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Across Lands: Double Consciousness and Negotiating Identities in Early Chinese American Literature, 1847-1910S Ying Xu

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Across Lands: Double Consciousness and Negotiating Identities in Early Chinese American Literature, 1847-1910S Ying Xu University of New Mexico UNM Digital Repository English Language and Literature ETDs Electronic Theses and Dissertations 8-28-2012 Across Lands: Double Consciousness and Negotiating Identities in Early Chinese American Literature, 1847-1910s Ying Xu Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/engl_etds Part of the English Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Xu, Ying. "Across Lands: Double Consciousness and Negotiating Identities in Early Chinese American Literature, 1847-1910s." (2012). https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/engl_etds/18 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Electronic Theses and Dissertations at UNM Digital Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in English Language and Literature ETDs by an authorized administrator of UNM Digital Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. i Ying Xu Candidate Department of English Department This dissertation is approved, and it is acceptable in quality and form for publication: Approved by the Dissertation Committee: Gail Houston, Co-Chair Gary Scharnhorst, Co-Chair Jesse Alemán Jonathan Porter ii ACROSS LANDS: DOUBLE CONSCIOUSNESS AND NEGOTIATING IDENTITIES IN EARLY CHINESE AMERICAN LITERATURE, 1847-1910S BY YING XU B.A., English, Sichuan University, China, 1995 M.A., English, Sichuan University, China, 2001 DISSERTATION Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy English The University of New Mexico Albuquerque, New Mexico July, 2012 iii ©2012, Ying Xu iv To Xu Zetu, who introduced me to the worlds of literature, Baopu Zhou, whom I hope to convey this love for books and words, Liu Xiangying, who loves me with open hands so I can soar high and free, and Robert Chapman, who I gladly share this journey of life. v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS As a Chinese proverb goes, there is no water without its source and no trees without its roots. My dissertation resulted from many people’s support, encouragement, and generous help. First and foremost, I would like to thank Dr. Gary Scharnhorst for guiding me through this challenging project and having served as my chair until this spring; without his unique insight, endless patience, and scholarly guidance, this project would not have reached its current depth and scope. I would also like to thank my amazing chair, Dr. Gail Turley Huston; without her adamant efforts and determination to help me get through the final stage of revision, this project would never have been finished. Her timely guidance and constructive feedback were like a precious rain to growing crops. I also want to express my gratitude to Dr. Jesse Alemán and Dr. Jonathan Porter for their notes, feedback, and support throughout various stages of this project. I am especially indebted to the Arms Fellowship at UNM that was awarded to me in 2009, which enabled my research trip to the Bancroft Library and started my writing. The second Arms Fellowship I received in the summer of 2011 provided much needed financial support and helped me through the most difficult time of the dissertation writing. Thanks to my fantastic friends who supported me throughout this project. Christina and Uday Desai heard me talking about this project for over three years and witnessed my progress. I am indebted to Ezra Meier for reading chapters and providing support in many aspects of life. Thanks to my counselor Ruben Zurita and physical therapist Diane Beech for keeping me healthy and sound. I also want to extend my gratitude to the Interlibrary Loan team at the Zimmerman Library of UNM, who requested hundreds of books for me and were indispensible to the project. Most especially, I want to thank my friend Liu Hongmei in China for sharing my happiness and pain during the project. Many thanks to Ashley Carlson and Randall Gann for reading multiple versions of drafts and making the time to help me polish my writing. I also want to acknowledge family members’ contribution to my finishing the project. Leslie Silko and Bill W. Orzen edited my dissertation thoroughly and embraced me with their laugher, humor, and art while I was grumpy and frustrated. Thanks to Richard Chapman and Jan Biella for not only being my readers but also giving me the sense of home in this country. Special thanks go to my mom, Liu Xiangying; without her selfless love and support, my education in this country could never have been realized. Thank you my dearest daughter, Baopu Zhou, for teaching me to be a better person and mother. No words can express my gratitude to my brother Xu Qi, for taking care of grandma in China so I could concentrate on my study in the U.S. Thank you grandma, for your wonderful presence in my life. Thank you Dad, I miss you. I know you would be proud of me if you could see what I have accomplished. Finally, I want to say “xie xie” to my husband, Robert Chapman, for being my partner in crime. I can never imagine having a better cheerleader, comrade, friend, audience, and critic than him. He believed in me even when I doubted myself. He is the light in the darkness. vi ACROSS LANDS: DOUBLE CONSCIOUSNESS AND NEGOTIATING IDENTITIES IN EARLY CHINESE AMERICAN LITERATURE, 1847-1910S by Ying Xu B.A., English, Sichuan University, China, 1995 M.A., English, Sichuan University, China, 2001 Ph.D. English, University of New Mexico, 2012 ABSTRACT This dissertation analyzes the works of three early Chinese immigrant writers (Yung Wing, Yan Phou Lee, and Wong Chin Foo) and two mixed race writers (Edith Eaton and Winnifred Eaton) in late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century North America in order to critique the formation of early Chinese American literature. Borrowing W. E. B. Du Bois’s construct of double consciousness and Amy Ling’s theory of between worlds, I argue that the complicated double consciousness exhibited in the works of these early immigrant writers demonstrates their across lands strategies of negotiating identities prior to and during the Exclusion Era (1882-1943). My formulation of what I call “across lands theory” focuses on the self-representations of Chinese and mixed race immigrants in their struggle to acquire a place in the United States as well as other countries while simultaneously coping with anti-Chinese regulatory laws. While they negotiate their identities across geographical terrains (China and the U.S.), they also construct their self-image across other terrains such as psychological, legal, discursive, and aesthetic ones with a range of responses that cannot be limited to just resistance and vii assimilation. Double consciousness is the dilemma immigrant writers face, and across lands strategies demonstrate their self-fashioning and negotiation of identity during the Exclusion Era. The first chapter of this dissertation analyzes the ways in which double consciousness is utilized by Yung Wing to construct his memoir as the text of a self- made man. I argue that Yung’s memoir revises the nineteenth-century cult of the self- made man to provide a prototypical model of autobiographical writing for the othered, racialized immigrant subject. The second chapter focuses on Yan Phou Lee’s autobiography and periodical writing and investigates Lee’s construction of difference in revising the stereotypical image of the Chinese in the late nineteenth century. I point out that the double consciousness shown in Lee’s works proves that he is, like Yung Wing, another across lands figure who negotiates “between worlds” in often sophisticated, complex, and nuanced ways. The third chapter focuses on complicated across lands strategies in Wong Chin Foo’s construction of Chinese American identity in relation to “the intelligent class of China” vis-à-vis “heathenism.” In this chapter, I argue that Wong’s periodical writing, translation, and political activities contribute to the project of constructing the new identity—Chinese American. My last chapter examines Edith and Winnifred Eaton’s writings in terms of acts of passing against a paradigm of resistance and acculturation. By studying Mrs. Spring Fragrance and a Japanese Nightingale in the Eatons’ works, I argue that their across lands strategy of utilizing and subversively undermining racial constructions of white American culture helps revise the abject Asian female body, including their own mixed race authorial bodies. viii TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Figures……………………………………………………………………….. x Preface……………………………………………………………………………………….. 1 Introduction Re-Appropriating Double Consciousness…………………………………. 6 Du Bois’s Construct of Double Consciousness, Amy Ling’s Theory of Between Worlds, and My Theoretical Concept of “Across Lands”………………………… 13 The Making of Asian Americans: Why Were/Are Earlier Immigrant Writers Neglected………………………………………………………………………….. 22 Chapter Layout: Negotiating Identities across Lands…………………………….. 32 Historical Context Yung Wing, the Missionary Discourse of “Making the New Orient,” and the Chinese Educational Mission (CEM)………………………………… 38 Chapter I “Caught between Two Stools”: Re-signifying Double Consciousness in Yung Wing’s My Life in China and America (1909)…………………………………… 45 Yung Wing’s Text as a Troubled Site……………………………………… 46 Re-Signifying Yung Wing’s Double Consciousness in My Life in China and America…………………………………………………………………………… 53 Double Consciousness and Across Lands Negotiation in Yung Wing’s Educational Project……………………………………………………………….. 70 Historical Context Yan Phou Lee and Yung Wing’s CEM……………………………..... 80 Chapter II “Good Heathen” or “Bad Heathen”: The Construction of Difference in Yan Phou Lee’s Writings……………………………………………………………….. 87 Yan Phou Lee’s Transitional Identity in When I Was a Boy in China (1887)…... 89 Yan Phou Lee’s Graduation Speech (1887): From an Urban “Ambassador” to a Champion for the Chinese in America…………………………………………... 100 The Construction of Difference: “Good Heathen” and “Bad Heathen” in Yan Phou Lee’s “Why I Am Not a Heathen” (1887)………………………………… 108 “The Chinese Must Stay” (1889): The Displacement of Chinese Laborers…….. 113 Yan Phou Lee: A Man across Lands Negotiating identities……………………. 118 Historical Context Ah Sin: Nineteenth-Century Image of the “Heathen Chinee”……..
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