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The Changing Faces of Chinese Canadians: Interpellation and Performance in the Deployment of the Model Minority Discourse

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The Changing Faces of Chinese Canadians: Interpellation and Performance in the Deployment of the Model Minority Discourse THE CHANGING FACES OF CHINESE CANADIANS: INTERPELLATION AND PERFORMANCE IN THE DEPLOYMENT OF THE MODEL MINORITY DISCOURSE HARMONY KI TAK LAW A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY GRADUATE PROGRAM IN HUMANITIES YORK UNIVERSITY TORONTO, ONTARIO December 2018 © Harmony Law, 2018 ABSTRACT The history of Chinese settlement in Canada is one that closely parallels the evolution of the Canadian state’s own racial and immigration policies. As policy shifted from covert and overt forms of racial exclusion and discrimination, including the Chinese Immigration Act of 1923 that attempted to ban immigration from China altogether, to the introduction of an official multicultural policy and a points system that admitted prospective immigrants based upon their academic and economic credentials, the portrayal of Chinese Canadians has centred on two predominant stereotypes: the Yellow Peril and the Model Minority. While it is easy to retroactively assume that the Yellow Peril discourse has been superseded by that of the Model Minority – particularly in light of Canada’s official multiculturalism policy, the increased economic and social capital of Chinese Canadians, and China’s own recent economic boom – this dissertation argues instead that both discourses have co-existed since the beginning of Chinese immigration to Canada, and continue to do so today. Using a combined examination of Chinese Canadian history and life writing, I argue that the Model Minority discourse is not a recent phenomenon; rather, it is an example of the complex relationship between external interpellation by mainstream Canadian society, and the agency and affective performance of Chinese immigrants and their descendants. While the Model Minority discourse has been used as a tool to maintain the Eurocentrism of mainstream Canadian society by placing Asian immigrants, including Chinese, upon a pedestal in contrast to other racialized minorities, it has also found footing in the desire of Chinese Canadian communities to be accepted and acknowledged as desirable citizens by the Canadian state and the public. ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Thank-you…to my Graduate Supervisor, Dr. Eva C. Karpinski. Throughout the long process of fulfilling all the requirements of my PhD studies, you have been a warm and patient guide and mentor. Every single time we meet to discuss my work, you are prepared with extensive notes and comments, suggestions for scholars to add to my theoretical framework, and – on more than one occasion – new books to help me start my own library of resources. Thank-you…to everyone who has taken part in various supervisory committees over the course of my PhD studies. While real-life circumstances have meant that my team of advisors has been in constant flux, I am glad to say in hindsight that this has offered me a far broader range of perspectives on my work than I could ever have imagined. My thanks, therefore, to Drs. Eve Haque and Nalini Persram, who were present for my oral comprehensive exams; Drs. Lily Cho and Sailaja Krishnamurty, who oversaw the creation of my dissertation proposal; and Dr. Leslie Sanders, who joined this committee in the process of finally putting this project to paper. Thank-you…to all the course directors and lecturers whom I worked for as a teaching assistant. You have all been amazing mentors for me: Drs. Peter Stevens, Jon Sufrin, Sailaja Krishnamurty, Andrea Medovarski, and Karen Ruddy. We have survived a great deal together – including two strikes! – and I truly hope that the friendships I have formed with each of you as colleagues can last a lifetime. Thank-you…to my family. Your decision to come to Canada from Hong Kong is what started me on this entire journey to begin with. Thank-you, also, for supporting your daughter/sister/aunt in a career path in the Humanities that falls so far outside the “Model Minority” stereotype. I love you all so much, and could not have done this without you. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract ii Acknowledgments iii Table of Contents iv Introduction 1 Research Question 7 Chapters Outline 13 Chapter 1: Canadian Multiculturalist Discourse and its Critics 20 1.1 Multiculturalism as Part of Canada’s National Imaginary 25 1.2 Critiques of Canadian Multiculturalism 31 1.3 What to Do with Multiculturalism? 47 Chapter 2: Chinese Canadian Life Writing as Subjective Acts 51 2.1 Why Life Writing? 52 2.2 Chinese Canadian Literature and Its Common Themes 59 2.3 Methodology and Data Corpus 70 Chapter 3: Interpellation and Affective Performance: Chinese Canadians in the Exclusion Era 72 3.1 The Yellow Peril and Chinese Exclusion 74 3.2 Chinese Responses to Exclusion: Chinatown Communities 85 3.3 Chinese Responses to Exclusion: Brokering Citizenship 89 3.4 Beginnings of the Model Minority? Interpellation and the Performance of Assimilability 96 Chapter 4: Chinatown Narratives: Giving Voice to the Silenced 100 4.1 Surprisingly Unwelcome: The Writing on the Wall 102 4.2 Choosing to Come, Choosing to Stay – First-Person Accounts of Exclusion 105 4.3 Growing Up Chinese, Growing Up Canadian – The Chinatown Narrative 117 4.4 Coming Around Full Circle 132 Chapter 5: Opening Policy and the Rise of the Model Minority Discourse 135 5.1 “Open” Doors – Repealing Exclusion and the Points System 136 5.2 Making It Big – Asian Success and the Model Minority Discourse 142 Chapter 6: Performing the Model Minority Discourse in Chinese Canadian Life Writing 150 6.1 Achievement in the Face of Adversity – Selecting Success 152 6.2 Changing Canada from Within – Chinese Canadians in Politics 157 Chapter 7: Collapsing from Within: Asian American and Canadian Criticisms of the Model Minority Discourse 174 7.1 Not All Asians: The Inaccuracy of the Model Minority Image 175 7.2 That’s So Asian: The Model Minority Discourse’s Reflection on Cultural Character 177 7.3 Divide and Conquer: The Model Minority Discourse as a Counter-Resistance Tactic 185 iv 7.4 Should We Be Grateful?: Negotiating the Model Minority Discourse and Its Criticisms 190 Chapter 8: Speaking Up and Breaking Rules: Refuting the Model Minority Discourse in Chinese Canadian Life Writing 192 8.1 Speaking Up Through Art – Chinese Canadian Cultural Activism 193 8.2 Breaking Under Pressure: Consequences of Model Minority Parenting in Evelyn Lau’s Runaway 200 8.3 The Price for Speaking Out: Writing as Activism in Jan Wong’s Out of the Blue 207 8.4 Refusing to Conform 214 Chapter 9: Too Much of a Good Thing: Negotiating the Yellow Peril and Model Minority Discourses in Present-Day Canada 216 9.1 Poised to Take Over: “Too Many Asians” in Canadian Schools and Neighbourhoods 218 9.2 Refusing to Apologize: Performance and Self-Actualization in Ultra Rich Asian Girls 230 Conclusion: Finding a Balance: Is It Possible? 242 Further Research and Next Steps 245 Works Cited 248 Primary Sources 248 Secondary Sources 249 v Introduction Growing up in Toronto as a Chinese Canadian immigrant from Hong Kong, I have come across no shortage of stereotypical images. In my experience, these ideas can fall into two main categories. On the one hand, some stereotypes evoke China’s vivid, millennia-old history: the serenely flowing brushstrokes of Chinese calligraphy; the crack of firecrackers and the glow of paper lanterns during the Lunar New Year; the smells and aromas of China’s plenitude of diverse cuisines; the glisten of red silk qipao encrusted with luxurious golden embroidery. Complementing this set of traditional cultural stereotypes is another that claims to represent the present-day: the hustle and bustle of accountants, real estate agents, and stockbrokers; the near- perfect grade averages coupled with prestigious degrees in the maths, sciences, engineering, or business; the plethora of wealthy immigrants from mainland China, Hong Kong, or Taiwan1 populating mansions in the suburbs or plush condominiums in the downtown core. Both sets of stereotypes combine into an imagined story of success, in which Chinese Canadians have excelled academically and economically whilst maintaining ties to their ancestral traditions: a poster child case of Canadian multiculturalist2 policy at work. Yet, this success story is not the only one that must be told. It is imperative that Canadians never forget the years of Orientalist and anti-Asian discourse and policy. Although Chinese migrant workers were desired as a cheap source of labour in the mid-19th century, their 1 I distinguish between these three locations (mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan) in particular due to their distinct cultures and histories. This distinction is in no way meant to be a comment on the political relationship between them. Furthermore, because I use “mainland China” to refer to a geographic and cultural space, any mention of “the People’s Republic of China” refers to the specific nation-state that was founded by the Chinese Communist Party in 1949. 2 I use “multiculturalist” here rather than “multicultural” to emphasize the ways in which Canada’s official multiculturalism policy functions as an ideological discourse. I also use it to refer to multiculturalism as a discourse, as opposed to multiculturalism as a mere descriptor of ethnocultural diversity. 1 racialized features, their distinctive cultural practices and values, and their apparent willingness to work under dangerous conditions with little pay earned the burgeoning Chinese Canadian community the fear and ire of the surrounding mainstream European Canadian society. Populist agitation for the sanctity of a “white Canada” and an emergent labour movement that saw Asian migrants as a threat to their goals led to Parliament’s passing several anti-Chinese laws that marked the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This included, among others, the imposition of a mandatory head tax on Chinese immigrants in 1885; the Chinese Immigration Act – known commonly as the Exclusion Act – barring most Chinese immigrants in 1923; and the continued disenfranchisement of Chinese Canadians – immigrant, naturalized, or Canadian-born – until 1947.
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