explore in this essay. Lowe, Immigrant Acts, 11. Omi and Takagi, ‘‘Thinking Theory,’’ xiii. Certainly not immune to similar accusations concerning the co-opting of special rights, mainstream gay and lesbian organizations must think through the particular political difficulties and contradictory agendas that national issues like gay marriage and affirmative action pose to one another, both for individual queers of color who hold multiple affiliations to various political causes and for the politics of coalition building. The consideration of Asian American identity in a queer and diasporic context is complicated by mainstream gay and lesbian activism’s own resistance to theorizing itself outside of US national borders. That the dominant focus of current gay and lesbian activism is on domestic issues and the claiming of equal rights obscures the international genealogy of queer activism and its reliance on the global. In claiming equal rights and access to the queer nation, queer activism reifies the US nation-state as the privileged site for oppositional politics in ways reminiscent of the Asian American cultural nationalist project, calling for vigilant interrogation. See Masao Miyoshi, ‘‘A Borderless World? From Colonialism to Transnationalism and the Decline of the Nation-State,’’ Critical Inquiry 19 (Summer 1993): 726–51, for a concise

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42 43

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summary of the economic and political shifts in the 1980s that allowed for the rampant spread of multinational capital and the global restructuring of these economic resources into transnational institutions. The gay and lesbian liberation movement that emerged in the post-Stonewall era was largely based on a politics restricted to sexual identity and practices. The new queer social movements in the 1990s are largely based, instead, on the critique of identity politics and the discursive production of the subject. Queer activism’s critique of the subject and its reorganization of coalitional interests along the lines of political goals need to be considered in the context of racial differences. See filmmaker Richard Fung’s ‘‘Looking for My Penis: The Eroticized Asian in Gay Video Porn,’’ in How Do I Look? ed. Bad Object Choices (Seattle: Bay, 1991), 145–60. [Reproduced as chapter 14 in this volume.] Fung writes that in Western society ‘‘the Asian man is defined by a striking absence down there. And if Asian men have no sexuality, how can we have homosexuality?’’ (148). In the mainstream heterosexual community, Asian American men have had to contend with the pervasive stereotype of themselves as ‘‘emasculated sissy’’ (Frank Chin’s Charlie Chan and the Fu Manchu syndrome). These mainstream portrayals of enervated Asian American members recirculate within gay communities, where queer Asian American men find themselves repositioned as passive and feminized ‘‘bottoms’’ – impotent Cio-Cio-Sans plucked from the orientalized states of Madame Butterfly. David L. Eng, ‘‘The Wedding Banquet: You’re Not Invited and Some Other Ancillary Thoughts,’’ Artspiral 7 (fall 1993): 8–10. Mark Chiang, ‘‘Coming Out into the Global System: Postmodern Patriarchies and Transnational Sexualities in The Wedding Banquet,’’ in Q & A: Queer in Asian America, ed. David L. Eng and Alice Y. Hom (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1998), 374–95. Chiang adds that the ‘‘multicultural, nonheterosexual family formed by Wai-Tung and Simon at the end of the film . . . is thus in sharp contrast to the representation of women’s liberation offered to Wei-Wei . . . whose decision to keep the baby drastically reduces her options and forecloses the possibility of withdrawing from the global system.’’ Leslie Sklair labels this class of global citizen the ‘‘transnational capitalist class’’ (TCC). See Sklair, Sociology of the Global System, 2nd edn (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995). Wong, ‘‘Denationalization,’’ 17; original emphasis.

369

Index

A Great Wall (Wang), 269–70 acculturation, 66n, 79n, 148, 179–80, 284, 298 activism, 1, 6, 12, 58, 323 affirmative action, 90, 232, 279, 282, 322, 324, 360, 368 Africa, 198, 207, 274n African, 274n, 359 chattel slavery, 280 cultural patterns, 192 South Africa, 46, 183 African Americans, 122, 171–2n, 282, 287, 292, 293n, 314, 320, 324, 329n, 365n, 368n; see also blacks; United States Agbayani, Amefil R., 335–6 AIDS, 360 Alaska, 202, 280 Alegado, Dean T., 337–8 Alien Land Laws, 54 Alger, Horatio, 10 Algerian resistance, 262 Almirol, Edwin B., 228, 234n American dream, 65, 280, 291 American Indians, see Native American(s) Anderson, Benedict, 302, 335, 337, 338n, 346n Aquino, Belinda, 345n Armenian, 272n Arroyo, Jose´, 249 Article XIX, 50

Asia, 67–70, 87, 97, 104, 111, 122, 130, 138, 140, 144, 182, 197–8, 200–1, 206, 241, 258, 285, 315, 341, 353n Asian America, 6, 89, 108, 258, 271n Asian American Studies, 1–13, 14n, 84–95, 117–20, 170, 214n, 315, 350–2, 356–64, 365–9n Asian American(s), 1–11, 13, 17–19, 22–7, 39, 62, 66n, 70n, 83–99, 111–14, 115–16n, 120–34, 140, 155–66, 168–9, 170n, 187, 196–8, 201–2, 205–8, 211–12, 215–23, 248, 254, 256–63, 264–5, 267–71, 272n, 277–80, 282, 284, 286, 293, 297, 299, 350–3, 355–65, 366–7n activism, 1, 6, 12, 323, 360, 365n art, 90, 123, 135, 140–1, 144, 163, 203, 206, 278, 289 Asian Americanist(s), 6–7 class, 4, 9, 10, 39, 86, 89, 135, 197, 246, 263, 265, 278, 304, 361 communities, 8, 84, 88, 119–20, 215, 260, 353 culture, 256–9, 261, 263–4, 266, 268, 270, 297, 353–8, 363, 368n discourse, 259, 261, 263–5, 268 exclusion acts, 49, 259; see also specific exclusion laws experience, 2, 86, 90, 108, 112, 217–18, 257, 283, 293n

Index family, 219–20, 222n feminists, 261, 265, 354 films, 9, 11, 65n, 159, 170n, 174n, 210, 237, 244–5, 249–50, 252n, 257, 264, 269–74 heritage, 55, 165, 208 history, 5–6, 9, 89, 111, 208, 277 Hollywood, 134, 154–5, 237 identities, 2, 5, 8, 9, 10, 197, 206–7, 261–3, 266, 271, 283, 351, 353, 354, 356–8, 361–3, 368 internment, 114, 124, 144, 204–5, 208 literary criticism, 3 literature, 7, 8, 111, 127, 160, 197, 200, 202, 206, 211, 213, 264–5, 300, 314 masculine identity, 262, 265–6 masculinity, 236, 264–6, 354 men, 5, 9, 210, 211, 264, 354 mental health, 5 mixed race, 9, 258 model minority, 215–16, 218, 222, 364 movement, 89, 122, 218, 365–6 nationalism, 11, 261, 264–5 politics, 271 success, 215–23 Superminority, 277 third generation, 197, 202, 204 violence against, 221 women, 5–6, 112, 115, 124, 163, 211, 214, 262 writer(s), 7, 115, 160, 197, 200, 206–8, 213, 271n, 276–7, 287, 292 Asian Canadian, 248 Asian Indian(s), 93–4, 103–4, 120–1, 124, 127, 227 Asian(s), 9, 26–7, 31–2, 39, 59, 64, 67–70n, 88, 94, 101, 103, 107n, 199, 206, 218, 220–1, 223, 236–8, 240–51, 251–3n, 256, 258–9, 261, 271–2n, 277–8, 283–4, 292, 356, 362 anti-Asian sentiments, 87, 122, 132, 221, 272n, 330 body, 246–7, 320–1, 328 communities, 87, 218, 251n, 258, 261, 277 culture, 104, 140–1, 179, 258, 264, 323 desire, 241–2, 250

eroticization of, 235 experience, 84, 85n, 90, 222 families, 220, 223 film, 244 gay and lesbian movements, 237 gay men, 230, 237, 238, 241, 243–4, 247–8, 250–1, 252n gay pornography, 238, 244 immigration, 49, 103, 181–2, 219, 221, 253n, 256, 258–9, 272n, 279 labor, 201, 218 language(s), 88, 101, 199, 239 lesbians, 237–8, 252n literature, 7 male stereotypes, 237, 250 men, 9, 31, 119, 210, 237, 239, 241–4, 251 men’s sexuality, 236–8, 242 nations, 199, 202, 245 power, 240 refugee(s), 94, 202, 216, 218, 279 representation, 241 sexuality, 244, 250 women, 210, 237, 242, 256 work ethic, 221 assimilation, 7, 8, 11, 19, 30, 34n, 44, 51, 66n, 80, 150, 153, 156, 178, 187, 199, 200, 202, 217, 228, 229, 258, 261–6, 269–70, 272n, 278, 284, 291–2, 334, 350 unassimilable, 47–9, 151, 216, 367n Association for Asian American Studies (AAAS), 2, 92 Association of Asian American/Pacific Performing Artists (AAPPA), 155 atomic bomb 206 autobiography, 5, 7, 95, 110, 115n, 123, 135, 140, 142, 145, 153–4, 156, 161–2, 171–3, 201, 264 Azorean immigrants 188 Baker, Houston, 276 Balibar, Etienne, 282 The Ballad of Mulan, 135–8, 155, 166 Banton, Michael, 281 Barnet, Richard, 281 Barthes, Roland, 287, 319, 326–32 371

Index Bataille, Georges, 287 Benhabib, Seyla, 2 Bentz, Thomas, 94 The Big Aiiieeeee! (Chin), 7, 160–1, 165–9, 171–2n, 314, 353n, 354, 366n Biggers, Earl Derr, 149, 198 Biko, Steven, 207 bilingualism, 308 ‘‘birds of passage’’, 181 black(s), 8, 11, 19, 57–60, 65n, 87–9, 124, 167, 175, 177–8, 192n, 198, 202, 206, 217, 220, 229, 234n, 235–7, 238, 245–6, 248–9, 251–3n, 320–30, 365–6n Black Power Movement, 217 civil rights activism, 58, 89 culture, 192n family, 167, 192n, 323 gay men, 244, 248, 252n identity, 248 liberation, 167 men, 167, 202, 243, 320, 327 militant, 216–17 negro problem, 199 power, 64, 217, 223 rappers, 283 rioters, 325 sexuality, 249 vernacular, 276 Blauner, Robert, 83, 100, 119, 282, 298 Blu’s Hanging (Yamanaka), 4, 13n boat people, 280 Bonacich, Edna, 100, 107n, 315 borders, 4, 51, 137, 351–2, 356–7, 363, 365–8 Bordowitz, Gregg, 249 bourgeois, 262–3, 273–4n Bright Pearl, 138–9 Buddhist, 151, 172, 202 Bulosan, Carlos, 10, 95, 109–12, 115n, 123–4, 201, 202, 210, 213n, 277, 287, 289, 301, 303–5, 311–14, 315n Burlingame Treaty (1886), 56, 99, 131 Burma, 202 Bush administration, 106, 322, 330 372

Cade, Toni, 167, 173n Cambodian, 272n, 278 Campomanes, Oscar V., 10, 12, 296, 351, 366n Canada, 103, 245 Canton province, 258 Cantonese, 40, 43–4, 57, 63, 93, 116n, 143, 145, 162, 172, 174n, 187, 203, 256, 265 capitalism, 8, 10–11, 114, 245, 256, 269–70, 273n, 276, 280–2, 322, 325–6, 329, 330n, 353 Carby, Hazel, 291, 293 Cardova, Fred, 94 Carino, Benjamin, 298, 301, 341–3 Carlomusto, Jean, 249 Caroli, Betty Boyd, 94 Catapusan, Benicio T., 228, 234n Cerrenio, Virgina, 301 Chai, Alice, 68n, 72, 113–14, 116n, 117 Chan, Charlie, 54, 133–4, 140, 147, 149, 151, 153–6, 160, 162, 198 Chan, Jeffery Paul, 66n, 159, 162, 205, 214n, 366n Chan, Sucheng, 6, 86, 91, 106, 114, 115n, 117–18, 122, 125, 132, 365n Chang, Diana, 143, 171, 256–7 Cheng, Anne, 13, 315 Cheng, Lucie, 107n Chicano(s), 272n, 287, 314, 365n Chicano narrative, 277 Chih, Ginger, 94 Chin, Frank, 7, 12–13, 54, 66n, 70n, 124, 133, 159, 170n, 198, 205–6, 264–5, 353, 366, 369n Chin, Vincent, 90, 122, 131, 173n, 221, 278, 367 China, 39–41, 43–5, 49, 51–60, 66n, 67–70, 95, 97–103, 107n, 113, 125, 129, 131, 135, 139, 141, 180–7, 190–1, 192n, 199, 201, 203, 205, 209–10, 267–9, 280, 290 Great Wall of China, 269 China Men (Kingston), 163–9, 170n, 207, 210, 211, 214n, 280, 290 Chinese, 17–33, 34n, 37–65, 66–70n, 74, 78, 79n, 99, 102, 104, 105–6n,

Index 111–14, 125–32, 139–56, 177–83, 186–7, 199–201, 203, 207–10, 216, 236, 239, 242, 248–9, 256–8, 261, 265–70, 271–2n, 274n, 277, 280, 285, 290–1 brides, 185 Ch’ing Dynasty, 42 citizenship, 178–9 community, 18, 252n Confucius, 40–1, 54 culture, 5, 31, 178–80, 248, 257, 265 customs, 24, 179–80 diaspora, 258 domestic servants, 97 dual-worker family, 189 families, 17, 185, 186, 274n foreigner(s), 178–9, 181, 202, 213 heritage, 6 history, 264 immigration, 51, 129, 179, 181–3, 187–9, 191, 192n, 258, 272n, 290 immigration associations, 183 immigration, of men, 205, 265 immigration, illegal, 180 intermarriage, 183 language, 179–80 Mandarin, 290 medicine, 203 men, 7, 22–4, 31, 181, 184 mining, 180–1 population, 182 railroad workers, 208 revolution, 189, 203 settler(s), 182 sexuality, 245 society, 177, 179, 264 speaking, 188, 189 tradition, 5, 178–9, 265–6 values, 177, 256, 274n women, 7, 181, 184–5, 200, 255 women’s identity, 265, 268 women’s occupation, 11, 20, 31, 50, 55, 59, 60, 128 women’s prostitution, 97, 99, 130, 146, 183 women’s travel, 97, 129, 130, 230, 367n Yueh, 39, 42, 44

Chinese American(s), 5–8, 45, 58, 60, 62, 67, 74, 87, 89, 94, 107, 110, 114, 133, 135, 139, 143–6, 147n, 151–2, 153–69, 170–2, 177–80, 182–3, 186, 188, 190, 192n, 198–9, 207–9, 211, 216, 218, 221, 255–7, 266–70, 271n, 274n, 277, 283, 290, 366 Chinatown(s), 28, 30–2, 34n, 39, 44, 50–65, 66n, 180, 185, 187–90, 203, 211, 216–17, 258, 265–6, 271n citizens, 182, 184–5, 187 citizenship, 8, 179, 182, 184 community, 7, 89, 203 culture, 264 emasculation, 158, 163–5, 170n experience, 178 family, 8, 113, 177–8, 179–80, 190, 192, 266, 268–9 gang violence, 189 generation gap, 31 history, 8, 137, 163, 170n immigration, 188, 190–1 labor, 181–2 literary history, 165 Mandarin, 42, 43, 58, 65, 187, 266, 290 men, 155, 158–60, 162, 164–5, 168, 170, 205, 266 mental health, 17, 28, 30–3, 34–5n, 73–4, 79n, 80 merchant class, 181 parental expectation, 20 passivity, 6 population in U.S., 181, 187 pride, 6, 20, 22, 25–39, 64–5, 77, 81, 150, 232, 234 psychology, 6 racial self-hatred, 23, 28, 30 San Francisco politics, 47, 68 settlement, 43, 100, 188, 298, 316n, 351, 367n split household, 8, 116n, 177, 183, 191 success/achievement, 216–17 traditional family, 17, 77–8, 323 typology (Traditionalist/Marginal/ Asian American), 19, 28, 35, 37, 73, 75 373

Index Chinese American(s) (cont’d ) women, 7, 114, 155, 157, 162–3, 169, 172, 200, 205, 211, 268 working class, 187 youth problems, 189–90 Chinese Canadian, 200, 253n Chinese Exclusion Act (1882), 50–3, 181–4, 272 Chinese Historical Society, 47, 66 Chiu, Monica, 13 Chou, Lei, 250 Chu, Louis, 202–3, 213, 256, 265–6, 274n cinema studies, 9 civil rights, 36, 58, 89, 105, 179, 279, 281–2, 352 Civil Rights Movement, 187, 199, 216, 341 class, 4, 9–10, 12, 32, 35, 39, 42–3, 57, 58, 61–2, 76, 80, 87, 89, 97, 104, 121, 150, 168, 173n, 182, 200, 201, 246, 250, 255–6, 258–63, 265, 268, 271, 273–4n, 276, 278–9, 284–5, 292–3 backgrounds, 197 difference, 10, 274, 343 fantasy, 246 identities, 272n relations, 246 subaltern, 260 Cold War, 199 colonialism, 10–11, 196, 197, 199, 262–3, 265, 281–2, 305, 315, 334, 369 Asian colony of the U.S., 289 colonial textbooks, 289 colonialist logic, 264 colonies, 13n, 252n, 280, 352, 360 colonizer, 262, 274n decolonizing, 280, 292 discourse, 9 domination, 263 expansion, 236 fantasy, 246 French, 262 history of, 10 imagery, 249 internal colonialism, 282 language, 10, 236 neocolonial, 262, 280 374

Philippines, 11 Spanish colonialism, 289, 308, 316, 330, 347n violent colonial domination, 280 communism, 258, 269–70 communist victory, 192n concubine(s), 181, 184 Cubic Air Law, 49 cultural studies, 2, 13n, 272n, 276, 286, 298, 331 culture, 2, 5–8, 10, 17–19, 27, 33, 35–40, 47, 63–8n, 100, 117–20, 145–50, 178–80, 191–2, 192n, 197, 201–2, 205, 209–10, 216–19, 222, 236, 244–5, 256–9, 261–2, 273n, 279, 281, 284, 287, 292, 330, 334, 350, 363 American, 211, 233, 254, 256 analysis, 178 cultural autonomy, 277 cultural conflict, 228 cultural consciousness, 35, 39, 218, 282, 304, 330 cultural construction, 257 cultural contexts, 248 cultural determinism, 178 cultural difference, 9–10, 178 cultural domination, 262–3 cultural exile, 238, 309 cultural hegemony, 197–8, 259 cultural inheritance, 257 cultural model, 257 cultural nationalism, 352–4 cultural politics, 9, 256, 258–9 cultural practices, 256 cultural schizophrenia, 238, 283 cultural system, 180 cultural values, 217 culturally displaced, 251 diaspora, 256 ethnic cultural politics, 256 ethnic culture, 238, 263, 271n heroes, 208 high, 201 imperialism, 242 integrity, 202 majority/minority culture, 258–9 patterns, 183, 192

Index resources, 178 of sexuality, 248 traditional culture, 180, 201–2, 216, 257 Daniels, Roger, 60, 69n, 85, 88, 275, 279, 365 De Lauretis, Teresa, 274n De Vos, George A., 84 Dear Abby, 196, 198 democracy, 206, 289 American democracy, 199 liberal democracy, 282 racially exclusive, 281 denationalization, 11 Depression, the, 46, 48, 227, 231 diaspora, 3, 10–12, 254, 300, 350–1 Chinese, 258 culture, 256 Dim Sum (Wang), 257 Dirlik, Arif, 5 discrimination, 11, 19, 22–5, 30, 58, 178, 186–8, 216, 221–2, 242, 346–50 anti-Chinese American legislation, 178 racial discrimination, 216 university admissions (Asians), 259, 272n domination, 3, 59, 62, 103, 110, 135, 201, 207, 211, 213, 280–1, 285, 292, 302, 356, 366 The Dragon and the Phoenix, 138–9 Dyer, Richard, 240, 252n East Asian(s), 235–6 women, 237 Eastern Europe, 282, 360 Eastern European immigrants, 229 Egypt, 280 Eng, David, 11–13 Erickson, Eric, 332, 349 essentialism, 9–10, 263–5, 269, 271, 277, 285 essential identities, 10, 262–3 essentialist politics, 271 essentializing Asian American culture, 256, 261–2 ethnic identity, 265 positive essentialism, 270

strategic essentialism, 270 ethnic studies, 5, 8, 301, 366 ethnicity, 12, 119, 163, 169, 226, 229, 232, 233, 257–8, 260–4, 271, 274n, 277, 281–3, 287, 291, 293, 294n, 316n, 322, 328 appearance, 9, 230 awareness, 199 communities, 238 culture, 238, 263, 271 diversity, 12, 35, 116, 169, 261, 292 ethnic cultural politics, 256 ethnic dictatorships, 22 ethnic immigrant(s), 259, 260, 272n ethnic minority, 260, 272n ethnic otherness, 272n ethnic state, 259, 272n ethnic urban enclaves, 201 ethnic writing, 276, 293n ethnicization, 332 ghettos, 178 groups, 192, 227, 258, 260–1, 281 heritage, 9, 226 history, 83–4 identity, 123, 229, 232, 259, 261, 263–6, 270–1, 274n, 291 immigrant communities, 260 immigrant groups, 259–60 internal ethnicity, 332 origins, 245, 253 relations, 178 ethnography, 6 Eurocentricity, 276 European immigrant model, 278, 280, 281 hegemonic eurocentrism, 280 European, 229, 236, 252, 264, 280, 344, 367 American, 277, 282, 292 culture-hero, 285 Euro-American hegemonic culture, 287 Eurocentric humanism, 280 Eurocentrism, 280 European immigrant model, 278, 281 immigrants, 196, 278, 280 society, 264 375

Index exotic, 39, 52–3, 113, 145, 210, 240, 316 exoticized Chinese American culture, 264 oriental, 293n Fa Mulan, 135–6, 155 Fanon, Frantz, 60, 237, 262–6, 274, 309 Far, Sui Sin, 143 Father and Glorious Descendent (Lowe), 152 Felipe, Virgilio, 93 feminism, 3, 263–4, 368 anger, 7 Asian American, 261, 265 concerns, 264–5 feminist groups, 261 feminist politics, 2 feminists, 261, 265, 276 feminists of color, 251 movement, 160 patriarchy, 110, 114, 116n, 123, 160, 168–9, 173 sexism, 7, 110, 162–3, 168, 172n, 206, 211, 250, 261, 265, 274 social feminism, 2 Fifth Chinese Daughter (Wong), 110, 115n, 139n, 152, 199, 214 Filipina/o American(s), 9–11, 26, 92, 105, 118–21, 124, 186–90, 200, 206, 218, 226–8, 232, 272n, 277, 283, 296, 303–12, 314n, 332–45 class, 10–11 communities, 9, 11, 226 culture, 226 exilic writing, 10 expatriates, 10, 209 exploitation, 281 families, 231, 235n identities, 9, 287, 300 immigration, 233 laborers, 11 literature, 10 men, 210 migration, 11 mixed race, 9, 226–7, 228–9, 235n; see also Mestizas/os nurses, 344 376

organizations, 11 Pilipino American, 297 women, 231 writer, 283, 287 Filipinas/os, 202, 226–30, 232–3, 258, 272n, 277, 288–90, 296–302, 334–60 community, 226, 289, 346–7n culture, 11, 232–3 exile(s), 201n expatriate, 209 identity, 287 immigrants, 201, 212, 272n laborer, 11, 280 manongs, 209 men, 229, 231, 339, 341 migrant, 202, 287 perceptions of U.S. culture, 11 Flowers in the Mirror (Li Ju-Chen), 163–4, 172n Foucault, Michel, 169, 273, 287, 313, 331 free enterprise, 324–5 French Revolution, 273n Fu Manchu, 54, 133, 143, 147, 151–4, 159, 162, 198, 216, 353, 369n Fuentebella, Cielo, 297 Fung, Richard, 9, 12–13, 235, 245–51, 369n Galbraith, Kenneth, 311 Gates, Henry Louis J. R., 293n gay men, 237, 239, 240, 242, 249–51, 252n, 261 Asian, 237–8, 241–4, 247–8, 250–2n black, 244, 248 communities, 9, 238, 244 films, 9, 244 Gay Men’s Health Crisis, 249, 252n identity, 251 men of color, 241, 244 movements, 237, 244 pornography, 9, 235, 238–42, 244, 246–7, 251, 252n representation, 238 see also homosexuality Gee, Emma, 214n gender(s), 4, 6, 8, 9, 11–12, 108–9, 114, 115–16n, 122–5, 157, 161–6, 169,

Index 173–4n, 186, 197, 210, 236, 247, 261, 263, 265, 268, 270–1, 274n, 276, 279, 284–5, 289, 292–3, 363 diversity, 211 gendered gaze, 241 perspectives, 204, 210 politics, 7 Genovese, Eugene, 281 Gentlemen’s Agreement, 367n Gillenkirk, Jeff, 94 Gitlin, Todd, 223 Glazer, Nathan, 278, 281 Glenn, Evelyn Nakano, 7, 12, 114, 116n, 177, 275 globalization, 357, 361, 367n Goethe, 285, 293 Gonzales, N. V. M., 296, 309, 316n Gramsci, Antonio, 259–60, 272–3n Guangdong, 191 Guevara, Che, 286 Gupta, Sunil, 251n Hagedorn, Jessica Tarahata, 212 Hall, Mabel Saito, 94 Harvey, David, 279 Haslam, Gerald, 39 Haug, W. F., 282 Hawaii, 95, 99, 101, 103, 107n, 114–19, 130, 154, 191, 201, 204, 210, 280, 283, 287, 332, 337, 340, 344, 346–8n sugar industry, 335 Hawaiian Sugar Planters’ Association, 355 Hayakawa, Sessue, 237 Hegel, G. W. F., 286 hegemony, 8, 10, 196–8, 200, 203, 223, 225, 259–60, 271, 272–3n, 279–80, 284–5, 291–2, 300 counterhegemony, 260, 273n, 287 Euro-American hegemonic culture, 287 eurocentrism, 280 hegemonic racial formation, 292 prehegemony, 260 struggle, 285 Her Father’s Daughter (Porter), 150 heroism, 366n heterogeneity, 254, 258–62, 265–7, 270–1, 272n

heterosexism, 211, 250 heterosexuality, 4, 11, 246, 351, 359, 368 Hill, Herbert, 119 Hing, Bill Ong, 365n Hispanic(s), 178 historiography, 5, 84, 90, 91n, 116n, 280, 315n autobiography, 5, 7, 95, 110, 115n, 123, 135, 140, 142, 145, 153–4, 156, 161–2, 172n interviews, 18, 21, 24, 89, 92–3, 100, 114, 116n oral history, 67, 93–4, 100, 105, 112, 116n, 121 primary sources, 91 secondary literature, 91–2, 102 single secondary sources, 6 history, 183 Hollywood films, 237 Hom, Marlon, 93, 113, 116n homophobia, 160, 211, 241, 354 homosexuality, 7, 66n, 237, 252n; see also gay men homosociality, 211 Hong Kong, 187, 283–4 hooks, bell, 2, 13n Houston, James D., 199 Howe, Joyce, 155 Hsu, Francis L. K., 43, 68 Hu-DeHart, Evelyn, 5 Hune, Shirley, 119n Hwang, David Henry, 7, 208, 211, 293n hybridity, 254, 258–62, 265–7, 270–1, 272n Ichioka, Yuji, 87, 103, 108, 118 identity, 1–2, 4–5, 8–10, 12, 20, 22, 25–9, 31, 36–8, 43, 56–8, 60, 65, 70–1n, 77–80, 145, 155, 162, 168, 182, 197–8, 206, 210–11, 218, 245, 257, 262, 264–5, 267–8, 271, 276–7, 282–6, 288, 291–2, 301, 304–8, 311, 313, 314n, 334, 352–6, 358–63, 368n American, 87, 196–7, 209, 211, 263, 266 Asian American, 25–8, 261–2, 266, 271, 283, 354, 357–8, 362–3, 368n class, 272n 377

Index identity (cont’d ) crises of, 24, 59, 149, 151, 205 development, 9 essentialized, 262 ethnic, 123, 232, 259, 261, 263–6, 270–1, 274n, 291, 302, 347n female, 268, 274n group, 233 Mestiza, 232 precolonial, 262 racial, 216, 229, 290 sexual, 241, 244, 358–9, 369n identity politics, 10, 261–2, 276–7, 282–3, 285–7, 289–90, 297, 300, 302, 314, 359, 369 postmodern, 277 ideology, 41, 43, 67, 102, 106n, 113, 119, 165, 168, 178, 216–17, 219, 259–60, 272n, 279–81, 283, 292, 293n, 320–3, 325, 328, 329, 330n, 367n concerns, 222 dominant, 168, 220, 273n, 320, 322–3 hegemonic, 223, 330n political, 220 racist, 244 sexuality, 249 immigration, 3, 9, 29, 37, 49–55, 58, 62, 65, 70n, 78, 81, 83–4, 88, 90, 93–4, 97–101, 103–4, 106n, 107n, 111, 114, 120, 122–4, 128–32, 135, 140, 150, 152, 158, 164, 170n, 172–3n, 179, 183–8, 190, 192n, 197, 200–4, 208, 210–11, 217, 218, 256, 258–61, 264, 271–2n, 278–80, 289, 292, 293n, 298, 300–5, 308–9, 314, 314–15n, 327, 329n, 330n, 332–8, 341–5, 345n, 346n, 350–2, 356–9, 362, 364n, 367n Chinese Exclusion Act (1882), 49–50, 53, 55, 70n, 130–1, 181, 184, 272n, 345n, 367n Immigration Act (1924), 54, 182, 272n, 367n Immigration Act (1953), 70n, 184 Immigration Act (1965), 70n, 122, 187, 218, 233, 333, 341–4, 346n, 356, 364n, 367n National Origins Act, 272n 378

Nationality Act (1940), 347 Tydings–McDuffie Act (1934), 227, 335, 345n imperialism, 53, 70n, 100, 142, 151, 197, 242, 281, 289, 293, 299, 313, 315n, 356 Indochina, 87, 280 Indonesia, 280 industrialization, 96n, 106n, 152, 281 factory labor, 106n Iranian, 272n Irish Americans, 196 Ito, Kazuo, 93, 98 Jacinto, Jaime, 301, 312 Japan, 6, 53, 95–100, 103, 128–9, 131, 140, 151, 198, 221, 223, 258, 299, 330n, 346n, 367n bombing of, 207 Japanese, 6, 26, 31–2, 54, 59–60, 94–100, 102, 104, 105n, 107n, 120–1, 123–5, 127–31, 134, 140, 143–4, 150–3, 160, 173n, 198–9, 204, 205, 206, 216, 221, 236, 238–9, 242, 245, 248, 255, 258, 267, 272n, 277–9, 280, 289, 335, 337, 367n women, 6, 95–9, 124–5, 128–31, 255 Japanese American(s), 60, 87, 94, 110, 114, 134, 140, 145, 150–1, 165, 178, 197, 199, 203–5, 207–8, 216–18, 221, 254–5, 258, 271–2n, 296, 314n, 322, 353 internment, 94, 114, 124, 205, 255 issei, 26, 93–4, 98–9, 103, 107n, 114, 124, 271n, 254–5 nisei, 26, 47, 55, 110, 114, 120, 123, 150–1, 203–4, 254–5, 271n sansei, 120, 204, 207, 254–5, 271n Japanese American Research Project (JARP), 99 Jefferson, Thomas, 281 Julien, Isaac, 248, 249 Kaneko, Lonnie, 208 Kang, Younghill, 109, 111, 123, 198, 201 Kaplan, Amy, 299, 315n Karachi, 199

Index Kenya, 280 Kessner, Thomas, 94 Kibrai, Nazli, 114, 116n Kikumura, Akemi, 97 Kim, Christopher, 93, 234n, 317n, 347n Kim, Elaine, 86, 117–32, 159, 170n, 264, 314n, 323, 329n King, Rodney, 320, 324–6 Kingston, Maxine Hong, 7, 83, 88, 100, 109, 128, 134–7, 139, 142, 145, 154–6, 158, 162–4, 166–7, 168, 170n, 171–2n, 200, 207, 210, 211, 256, 264–5, 277, 280, 283, 290–1, 300 kinship group, 41, 43, 166, 177n, 192, 206–7, 301, 305 Kitano, Harry, 279 Kogawa, Joy, 128 Kolko, Gabriel, 281 Korean American(s), 10–11, 87, 93, 94, 126, 134, 321–5, 328, 329n Korean(s), 26, 55, 102, 104, 111, 114, 120–1, 123–4, 127, 134, 174n, 198, 201, 218, 227, 258, 272n, 319–20, 324, 326, 329n, 330n, 337–9, 348n, 356, 367n Krupat, Arnold, 276 Kureishi, Hanif, 251 Kwong, Peter, 86, 120, 179 Kyne, Peter B., 150 laissez-faire capitalism, 284, 322 Laotian, 121, 272n Latin America, 198, 207 Latinas/os, 8, 11, 198, 238, 243, 246, 272, 320–2, 324–5, 327, 329n, 365n Law-Yone, Wendy, 202 Lebanese, 272n Lee, Ang, 362 Lee, Mary Paik, 114, 116n Lee, Rose Hum, 45, 55, 62, 68–72n Lefebvre, Henri, 284 lesbian(s), 237–8, 242, 247–51, 252n, 261, 358–61, 368n, 369n Letelier, Orlando, 207 Levine, Lawrence W., 83, 119, 192–3n Lim, Shirley, 26–46, 110

Ling, Amy, 265 Liporada, Rodolfo, 345n literary criticism, 2, 9, 12, 13n, 276, 278 Livingston, Jennie, 351 London, Jack, 140, 145, 198 Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), 330n Los Angeles rebellion, 10, 319–20 Lowe, Lisa, 9, 12, 13n, 254, 357, 368 Lowe, Lydia, 255 Lowe, Pardee, 143, 152–3, 199 Lum, Wing Tek, 207 Lye, Colleen, 330n Lyotard, Jean-Franc¸ois, 284 Mahn, Sum Yung (Brad Troung or Sam), 238–40, 242–3 mail order brides, 210, 242 Malcolm X, 10–11, 62, 320–1, 324, 326–8, 331n Mandarin Chinese, 42–3, 58, 266, 290 Manifest Destiny, 112, 315n, 324 Marco Polo, 141 marginality, 13, 19, 22–6, 28–30, 36–8, 45, 55, 66n, 73–7, 80, 115, 163, 196–7, 200, 209, 229, 276–7, 287, 323, 351 Mark, Diane Mei Lin, 94 Marx, Karl, 100, 285–6, 293n Marxism, 2, 13n, 141, 283, 352 masculinity, 7, 9, 45, 158–60, 163–4, 167–8, 205, 354, 358–9, 366n Matsumoto, Valerie, 114, 116n Matsumoto Omura, James, 150 Mazumdar, Sucheta, 356, 367n media, 8, 10, 12, 18, 47, 53, 83–4, 86, 89–90, 101, 165, 235, 250, 277, 282–3, 297, 319, 326–8, 329n, 342, 362, 365n Megino, Frank, 128 Memmi, Albert, 308, 316n Mestiza/os, 226, 228–30, 231–3 Mexico, 280, 290, 341 border, 202 braceros, 183, 280 Mexican, 47, 159, 281, 356 Middle East, 170n, 236 379

Index migration, 6, 11, 103, 270, 281, 301, 303, 307, 309, 343, 356 emigration, 79, 97, 98–100, 102, 106–7n, 128, 130–1, 342, 367 indentured laborers, 103 Miles, Robert, 281 Miller, Allan, 93, 178, 315 minorities, 8, 11, 19–20, 23, 26–7, 33, 35, 59, 65, 86, 110, 157–9, 162, 172n, 173n, 177–8, 198–9, 216–18, 220, 237, 258–61, 276–7, 279, 322, 325, 330n, 353, 356; see also race discourse, 197, 259, 272n, 330n, 368n Mirikitani, Janice, 207, 254–6 miscegenation 1912 Saskatchewan law, 236 anti-miscegenation laws, 51, 54, 158, 210 missionaries, 7, 51, 53–4, 77, 141–2, 145–6, 148, 151, 154, 198–9, 367n American missionaries, 198–9 Miyoshi, Masao, 171n, 368n model minority, 122, 177–8, 198–200, 204, 215, 217–20, 222–3, 277–8, 322, 325, 330n, 364n; see also Asian Americans; Asians myth, 8, 11, 12, 251n, 259, 272n, 322–4 Mori, Toshio, 124, 151 Moriyama, Alan T., 100, 107 Morrison, Joan, 94, 150, 225n Motlow, James, 94 Moynihan Report, 167, 173n, 194n Mukherjee, Bharati, 120, 302–3 Muller, Ronald, 281 Murayama, Milton, 109, 123–4, 203–4 Nakanishi, Don, 118 Nakano Glenn, Evelyn, see Glenn, Evelyn Nakano nation, 8–9, 151, 210, 298, 300, 305, 311, 315n, 351–7, 361–5, 365n, 367n, 368n nationalism 1, 3, 7, 11, 51, 261–5, 302, 337, 367n Asian American nationalism, 264–5, 352–6, 358, 361, 364, 368n nationalities, 108, 149, 197–9, 332, 338 380

Native American(s), 47–9, 102, 159, 206, 209, 280, 281, 292, 314n, 324 nativism, 262–6, 269–70, 274n, 309 Navarro, Ray, 246 Nee, Victor and Bret, 98 New York Times Magazine, 216, 221–2, 223–5n Newsweek, 10, 223n, 320–5, 330n, 340–1n Nguyen, Viet, 3 O’Neill, Tip, 196 Okada, John, 109, 124, 203, 205 Okihiro, Gary, 5 Okimoto, Daniel, 199 Omi, Michael, 220, 282, 359–61 Ono, Kent A., 5 orientalism, 7, 196, 198, 210, 236, 239 oriental, 39, 54, 56, 59–61, 63, 105, 156, 159, 163, 165, 235–6, 239–40, 242–3, 245, 252n, 278, 293n Osajima, Keith, 8, 12 out-marriage, 206; see also power Pacific, 98, 130, 199, 308, 339 Pacific Coast, 92, 94, 201, 205, 303, 344 Pacific Islander(s), 4 Page Law (1975), 130 Pakistani, 272n Palestinian diaspora, 281 Paris is Burning (Livingston), 351 Parmar, Pratibha, 251n people of color, 8, 112, 198, 199, 206, 238, 249, 252n, 276–8, 280–1, 289, 291–2, 352, 360 gay, 252 women, 3, 157, 168–9, 262–3, 274n People vs. Hall (1854), 48 Philippines, 10–11, 183, 195, 199, 209, 227, 229, 230–3, 280, 285, 289, 290, 297–328, 329–32n, 333–44, 345n, 356n, 367n Americanization, 266, 342 colonial history, 303, 311, 313 communism, 270, 339, 360 statehood, 308

Index plantations, Hawaii, 105, 121, 123, 125–7, 130–1, 204, 210, 335–8 political, 2, 3, 7, 11, 13, 36–7, 40, 42, 51, 65, 82, 87, 89, 111, 114, 179, 188, 192, 197, 199, 216–20, 222–3, 237, 241, 244, 250, 252n, 259–63, 270, 271n, 273n, 281, 283, 285–6, 291–2, 293n, 339, 342, 352, 357–61, 368n, 369n conditions, 6, 11, 110, 215, 217, 342 constraints, 178, 190 political economy, 280–1, 291–2, 293n politics, 1, 3, 8, 10, 47, 157–8, 172n, 218, 256, 259, 261–4, 271, 273n, 282, 285, 287, 291, 302, 312, 315n, 357, 359, 368n, 369n Asian American, 271, 359–61 cultural, 256, 258–60 of difference, 29 racial, 169, 216, 282 Porter, Gene Stratton, 150 postcolonial, 253n, 312, 342, 345, 366n postmodernism, 2, 161, 276–7, 279–80, 282, 284–5, 291 postnationalism, 12 poststructuralism, 10, 12, 276, 287 method and theory, 293n power, 3, 23, 26, 36, 40–3, 52, 59, 114, 166, 187, 200, 210, 215, 223, 237, 240, 242, 244, 246, 251, 252n, 276, 280, 284–5, 287, 292, 293, 311 relations, 41, 246, 249, 279–81 structure, 251 The Pride of Palomar (Kyne), 150 psychoanalysis, 13, 286 psychology, 4–5, 13n, 17–82, 236 Puerto Rico, 280 push–pull theory, 88 Quayle, Dan, 322 queer(ness), 9, 11, 141, 237, 351–2, 354, 357–60, 362, 366–9n activism, 351, 360–1, 368, 369n compulsory heterosexuality, 351, 354 homophobia, 160, 211, 241 mainstream scholarship, 1, 360 nation, 351, 368

normative heterosexuality, 352, 359 whiteness, 364 Quemada, David, 308, 317n Queue Ordinance, 51 race, 5–9, 11–12, 23–4, 48, 60, 63, 83, 92, 105n, 119, 124, 135, 143–5, 148–9, 151, 153, 155–6, 159, 168–9, 178–9, 197–9, 206–7, 210–11, 216–17, 220–1, 227–9, 232, 235–6, 238, 240–8, 252n, 259, 261–2, 262n, 272, 276, 278–82, 284–5, 288, 291–3, 319, 322, 328, 329n, 330n, 345, 346n, 360–1, 363, 367n; see also minorities anti-racism movements, 236, 238, 274n integration, 55, 80, 183, 226, 237, 239, 243, 249, 252n, 291 interracial, 9, 12, 90, 226–9, 232, 233n race relations, 92, 105, 119, 216–17, 281, 321, 329n, 345, 352 racial formation, 281, 292, 352, 356–60 racial groups, 26, 80, 192, 261, 281 racism, 2–3, 5–8, 17, 19, 22, 25–6, 29–30, 36, 38–9, 43, 45–8, 50, 52, 56–7, 61, 66n, 69n, 74–5, 77, 85, 90, 111, 119, 120, 122–4, 127, 133–4, 140–4, 150–5, 159–60, 164, 167–9, 170n, 171n, 172n, 177, 189, 197–9, 204–5, 211, 216–17, 221, 227, 236, 238, 244, 246, 248, 252n, 261–2, 269, 272n, 279, 281–2, 284, 288–9, 292, 293n, 324–5, 327, 345, 353–4, 357, 362, 365n railroads, 40, 48, 69n, 103, 130, 158, 180–1, 205, 208–10, 229–30, 280, 290, 316n Reagan, Ronald, 105, 220, 282, 330n Red Menace, 70 refugee(s), 26, 70n, 94, 121, 122, 126, 197, 202, 211, 218–19, 222, 258, 274n, 279, 281 religion, see missionaries Rex, John, 280 Romance of the Three Kingdoms (Luo Guan-Zhong), 160, 165–7, 173n Rosca, Ninotchka, 297, 301–2, 313, 317n 381

Index Rushton, Philippe, 235–6, 247, 251n Russ, Joanna, 244 Said, Edward, 170n, 236, 302–3, 310 Saigon, 218 Saldivar, Ramon, 277 samurai, 237, 239 San Juan, Epifanio, 301, 314, 316–17n Santos, Bienvenido N., 208, 214n, 297, 301, 303–5, 307–8, 311–12, 314n, 315n Sarasohn, Eileen, 94 Sartre, Jean-Paul, 287 Sassen, Saskia, 357, 367–8n Saxton, Alexander, 67n, 119, 281 Schenck, Celeste, 161, 286 sexism, 7, 36, 73, 110, 160, 162–4, 168, 172n, 206, 250, 261, 265, 274n Shakespeare, William, 135, 201 Shepherd, Charles, 141, 145–8, 151–2, 154 Simmel, George, 100, 128, 290, 293n Singapore, 140, 198, 210, 258 Sino-Japanese War, 192n Skinner, Michelle, 301–2, 314 slavery, 236, 280 social construction, 2, 252n sociology, 4, 8, 24, 81, 86, 119, 154, 156, 183, 315n, 337 sojourner(s), 43, 51, 68n, 70n, 100, 102, 140, 150, 152, 182–3, 190, 201, 203, 290, 315n, 350, 364n, 367n Solberg, Sam, 302, 307, 318n Sone, Monica, 95, 109–11, 122–4 Song, Cathy, 212, 214n South Asian(s), 87, 236, 248–9, 251n South Korea, 198, 280, 356 Southeast Asian(s), 94, 122, 127, 202, 218, 236, 278–9, 315n Spain, 133–4, 206, 232, 280, 289–90, 312–13, 334, 336–7, 339, 345, 346n Spivak, Gayatri, 13n, 270, 274n, 278, 329n, 366n Sri Lanka, 236 standpoint theory, 2, 7 Stanley, Peter, 299–300 State Dead Body Law, 49 382

stereotypes, 19–20, 26, 31, 38, 47, 55–60, 62–3, 65, 70n, 71n, 78, 84, 90, 104, 135, 140–3, 146–7, 149–52, 154, 156, 158–60, 162–3, 168–9, 171n, 172n, 206, 215–16, 226, 236, 248, 250–1, 251n, 253n, 261, 264, 290, 344, 353, 362, 365n, 369n Stevenson, Harold, 223 strategic essentialism, 2, 270–1 subaltern, 260, 263–6, 272–3n, 277, 284, 287–8, 292, 366n subculture, 21, 24, 30, 37, 199 Sugimoto, Etsu, 198 Sui, Paul C. P., 100 Sung, Betty Lee, 39, 46, 48, 154–5, 170n, 179, 182 Sunoo, Brenda, 94 Sunoo, Sonia, 94, 113, 116n Suyin, Han, 143 Tagami, Jeff, 297, 301–3, 312 Tagatac, Sam, 206, 296, 301–2, 315n Taiwan, 70n, 140, 187, 198, 221, 223, 239, 258, 271n, 363 Tajima, Renee, 172n, 237 Tajiri Tanyoshi, Lawrence, 150 Takagi, Dana, 5, 114, 358–61 Takaki, Ronald, 6–7, 10, 12, 83–132, 272n, 277–83, 298, 300, 335, 337–8 Tan, Amy, 7, 134, 142, 145, 256, 264–6 Tanaka, Ronald, 205 Tateishi, John, 94 TenBroek, Jacobus, 47, 68–9n Thailand, 238, 247, 248, 252n, 272n, 280 Theater Ordinance, 49 Third World, 28, 71n, 74, 207, 280, 286, 302, 356 Tokyo, 93, 199, 284 Tong, Ben, 6, 12–13, 162, 172n, 264 Toronto, 143, 237, 248, 252n tradition, 5, 7, 10, 201–2 transnationalism, 3, 11–12, 103, 285–6, 352, 356, 361–5, 365n, 367n, 369n trauma, 6, 46–51, 189, 192n, 230, 289, 319, 327–8, 351 Trinh, Minh-ha, 274 Trinidad, 236, 248

Index Tripmaster Monkey (Kingston), 167, 173n Ty-Casper, Linda, 301, 313, 318n United States, 6–11, 19, 28, 30, 37, 44, 53–4, 61, 70n, 84–5, 87–90, 92, 95–9, 102–5, 110, 114, 119, 121, 129–32, 142, 144, 146, 158, 178–84, 187–8, 199, 201, 203, 205–6, 208–9, 217, 221, 223, 227, 256, 258–60, 263, 271–2n, 281, 287–90, 295, 298, 300, 318, 320–2, 329n, 332–51, 351–3, 355–7, 362–4, 367n, 368n census, 181 colonialism, 11, 111, 315n, 333, 334, 337, 338 Department of Health, Education and Welfare, 187 Department of Justice, 187 foreign policy, 206 government, 99, 205 history, 10, 112, 115, 325 imperialism, 289 in Third World, 207 institutional racism, 292 Navy, 333, 338–45, 347, 349n popular culture, 197, 210 racial order, 292 racial state, 282, 292 racially violent history in the, 6 State Department, 199 see also war(s) Valangca, Robert, 94 Vietnam, 62, 114, 120–1, 124, 134, 206, 218, 243, 258, 272n, 278, 280, 325, 338–9, 356 Vietnamese American, 126, 238 Villa, Jose Garcia, 301n, 303, 316n Wakatsuki, Jeanne, 199 Wallerstein, Immanuel, 280 Wang, Ling-Chi, 5–6, 272n Wang, Peter (A Great Wall ), 269–70 Wang, Wayne (Dim Sum), 257–8 war(s), 102, 136–8, 160–1, 165–7, 173n, 199, 202, 205, 278 Civil War, 46, 48, 85, 280

Opium Wars, 280 Philippine–American war, 338 Sino-Japanese War, 192n Spanish–American war, 206, 280 war era, 202 World War II, 6, 26, 53–6, 90, 110, 112, 134, 143–4, 149–51, 184, 187, 189, 199, 202, 206, 231, 233, 250 see also Vietnam Ward, Arthur Sarsfield, 198 Watney, Simon, 245, 252n Watts riots, 321–2 Waugh, Tom, 240–1, 246–7, 253n The Wedding Banquet, 11, 362–4 Western culture, 5, 53, 55, 68n, 140, 141, 145, 154, 158, 161, 168, 188, 197, 236, 256, 302, 326, 369n Western imperialism, 53, 70n, 197, 289, 299, 315n, 356 white(s), 7–9, 24, 28–9, 32, 35–6, 38, 43–72, 74–90, 92, 105, 111–12, 118–19, 124, 130, 132, 134–5, 140, 158–74, 181–2, 187, 196–8, 200, 202, 205–6, 217–18, 220–1, 227, 229, 233n, 235, 237–9, 241–4, 246–51, 252–3n, 261, 265, 276–7, 281, 283, 319–24, 326, 328, 337, 350, 353, 359 men, 9, 48, 60, 69n, 140, 150, 153, 158–60, 169, 221, 237–44, 246, 248–9, 252n, 274n, 306–7, 327, 359, 362 pornography, 238, 241, 244, 247 racism, 45–6, 50–2, 57, 134, 141–3, 149, 151–2, 155, 198, 205, 327 supremacy, 46, 135, 140, 149, 151, 153, 156, 168–9, 252n, 321, 351 whiteness, 252n, 359, 364 women, 36, 48, 54, 105, 112, 140, 152, 157, 162, 169, 199, 205, 209, 228, 233n, 236 workers, 47–8, 59–60, 69n, 75, 102, 119, 151, 229 White, Hayden, 109, 115n, 122 Whitman, Walt, 281 Williams, Patricia, 330n, 331n Williams, Raymond, 272–3n, 309 Winant, Howard, 220, 224n, 282 383

Index Wolf, Eric, 281 The Woman Warrior (Kingston), 7, 83–4, 115n, 135, 156, 162–9, 173n, 193n, 200, 211, 213–14n, 256–7, 264, 275n women of color, 3, 157, 168–9, 262–3, 274n women’s studies, 6, 8 Wong, Jade Snow, 18, 34n, 95, 109–10, 115n, 123–4, 139, 142–3, 145, 152–6, 170n, 213n, 199 Wong, Sau-ling C., 88, 100, 111, 113, 115, 128, 162, 170n, 351, 364, 365n Wong, Shawn Hsu, 209, 211 Wong, Shelley, 115

384

Yamamoto, Hisaye, 204–5 Yamanaka, Lois-Ann (Blu’s Hanging), 4, 13n Yamauchi, Wakako, 211, 214n Yans-McLaughlin, Virginia, 107n Yellow Peril, 48, 52, 64, 70n, 145, 150, 277, 364n Yep, Lawrence, 208, 214n Yung, Judy, 105n, 114, 116n, 128, 214n Yutang, Lin, 55, 201 Zabusky, Charlotte Fox, 94 Zinn, Howard, 281