Examining Archival Representations and Descriptions of The
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UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles “Strangers from a Different Shore”: Examining Archival Representations and Descriptions of the Chinese in America Before and During the Chinese Exclusion Act (1860-1943) A thesis submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Master of Library and Information Science by Jeannie Yujing Chen 2018 © Copyright by Jeannie Yujing Chen 2018 ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS “Strangers from a Different Shore”: Examining Archival Representations and Descriptions of the Chinese in America Before and During the Chinese Exclusion Act (1860-1943) by Jeannie Yujing Chen Master of Library and Information Science University of California, Los Angeles, 2018 Professor Anne J. Gilliland-Swetland, Chair This thesis seeks to examine archival representations of Chinese in America in collections dating from before and during the Chinese Exclusion Era (1860 – 1943), both in mainstream institutional archives/special collections repositories and in smaller community- based archives. Using critical race theory as methodological framework and an interpretivist case study approach, this exploratory study shows a continued lack for transparency surrounding archival description and archival representations within such collections, an uneven distribution of resources across institutions that collect and preserve materials on early Chinese in America, the difficulties of balancing evolving terminologies and changing archival descriptive standards/technology, and the need for collaboration among bibliographers, catalogers, archivists, historians and activists in creating archival descriptions in collections about the Chinese in America. Due to the paucity of current archival studies scholarship on early Chinese in America, this work intends to highlight the presences (or lack of presence) of Chinese in America in various archives and to enhance awareness of their historical influences and contributions within archival records. Such an understudied subject poses an especially significant area of research for future professional and scholarly work in the library and information sciences field. ii The thesis of Jeannie Yujing Chen is approved. Min Zhou Gregory H. Leazer Anne J. Gilliland-Swetland, Committee Chair University of California, Los Angeles 2018 iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter 1: Introduction................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter 2: Literature Review........................................................................................................ 14 Chapter 3: Methods....................................................................................................................... 47 Chapter 4: Findings and Discussion............................................................................................. 73 Chapter 5: Conclusion and Recommendations .......................................................................... 125 Bibliography............................................................................................................................... 136 iv LIST OF TABLES Table 1: OAC search results for “Chinese American” ................................................................ 60 Table 2: OAC search results for “Chinese in America” .............................................................. 60 Table 3: OAC search results for “Chinese—United States”......................................................... 61 Table 4: OAC search results for “Chinese exclusion” …............................................................. 61 Table 5: OAC search results for “Chinaman” .............................................................................. 62 Table 6: OAC search results for “Chinese question”.................................................................... 62 Table 7: OAC search results for “anti-Chinese” .......................................................................... 63 Table 8: Facets for analysis in finding aids ................................................................................. 72 Table 9: UC Riverside, “Chinese in California Collection, 1850-1989” .................................... 75 Table 10: Stanford University, “The Leland Stanford Papers, 1841-1897”................................. 95 Table 11: CHSSC, “Chace and Evans Collection, 1865-1869” ................................................. 111 v Acknowledgments I would like to thank everyone who took their time to contribute to the completion of this thesis, in both big ways and small. The year 2018 was a particularly challenging one, and I do not know that I would be here writing this, if not for all the people in my support network, who inspired me, encouraged me, and motivated me to stay strong. Thank you to Anne Gilliland for your guidance from the very beginning. Meeting you for the first time as a prospective MLIS candidate and learning about what was possible in a program with an explicit commitment to social justice and community solidified my decision to pursue my degree here. You opened up so many formative opportunities and helped me feel supported even in the most difficult periods of my graduate studies. I also want to give heartfelt thanks to Michelle Caswell, who has been another major source of encouragement during my first year in the program and provided crucial support to so many of my academic and professional endeavors. I can never thank you both enough for your understanding, kindness and patience. Thank you to Min Zhou for your guidance and insights from the Sociology and Asian American Studies perspective, and to Gregory Leazer for offering your time at such short notice and for sharing your knowledge in bibliographic control and in cataloging and classification. Thank you to all the various individuals I met and talked with about my research. I cannot express how important these conversations were and how meaningful it was for me to be able to write on the communities that I care very much about as a second-generation American-born Chinese. Thank you to Marjorie Lee at the UCLA Asian American Studies Center for pointing me in the right direction to such rich resources on Chinese American history, and thank you to Linda Bentz, Eugene Moy, Gilbert Hom, and all the staff and volunteers at the Chinese Historical Society of Southern California for welcoming me as a volunteer and allowing me to be a part of the organization’s history and mission. Thank you to my mother, for your willingness to read my work at all hours of the day (and night), no matter how busy you were, and to Shuxian Li, for your unwavering support from my first moments choosing graduate programs to my final weeks at UCLA. Thank you all. vi Chapter 1: Introduction The history of Asian Americans offers an important lesson. In the telling and retelling of their stories, these immigrants and their descendants contribute to the creating of a larger memory of who we are as Americans. They reassure us that we can be ethnically diverse and still one people, restlessly and hopefully striving toward “a more perfect Union.” Bursting with their varied visions of America, Asian Americans rebel against the ethnocentrisms embedded in Hirsch’s enclosing cultural literacy and Schlesinger’s exclusionist view of the past. Urging us to rethink the way we think about our nation’s history, these “strangers from a different shore” tell us the time is opportune for the redefining of America.1 — Ronald Takaki, “Strangers from a Different Shore” (1998). If we do not want our forbearers to be consigned to permanent oblivion, or, at best, to what the British social historian Edward P. Thompson has called the “enormous condescension of posterity,” we must recover their voices and assert, on their behalf, their agency.2 — Sucheng Chan and K. Scott Wong, “Claiming America” (1998). Context of the Study Despite a significant trend towards locating intersections with critical race theory, postcolonial studies, and ethnic studies, archival studies literature in the United States has continuously left out a significant population from its reach: the Chinese in America. Archival materials on the Chinese in America, especially in the late 19th and 20th centuries, are fragmented and difficult to piece together, based on a search of historical and archival collections of Chinese in America. According to Yan He, who is the China Documentation Center librarian at George 1 Ronald Takaki. Strangers from a Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans, Updated and Revised Edition. Revised and Updated edition. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1998. 2 Sucheng Chan and K. Scott Wong, “Preface,” Claiming America: Constructing Chinese American Identities during the Exclusion Era, ed. K. Scott Wong and Sucheng Chan (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1998): viii. 1 Washington University libraries, “existing collections and archives now contain a wide range of topics from the early records of Chinatowns to the contemporary stories of new immigrants.”3 However, a special issue on Chinese American archives, collections, and libraries (edited by He) indicates that very few professional archivists have written or published about how such collections were acquired, arranged, processed, and/or described, even if these have been recorded in internal documents. In addition, most of the scholars who have done work with Chinese American archival collections appear to be non-archival scholars and researchers interested in the histories of underrepresented