DECONSTRUCTING GENDER BINARIES IN ASIAN AMERICAN LITERATURE
/\^ A thesis submitted to the faculty of San Francisco State University In partial fulfillment of the requirements for A AS the Degree
Master of Arts
In
Asian American Studies
by
Daphne E. Crane
San Francisco, California
August 2015 Copyright by Daphne E. Crane 2015 CERTIFICATION OF APPROVAL
I certify that I have read Deconstructing Gender Binaries in Asian American Literature by Daphne E. Crane, and that in my opinion this work meets the criteria for approving a thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree: Master of Arts:
Asian American Studies at San Francisco State University.
Dr. Eric Pido, Ph.D. Assistant Professor
Isabelle Thuy Pelaud, Ph.D. Professor
Anantha Sudhakar, Ph.D. Assistant Professor DECONSTRUCTING GENDER BINARIES IN ASIAN AMERICAN LITERATURE
Daphne E. Crane San Francisco, California 2015
This thesis critically examines the ideal that race and gender cannot intersect in Asian
American literature for fear of taking away from accurate representations of Asian
American masculinity. This thought has already been discussed by writers and theorists such as King-Kok Cheung, Elaine Kim, and Sau-ling Wong. I expand on their theories by looking deeper into the texts; such as Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior, and compare in depth newer writers such as Lan Tran. Cultural nationalist views of silence and “saving face” ignore the impact on Asian American women from their communities through themes of trauma and transgenerational trauma theories, to name a couple. I add to the arguments of Cheung, Kim, Wong, and others through showing how the complexities within the Asian American women’s community are deeper than the original idea of the intersection of race and gender.
I certify that the Abstract is a correct representation of the content of this thesis.
Chair, Thesis Committee Date PREFACE AND/OR ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank, and acknowledge the faculty and staff within the Asian American
Studies department at San Francisco State University. Without their positive words and encouragement, this process would have been more difficult than it was. I would also like to thank, and acknowledge the support from my family and friends. Their support and understanding of my disappearance from social activities and family gatherings made it easier to not stress over alienating them. And a special thank you to my committee; three of the most outstanding professors that I have ever worked with in my academic career, as well as mentors in encouraging and pushing me to steer my life in a direction that they knew would complete this process, as well as creating stepping stones for the next chapter of my life.
I fell in love with words, literature, and writing long ago. This process and the work that it took to complete this thesis helped to remind me of that love and to revisit the moments that created those initial feelings. I don’t know where my next chapter will take me, but I do know that I am more than capable of facing it head on, with pen in hand. TABLE OF CONTENTS
List of Appendices......
Introduction...... 1
Ethnic Studies Uprising ...... 3
Race, Gender, and Literature...... 5
Rewriting the Narrative...... 7
Chapter Breakdown...... 9
Chapter One: Literature Review...... 12
With Change, Comes Resistance...... 12
Racial Stereotypes and the Heroic Figure...... 14
Femininity as a Lessen...... 18
Orientalism in Literature...... 20
On the Fringe...... 23
The Mythical Feminine...... 27
Chapter Two...... 32
Representation vs. Rendition...... 32
Cultural Chauvinism...... 35
Constructive Cultural Criticism...... 38
Body Politics and Character Representation...... 40
Word Choice...... 44
The Contradiction of Frank Chin...... 48
vii Chapter Three...... 53
On Whose Authority...... 53
Western Expression and Eastern Modesty...... 57
The Upper Echelon...... 61
Centering the Decentered...... 64
Chapter Four...... 69
The Times, They are a Changin’...... 69
Through the Generations...... 75
Stigmata and Trauma...... 78
Defying the Silence...... 81
Check the Box...... 84
Conclusion...... 89
In Summation...... 89
Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing...... 92
Expansion...... 94
Appendix...... 96
Reference...... 114 LIST OF APPENDICES
Appendix Page
1. Syllabus...... 96 2. Course Calendar...... 98 3. TeachingSequence ...... 100 4. Week One Handout...... 104 5. Week Four Handout...... 108 6. Week Four Handout (2)...... 109 7. Week Six Handout...... 110 8. Week Six Handout (2)...... 112 1
Introduction
“In truth, ethnic studies began with an alternative version of American history and culture that was broadly inclusive. It started with the idea that American society consisted not only of Europeans but also of American Indians, Africans, Latinos, and Asians. It went on to propose that the histories of all of America’s people were so intertwined that to leave out any group would result in sizable silences within the overall narrative.” - Gary Y. Okihiro, Margins and Mainstreams: Asians in American History and Culture
I like to joke that my undergraduate and graduate programs made me an accidental feminist. As a literature major in my undergraduate program, I was exposed to many writers; writers who wrote about women, writers who wrote as women, and writers who wrote about how women should be. No, granted the literature that I refer to is from the European and white, Anglo Saxon American genres of the 18th and 19th centuries, I had expected to see some change in the 20th and 21st century works that I later read during my final year as an undergrad, but did not. The closest that I got as an undergrad, to literature written by people of color was that of Langston Hughes, and even that was a brief unit. By the time I started graduate school; I was set in my literature ways and kept my emphasis within literature.
I was excited to be able to turn my focus toward writers and protagonists of color;
I was not able to do this as an undergrad because of the heavy focus on the Literary
Canon, which contains a majority of white American, white European, and slave literary texts, further emphasizing a U.S. black-white racial binary construct in which race solely revolved around African American identity and white North American identity. Prior to 2
the late 1960s and early 1970s, American society was often viewed within a black-white racial binary, but during the late 1960s and early 1970s, non-black people of color joined the fight for racial equality, which in turn forced whites to acknowledge the biased system that they had created; essentially causing disorder to the American racial hierarchy. It was during that disorder that Asian American writers began to find their voice within communities of color, as well as within American mainstream society. Asian
Americans were finally being included into the American narrative, and creating their own narratives that emphasized a positive view of Asian Americans; not the negative, racial stereotypes created by White America.
In the early stages of the fight for equality for people of color, the main focus for
Asian Americans was to assert their racial equality within mainstream American society1.
Within the genre of Asian American literature, race and gender were not allowed to converge because while Asian American women were writing alongside Asian American men, the focus remained on race, and only race. This thesis involves research of publicly published Asian American literature in which the female gender is emphasized over race and the critiques of those Asian American literatures by Asian Americans that want the emphasis of race over gender. The goal is to show why intersecting race and gender within Asian American literature is something that is a continued necessity in order to create an inclusive Asian American narrative for future generations, and why doing away
1 “The stereotype operates as a model of behavior. It conditions the mass society’s perceptions and expectations,” from “Racist Love” (1972). 3
with the cultural nationalist2 views of constructing Asian American narratives, which are still influential to Asian American women writers today, will help with fostering a progressive Asian American community as a whole. To help continue with progression of the arguments against cultural nationalism, I have included a semester’s length of course curriculum and a first half-semester teaching sequence to be used to teach students about intersectionality of race and gender, and ways to rewrite the narrative that exists today.
Ethnic Studies, Uprising
Racial formation in the United States, prior to the Civil Rights era, rested upon a black and white binary that saw African Americans battling whites over equal representation for African Americans in a white society. The simplicity of the black- white binary did not include other races; such as Latino Americans, Native Americans, and Asian Americans. With the start of the Civil Rights movement came an awakening, other ethnicities joining the battle for equal representation in American society; essentially changing the racial dynamic in America from a black-white binary, into one that of multiple non-white identities. Michael Omi and Howard Winant termed this process as “racial formation theory.”
The definition given for racial formation theory by Omi and Winant is as follows:
“We define ‘racial formation’ as the sociohistorical process by which racial categories are created, inhabited, transformed, and destroyed” (55, Racial Formation in the United
2 A reference to cultural practices that form political identities, separate from local culture and identity politics. For example, Chinese American communities’ cultural practices and treatment of women differ from that of white, American cultural practices and treatment of women. The view of white, American cultural practices are often seen as “Western,” deeming it an outsider practice. 4
States: From the 1960s to the 1990s, 2nd Ed.). With the increasing numbers of non-Black ethnicities in the fight for equal representation in America, came the interethnic fight for equal footing within a multicultural society. Omi and Winant describe the Civil Rights movement as a transformation occurring in two phases. The first phase involved all non whites fighting for a racial reform. The second phase entailed interethnic movements
splintering into separate causes, forcing interethnic competition that lessened the overall strength for the overall movement for civil rights in America3.
With the demise of segregation and enforcement of integration came the want and need for people of color to be able to represent themselves in academia within an academic setting. There was now a need for students of color to want to learn about their pasts, their histories, their legacies. The late 1960s brought the longest student-led strike on the college campuses of then San Francisco State College (now San Francisco State
University) and the University of California, Berkeley. These two colleges were the locations where students of color fought for “...the right to control their instructors” (35-
36, Asian American Panethnicity: Bridging Institutions and Identities). From these campus battles arose Ethnic Studies; Latino studies, Black studies, American Indian studies, and Asian American studies. Courses were created by students, for students in order to counteract the hegemony of white-run and led academic institutionalization.
3 “...of the movement/state encounter was marked by the fragmentation of the minority movements into competing currents during the institutionalization of the racial reforms of the mid-1960s.” , from Racial Formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1990s, p. 104. 5
Students of color were not able to learn about their own histories from those who had lived it; from first-hand accounts.
Gary Y. Okihiro points out that even though students of color achieved their goals, there were still issues to contend with. On the surface, the area of Asian American studies was solid; it represented the Asian American community in how it wanted to be represented. In an essay, Okihiro refers to the fractures that lay under the surface of the
Asian American community. Okihiro writes “...Ethnic Studies and its politics should embrace the social and not racial formation, and insist that race, gender, sexuality, class, and nation are related social constructions...” (47, Ethnic Studies Research: Approaches and Perspectives). More work was needed to be done in order for a full and inclusive representation of the Asian American community can be seen.
Race, Gender, and Literature
As Ethnic Studies came to fruition, Asian Americans started writing in larger numbers. Some of the first contributors that came out of the initial Asian American literary movement were Frank Chin and Maxine Hong Kingston. Frank Chin was one of the contributors of Aiiieee! An Anthology o f Asian American Writers4 (1974), that focused on Asian American masculinity and the emasculation of Asian American men by a white,
American society5. Maxine Hong Kingston authored The Woman Warrior: Memoirs o f a
4 I will refer to the anthology as Aiiieee! from this point on. 5 From “Racist Love,” (1972). 6
Girlhood Among Ghosts6 (1975), and was thrown into the literary spotlight after its
release. The notoriety and acclaim that she garnered was from white literary critics and
the criticism that she received over her memoir were from a few Asian American writers;
specifically from Chin.
Kingston’s white critics applauded the memoir from an ethnic standpoint7,
whereas Chin’s criticism of the memoir came in the form of masculinity; Chin believed
that Kingston emasculated Asian American men in her memoir, as well as maintained
stereotypes of Asian American men. In A View From the Bottom: Asian American
Masculinity and Sexual Representation (2014), Nguyen Tan Hoang refers to the literary
anthology The Big Aiiieeeeel: An Anthology o f Chinese and Japanese American
Literature8 (1991), a 2nd edition that followed up Aiiieeeeel, and writes about it as being
“a powerful challenge to the white male literary canon and created a new voice and
visibility for Asian American writers” (4, Nguyen). The Big Aiiieeeeel and Aiiieeeeel
helped in putting Asian America into the literary community and helped to create a new
genre of literature written from the American bom Asian perspective through a cross-
cultural lens of both Asian and Asian American.
While Chin and his co-authors broke ground through their anthologies, they proceeded to limit the ways in which an Asian American male could be seen from a non-
Asian American viewpoint: as “male, heterosexual, American bom, and English
6 I will refer to Kingston’s novel as The Woman Warrior from this point on. See “Cultural Mis-Readings by American Reviewers” from Asian and Western Writers in Dialogue (1982). I will refer to it as The Big Aiiieeeeel from this point on. 7
speaking” (4, Nguyen). And while Nguyen praises Chin’s and others’ attempt at changing how Asian American men are viewed, as well as pointing out the limitations, he argues that “instead of seeing the associations with women and queers as stigmatizing, I suggest it is more socially and politically advantageous to advocate such an alliance as an important strategy of dismantling racism alongside heteronormativity” (5, Nguyen).
Nguyen’s argument is a positive opinion in that it allows for what Chin’s attempt does not. Intersecting race and gender can bring more experiences into the narrative, as well as solutions to an already limited view of how Asian Americans are seen.
Rewriting the Narrative
Okihiro is correct when he writes “...histories of all of America’s people [are] so intertwined that to leave out any group would result in sizable silences within the overall narratives9.” Frank Chin’s initial narrative was as close to representing all of Asian
America as possible in the late 1960s and early 1970s, but, as the times and social constructs changed, Chin’s views did not. He maintained his attacks on Asian American male representation and how they were perceived by a white America, essentially shutting the door on progress and newer narratives; Chin wanted to stick to the script that he created. Kingston and other Asian American women writers upheld the ideals of progressive activists, while Chin took upheld the old standard of patriarchy; the same
“standard” that he once fought against. The words from Kingston and other Asian
American women writers no longer focus on race, they bring in all aspects and identities
9 Gary Y. Okihiro, Margins and Mainstreams: Asians in American History and Culture. 8
that they feel represent them, and use the blank pages before them to tie in the new less important aspect of their Asian identities with the more important and dominant identities that make up an Asian American woman in America during the 21st century.
The erasure of women in the Asian American community is not an exclusive view that applies only to Asian American women writers; it is an inclusive ideal that affects
Asian American women everywhere. Helen Zia is a prominent Asian American activist, notably for her participation in ensuring justice following the racist murder of Vincent
Chin10, and author of “From Nothing, a Consciousness” (2000) was well aware of the complexities of her race as a Chinese American woman in America and her gender within a Chinese American household. When thinking of her racial identity, Zia writes “...I was someone living in the shadows of American society, struggling to find some way into a portrait that was firmly etched in white and, occasionally, black. And there were plenty of reminders that I wasn’t relevant” (4). Zia continues to write that her high school friends urged her to choose sides: white or black. Zin being told to choose by her friends goes back to the black-white racial binary, but as it came time for Zia to pursue higher education, she was forced to contend with her gender.
The pushback that Zia received from her father in terms of going to college was that of Old World thought, she could go to college, but it had to be close to home because of the idea that unmarried daughters needed to stay home until they were married. Once
10 Vincent Chin was a Chinese American man who was killed by two white men in Detroit. The two murderers were overheard accusing Chin of being the reason why auto workers were losing their jobs, which was in reference to the automation of making cars in Japan. The two murderers either could not, or chose not to discern the difference in ethnicity of Chin, from that of Japanese ethnicity. Because of the lack of hate crime laws at the time of Chin’s murder, the two murderers were fined a small amount and never had to spend a night in jail. 9
again adding to the pressure Zia felt from the Three Obediences of old worldliness and her Americaness: “I was caught between two conflicting Asian ideals. The Three
Obediences demanded subservience from females, but the primary of education taught me to seek advancement through study. My American side told me to heed my own call”
(13, “From Nothing, a Consciousness”). Zia’s willingness to take a stand against her father’s Old World ideals was the start of her transformation as an Asian American woman. And as other Asian American woman sought out their own gender identity, the movement of gender differences within the Asian American community started to build.
Zia’s experience highlights the idea of “either/or.” She, as well as Kingston, can be an Asian American and argue and fight for Asian American recognition, but not an
Asian American woman arguing and fighting for Asian American women’s rights. I am not arguing that Chin’s claims of stereotyping against Asian American men is not valid, because it is most certainly valid. I am arguing, however, that Chin’s fight is not the only fight that is necessary for the Asian American community and that is because of the complexities that are involved within any community.
Chapter Breakdown
Chapter One is the literature review. In this chapter I touch upon the scholarly works that are useful and important in adding to, upholding, and arguing my thesis statement: Asian American women writers must be allowed to write without a required racial stipulation because in doing so, all other social issues that Asian American women face are ignored and will have an effect on an Asian American woman’s day-to-day life, 10
as well as those that she interacts with. Chapter Two is the breakdown of the debate that surrounded around Kingston’s memoir and Chin’s criticism of her memoir. I take the accusations from Chin and explain why they’re incorrect, or not as detrimental as Chin would like the Asian American community to believe. I use another criticism of
Kingston’s memoir to show where Chin’s criticism was erroneous, as well as Chin’s own works to show the hypocrisy of criticism that he held for Kingston’s novel. Chapter
Three is about the feminist ideal that surrounds Kingston’s novel, as well as feminist ideals that came from novels published before and after Kingston’s memoir.
I do this to highlight the standard criticism of Asian American women writers and the arguments as to why the criticism is valid in the eyes of the critics. I then transition into the necessity of Asian American women writers using the literary platform as a way to heal from many types of trauma they may have faced. Chapter Four touches on the theory of transgenerational trauma, how one thing that happens with one generation can travel and affect the next generation, sometimes unknowingly and that to prevent such traumas to become transgenerational, Asian American women will need to release traumatic pressure through writing without judgement from others. I use Lan Tran as an example because the abuse that she experienced at the hands of her father has affected her over the years and in the relationships that she has had with others. I believe that
Tran’s experience exemplifies my own situation, as well as many other women in the
Asian American community. Not being able to discuss events in my family’s past has 11
taken a toll on me as an individual. Not being able to openly talk to my mother about our relationship has also taken a toll on me. So, I write. 12
Chapter One: Literature Review
With Change, Comes Resistance
I argue in this thesis that Kingston’s portrayal of her mother, as well as herself, is a way to change the passiveness of Asian American women. That Kingston’s memoir is a new, more modem format in which women in the Asian American community and literature can be portrayed as something other than passive. This is where I believe that
Chin has the biggest issue with Kingston’s feminist views. To empower women, not just in the Asian American community, takes away from the power that men wield over women. While Chin argues for racial equality, he continues to maintain the social ideology that men are stronger, better, and more competent than women. That is also the focus of thesis: my intent with this thesis is to examine the push to “save face11” within the Asian American women writers community from a patriarchal societal norm, and the negative result that comes from forcing women writers to either remain silent, or write from a perspective that is not their own. I will be looking at Maxine Hong Kingston’s The
Woman Warrior as the main focus when comparing the past criticism from male critics like Chin, and then move into more recent works by Asian American women writers; works that have changed in terms of the expansion of social issues that Asian American women face in the 21st Century, as opposed to the 20th Century.
11 To create an environment that positively reinforces a community or family’s reputation at the expense of an individual within the community or family. 13
The complexities that women face in the 21st Century are vast since the days of feminism marches. The complexities go past chauvinism, past a woman’s place being in the kitchen, past a woman having to stay at home to raise the kids and keep house while the man goes out and brings home the money. The unfortunate side-effect of women having more freedoms and equality in American society is more gender bias in the workplace, more sexism in the media, and more anger towards women from men who believe that the days of the 1950s never should have changed. These complexities relate to the Kingston-Chin through showing that from the 1980s into current times, Asian
American women face more than just racial issues; they face other non-racial issues, on top of racial issues. All of these issues that Asian American women face are too much to choose just one. Asian American women will need to choose the issues that they see foremost affecting them, and racial issues may not be on top of that list. There are men in this world who think they are better than women, Frank Chin is an example. There are men in this world who still think that women should remain quiet, and accept their place in society as second-class citizens; taking a backseat to men in America. These views of women and their “place” are not solely an American culture viewpoint; these views are also in Asian American culture.
Chin’s push for heroism, heroics, and men being warriors is not just one viewpoint from Chin, it is a viewpoint that most Asian cultures share. This idea of warriors and strength is easily relatable to Chin’s arguments toward Kingston’s memoir, but it was also the Asian American culture that emphasized his viewpoints. Chin, and 14
other Asian American men grow up hearing stories of heroic lore about ancestors, deities, and Gods. Asian American boys are pushed to represent this kind of heroism in order to bring honor to their families. It is also this ideal that has hurt Asian American girls and how they are viewed later on as Asian American women. Asian American women and girls are not seen as heroic, they are not seen as warriors that can save a family and hold them up in a positive light. But that does not mean that they are not heroes. Through their writing, Asian American women can be heroes to other women for finally voicing and making public the negatives that Asian American women face. Kingston was just that, a hero of sorts in that she was bold enough to write about the topic of silence, knowing that other Asian American women and girls would be able to relate because they themselves were forced to remain silent in their own families.
Racial Stereotypes and the Heroic Figure
King-Kok Cheung, in “The Woman Warrior versus The Chinaman Pacific: Must a Chinese American Critic Choose between Feminism and Heroism?” (1990), addresses the conflict of politics with gender in Chinese American literature. Cheung argues that relationships between the genders must be closely examined in order to address problems that arise when race and gender intersect. Cheung’s main focus is on Kingston’s The
Woman Warrior and the criticism that she received from Asian American male critics, specifically Chinese Americans. Cheung is correct when she writes “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 15
confronting the dialects of racial stereotypes and nationalist reactions or, above all, without wrestling with diehard notions of masculinity and femininity in both Asian and
Western cultures” (234). Chin’s accusation against Kingston of maintaining the emasculation of Chinese American men in her memoir is erroneous in that Chinese immigrant history in America is solely about how Chinese men were portrayed. For
Kingston to write a memoir that surrounds around a Chinese American family, and that family’s connections back to China, the stereotypes that Chin accuses Kingston of following in essence, cannot be helped because they are events that helped to shape the
Chinese American narrative. Kingston’s use of this narrative shows an inclusion of all
Chinese narratives.
Frank Chin’s criticism and reaction toward Kingston’s The Woman Warrior is proof of this. Chin accuses Kingston of perpetuating the stereotype of Asian American men as effeminate, weak non-heroes. Chin, himself a Chinese American writer, became stuck on the idea of stereotyping and refused to see past his own insecurities, which in turn blinded him against the overall merits of Kingston’s memoir. Cheung makes a great point when she writes “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” (235). Chin may not know that he is upholding patriarchal standards; putting the wants and needs of men before women. His arguments against Kingston’s memoir comes in a way that dismisses her want and need to come to terms with her own trauma that she 16
faced while growing up in a Chinese American family, in America. Chin’s critique was not about the Asian American race, it was about Chinese American men. If Chin were to make it about Asian American race, he would have to find a way to include women as well, but when looking at his previous writings, the mainstay in them is the appearance of the Chinese man; how he appears to white America and how he views white America.
In “Racist Love,” co-authored by Chin and fellow Chinese American writer
Jeffery Paul Chan, the issues of race and supremacy is discussed in a way that elaborates
Chin’s views of how he believes Asian American men have been viewed. His, and
Chan’s idea of “racist love” is equal to that of choosing the lesser of two evils. Both argue that while Asian Americans are not on the top of the racial hierarchy12, they are above the other non-white races; i.e. African Americans, Latinos, Native Americans, etc.
(66, “Racist Love”), and therefore are the safest and easiest to control. Chin takes the idea of “racist love” and uses it as a weapon against the stereotypes of Asian American masculinity, or lack thereof. At one point in their essay, both Chin and Chan negate womanhood and women13. They go even further in negating the essence of being a woman when they write “The mere fact that four of the five American-born Chinese-
American writers are women reinforces this aspect of the stereotype” (68, “Racist
12 The order in which a diverse population is created with racial preference going toward whites first, and African Americans last. Asian Americans are for the most part above African Americans in terms of preference and privilege, but continually unequal to whites. From Claire Jean Kim’s “The Racial Triangulation of Asian Americans.” “The with stereotype of the Asian it is unique in that 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’.” p. 68. 17
Love”). It is this statement that shows Chin’s main argument is not that of racial differences, but that in comparing Chinese men to women is a worse-than-racism issue.
This is where Chin’s misogynistic qualities come to the surface, because Chin’s
“fact” was not a representation of Asian male masculinity, it was merely a coincidence.
Chin argues that Asian American men should be given back their manhood by whites in
American society, that in doing so, it will put an end to the dominant-submissive dynamic. Simplified, Chin is arguing to be equal to whites, but more specifically, white men. Chin’s whole argument with racial supremacy is focused on manhood, men, and male sexuality. “Racist Love” slowly transitions from the Asian-white dynamic, to the
Chinese man-woman dynamic and how Chinese women should not write or participate in
Asian American literature because they are ruining the field through their complacency of white, American culture14.
Chin continually chastises white America for excluding immigrant Chinese and
Chinese Americans within the American narrative, erasing Chinese culture. He is hypocritical in this because the women writers that are attacked in “Racist Love,” and accused of cultural erasure, are being welcomed into the American literature community without actually erasing their culture; the novels written by Lowe, Wong, Lee, and Song include Chinese culture and specifically the culture that they themselves know as individuals. The authors in no way replace Chinese culture for white culture; their stories
14 “Of these five, four—Pardee Lowe, Jade Snow Wong, Virginia Lee, and Betty Lee Sung—confirm the popular stereotypes of Chinese-Americans, find Chinese-America repulsive, and don’t identify with it.” p.68. 18
are of Chinese America. These writers are writing with a woman’s perspective, would
Chin still feel the way that he did if the writers were men? Most likely not because according to the bulk of what Chin (and Chan) have written in “Racist Love,” the importance of men and manhood in Chinese America is more important than that of women’s stories in Chinese America.
Going back to Cheung, the “feminine” as Cheung refers to does not relate back to
Chin’s argument with emasculation, it is more to do with feminism; women being recognized as women, the trials that women face, the strife that women have to deal with in their personal and professional lives. The question remains as to why is it that Asian
American women who write are chastised by Asian American men when they feel that they are being portrayed as what they see as weak, feminine, or stereotyped. Cheung is asking why Asian American women writers have to adhere to a patriarchal society within the Asian American community just to “save face”.
Femininity As a Lessen
“Racist Love” wasn’t the only piece that Chin wrote, he is also a fiction writer, and had a hand in Aiiieeeee! The Big Aieeeel, the first Asian American literature anthologies. Chin authored such stories like “Food for all His Dead,” (1972) “Yes, Young
Daddy,” (1975) and plays titled “The Chickencoop Chinaman” (1971) and “The Year of the Dragon” (1974). The main focus of Chin’s work in this thesis will be on two fictional pieces, “Food for all His Dead” and “Yes, Young Daddy” and how he incorporates 19
women into his stories as a way to show his viewpoint of Chinese American women.
Another aspect of criticism on Kingston’s memoir was the cultural accuracy within her memoir, but more specifically her representation or depiction of the story of Fa Mu Lan15.
Chin also criticizes Kingston’s depictions of the way that Chinese Americans are portrayed in her memoir, but more specifically how the men are portrayed. In “Food for all His Dead,” Chin specifically shows the woman in the story as a stereotypical immigrant Chinese; improper English, thick Chinese accent, and fawning over the idea of an American bom Chinese boy. Chin writes her into the story as idolizing the protagonist, while at the same time, dismissing the Chinese culture himself.
Kingston’s father does not have much of an identity in her memoir; the main protagonists are Kingston and her mother. Kingston’s choice to put herself and her mother in the primary roles of The Woman Warrior is not an attempt at masculine erasure or emasculation, it is an effort to show and highlight the complexities of being a girl and woman in a Chinese American family. It is an effort to highlight the gender silence that has plagued not only the Chinese American culture, but the Asian American culture overall. While Kingston’s portrayal of her mother is as an overbearing, often times crazy and overly intrusive woman, she is also show to be the opposite of how Asian American women were expected to act within the Asian American community.
Chin is also making the argument that women’s lives are less than. When looking at the concept and actions of bullying and abuse, the one being bullied or abused, without
15 Fa Mu Lan is known throughout Chinese culture as a heroine who helped to save China from the Huns. 20
an outlet to release all of the feelings and emotions that build up, can in turn become a bully or abuser themselves16. This is what Chin did to Kingston. In his fight to gain a masculine identity from white America, he put his anger and negative emotions into his conflicts with women. He took his experiences as an Asian American man in white
America, and used them as a way to suppress Asian American women. Frank Chin became the epitome of what he was fighting against.
Chin was not the only one to make the cultural inaccuracy against Kingston.
Cynthia Sau-ling Wong looked closely at Kingston’s interpretation of the Fa Mu Lan
story, but in Wong’s critique titled “Kingston’s Handling of Traditional Sources,” (1991)
she is more into pointing out the errors, and then explaining why she thinks Kingston wrote the story the way that she did. Wong made a negative into a positive, while in
Chin’s “The Most Popular Book in China,” he does nothing but continue the negative viewpoints of Kingston’s memoir. Unlike Wong, Chin does not try and explain why
Kingston wrote her version the way that she did. In doing so, Chin was able to build up
an arsenal to attack not only Kingston’s creative ability, but other Asian American women writers’ creative ability as well.
Orientalism in Literature
Chin used his view of Kingston’s inaccuracies as reasons why Asian American women should not be writers; they will just get it wrong. As Wong points out in her
16 From “Bullying Definition.” 21
criticism of Kingston’s memoir, is that there are many versions of the story of Fa Mu
Lan, each written in the way that the author envisioned. And while the many versions that
Wong points out are different, they still have the same morals and ethics: woman honors
family via heroic actions and returns home to continue the tradition of Confucianism17
and filial piety18. Jennifer Griffiths and Viet Thanh Nguyen both discuss the female body,
female identity, and the politics that intertwine between the Asian American community
and women’s identity.
Chin’s summation of what he believes to be “The Most Popular Book in China”
(1984) is “The autobiography of a white woman bom and raised in a French hand laundry
in south China. The meek, sycophantic nature of the French of her childhood clashed
with the aggressive, individualistic nature of the un-revolutionized Chinese, who
embraces her as one of themselves” (6, “The Most Popular Book in China”). The story
that Chin refers to is about a French woman19, living in China, and rewriting the story of
Joan of Arc20 in a way that fellow French people found to be slanderous to the reputation
and history of Joan of Arc. Chin highlights the different reactions by the French and
Chinese: the Chinese hailed The Unmanly Warrior as “her personal experience was
authentically French and her unique understanding of both the French and the view of life
brings the Chinese the closest, most human understanding of the French ever produced in
the Chinese language” (7, “The Most Popular Book in China”).
17 Teaching system created from the philosophy held by Confucius, 551-479 BCE. 18 A Confucius philosophy in which elders’ wants and needs are put above an individual’s. 19 The Unmanly Warrior by Smith Mei-jing, as discussed in “The Most Popular Book in China.” 20 A French heroine during the Hundred Year’s War between France and England. 22
Chin sees the reaction by the Chinese, about Mei-jing’s story, as innocent; that it allows the Chinese to gain an insight into the French culture, something that the Chinese would not regularly be able to do. Chin reversed the script in a way that shows forgiveness from the Chinese perspective because it shows the Chinese in a positive light.
But, as Chin’s essay continues, he does not allow Kingston the same leeway. Chin claims that “None of the historical facts and legendary heroes and touchstones violates beyond recognition by Maxine Hong Kingston...for white approval and entertainment are anywhere near as obscure and esoteric to the Chinese as Joan of Arc is to the French”
(11, “The Most Popular Book in China”).
If Chin dismisses the gravity of historical and cultural error in Kingston’s book, then why does he take such a hard line against her and her memoir: because “People who know nothing about China, about Chinese-Americans, the railroad, the opera and who don’t want to know more than they know” will use Kingston’s memoir as the authority on those subjects (11, “The Most Popular Book in China”). Chin sees white readers who have read Kingston’s novel as not smart enough to know or decipher Kingston’s words as to mean something other than what was on the memoir’s surface. Chin is simply excusing the Chinese viewing Mei-jing’s story as a learning opportunity, but chastises the white viewing of Kingston as a drastic and problematic because of what could happen with the white view of Asians. Chin’s views are unfair to whites’ abilities to think critically and
Kingston’s ability to write, albeit similar to that of Mei-jing, yet still inexcusable by
Chin. 23
On the Fringe
In Margins and Mainstreams by Gary Y. Okihiro, he references the idea of the
“margin21”. Okihiro calls for a push of Asian Americans to come from out of the shadows, into the mainstream of American society; to be equals. Like Okihiro, Nguyen
Tan Hoang addresses the marginality of Asian Americans from the white community, but also addresses the marginality of Asian Americans, by Asian Americans; i.e. Frank Chin toward the non-masculine. In A View From the Bottom: Asian American Masculinity and
Sexual Representation, Hoang focuses on Asian American men and sexuality and how the two are portrayed within visual media, with the main objective of reconfiguration of male Asian Americaness juxtaposed with the idea of “bottomhood” (Hoang).
Throughout the book, the idea of “bottomhood” stems from the practice of gay sex, with one partner being the dominant (top) and the other being the submissive
(bottom). When applying the dominant-submissive toward Asian American men, they are portrayed in the majority as the bottom; or submissive. The idea of being submissive ties into the portrayal of Asian American men because of the idea of “Yellow Peril22,” a fear that came into fruition at a time in American history that saw more Asian American men than women; creating a fear that those Asian American men would turn toward white women as way to relive their sexual needs (4, Margins and Mainstreams).
21 The outer fringes of society in which minorities such as people of color, gays and lesbians, and women are placed within a social construct. 22 “Yellow Peril” is the idea that Asian American men’s sexuality is something to be threatened by in terms of losing white women to Asian American men, limiting the dating pool for white men. 24
Hoang examines the depiction of a Filipino houseboy in the movie titled
“Reflections in a Golden Eye.” When Hoang writes “Reassessing the Filipino houseboy’s bottom agency forces us to interrogate the limits of contemporary minoritarian politics and scholarship in their inability to accommodate subjects who deviate from conventional social and political agendas, in particular, those who forge alliances that privilege marginalized feminine values in the place of legitimated masculine ideals” (73). In order to erase the gender binary in popular culture, the representation of the Filipino houseboy needs to go past the surface or first-impression mindset; that the idea of masculinity is one-sided and does not include any possibility that includes outliers from the image of white and male. Hoang’s term of “bottomhood” doesn’t refer specifically to homosexuality; it also refers to the differences within Asian American men. Not all Asian
American men can be the heroic sun Gods that Chin references in “Racist Love.” Chin’s view of what an Asian American man should be is discounts not only the mass amounts of Asian American men in America, but it also discounts Chin himself because he was never a Bruce Lee23 or Chow Yun Fat24. Hoang’s use of Chin as a reference shows a comparison of the different varieties of Asian American male identities; gay, straight, masculine, effeminate, muscular, skinny, etc.
In Asian North American Identities: Beyond the Hyphen (2004), a collection of essays is profiled as “the complexities, the struggles and layering of various facets of one’s identity, which are shaped by the history and the politics of one’s imaginary and
23 Bruce Lee was a popular Chinese American martial artist who became popular through movies and television. Chow Yun Fat is a popular Chinese martial artist who can be seen in action movies worldwide. 25
adopted homeland(s), as well as the importance of memory, myth, and are in the construction of self’ (2, Ty and Goellnicht). Both Eleanor Ty and Donald C. Goellnicht, as editors, chose essays for their book based on the idea of the other, or “not being part of the dominant white culture in different ways” (3) During the time of Frank Chin’s The
Big Aiiieee, the idea of “other” was limited; as stated above, in order to make “a concerted effort to distinguish Asian American studies from Asian studies as part of the strategy of ‘claiming America’” (5, Ty and Goellnicht). And while Asian North American
Identities: Beyond the Hyphen touches on intersectionality of the multilayered identities that an Asian American can have, there is very little in the collection of essays that focus on gender identity.
One essay in Ty and Goellnicht’s collection that has a main focus on gender is
“‘To Hide Her True Self: Sentimentality and the Search for an Intersubjective Self in
Nora Okja Keller’s Comfort Woman” by Patricia P. Chu. Chu writes “A writer’s attempt to do justice to the suffering of women in a particular Asian society is all too likely to reaffirm existing stereotypes of Asian countries as the opposites of an enlightened, feminist West where women have complete freedom and equality,” (62) meaning that
Asian American women authors have to choose between writing how they see an Asian
American character and what they represent, or their perceived representation by non-
Asian audiences. Simplified, women authors cannot write about Asian America as they see it out of fear of continuing the stereotype of Asian America by non-Asian Americans.
This idea of writing about “otherness” is necessary in order to include gender into Asian 26
American literature, not just “frequently focused...aspects of Asian American life that are perceived as ‘universal’: family conflicts, the desire to better oneself through work and education, and the individual’s struggles, American-style, against injustices that sometimes include racism and individual prejudice” (62, Chu). Not everything that happened in Kingston’s novel happened in all Chinese American families. Not everything that happened in Chin’s short stories happened in all Chinese American families. But that is not to say that the events in both Chin’s stories and Kingston’s novel are not relatable on some level. Readers get to interpret what they read; they get to decide if something applies to them. It is not Chin’s job to make sure that every piece written by an Asian
American woman is relatable to both men and women.
In “Racist Love,” Chin’s claim that Jade Snow Wong’s Fifth Chinese Daughter was more about American identity and less about Chinese American identity is not completely inaccurate; Wong’s novel is a memoir that tells her story of being a Chinese
American woman in America. The key words are “woman in America.” Wong was not denying her Chinese culture in her memoir; instead she was highlighting the lack of acknowledgement of a woman in an Asian American household. Feminism has been highlighted as a Western ideal25; as something that only white people care about. But, in
Wong’s memoir, feminism is a major theme throughout: Wong has very little to no support from her family, and therefore must achieve her goals of success and progress from youth to adulthood on her own.
25 As seen in the images painted through the words of Chinese immigrant poets from Marlon Horn’s Songs of Gold Mountain: Cantonese Rhymes from San Francisco Chinatown(1987). 27
Leslie Bow covers Wong’s individualistic and feminist actions in her chapter titled “The Triumph of the Prefeminist Chinese Woman?: Incorporating Racial
Difference through Feminist Narrative26.” Bow suggests “that Asian American literary texts may also replicate normative American values (and apply them to Asia); in this, the
‘subversion’ of my title thus takes on a multiple meanings by situating Asian American literature within and against national narratives” (20). Asian American novels do not have to follow the ideals and beliefs of Old World Confucianism; Asian American women writers don’t have to write with restrictions in how women can and should be in novels.
The Mythical Feminine
To continue to write in a way that Chin is calling for in order to not continue stereotypes, which is his main argument against Wong’s memoir, maintains a patriarchy not only in the Asian American writer’s community, but also in fictional novels as well.
It is bad enough that women in the Asian American community are expected to toe the line, such as Helen Zia did prior to college, but to be expected to do the same within a creative environment defeats the purpose of creativity: creating something through imagination and/or originality. By going against what Chin is calling for, Asian American women writers are able to combine all identities that they have. In Wong’s case, she is able to blend her Chinese culture with American culture and create another identity that is better suited for her.
26 Betrayal and Other Acts o f Subversion: Feminism, Sexual Politics, Asian American Women’s Literature (2001). 28
There is a crucial statement that Bow makes, and this is “suggesting that marginal groups come to delineate domestic national interests, these critics establish a theoretical basis for the centrality of the oppressed that does not merely respond to a desire for pluralist inclusion” (20). Asian American men like Chin, who are fighting for masculine recognition by American society, are focused solely on that recognition. The theories constructed by Chin call for inclusion, but inclusion for that one and only issue. Chin, and others who argue for masculine recognition, are creating an exclusive club of sorts that only allows a select few. Chin’s fight for recognition as a “manly” man is premised under the label of race and ethnicity, but the realistic view of Chin’s fight is surrounded around gender more than it is race and ethnicity.
A question that Bow asks is “Does one favor a deconstructive stance that dismantles gender as a category of difference or a stance located in identity politics that maintains the concept of gender difference and works from and within it?” (21) Where are Asian American women writers supposed to be on a sociopolitical scale? Are they supposed to be the ones who debunk any and all myths and stereotypes that American society has constructed for them, or are they supposed to keep up with the myths and stereotypes in order to use them as an arsenal of sorts? I believe that Asian American women can do both.
They can use the arsenal of myths and stereotypes as examples in the erroneous way that American society sees women. The same can be applied to the Asian American women community. Stories like Wong’s and Kingston’s take the created myths and 29
stereotypes within the Chinese American community and show readers where the myths and stereotypes are wrong. Neither Wong nor Kingston, in their memoirs, gives into the passiveness that is expected of them. Wong’s dismissiveness came in the form of
acquiring a college degree and creating her own space, all the while staying single;
cultural nationalist expectations were for Wong to give up her “foolish” dreams and
marry in order to maintain tradition, not for love.
Kingston’s dismissiveness came in the form of her memoir. Silence of women in
Asian American culture is another form of giving into being submissive; another
expectation of Asian American women in Asian American culture. Instead of
internalizing the craziness that Kingston grew up around, and not the craziness of her
culture but the craziness of her mother, she wrote about it and she did not hold back
either.
There are reasons why race, gender, and creativity need to be a continued
discussion; the trauma, or effects of trauma do not disappear if gender is erased from the
narrative. The effects of trauma do not disappear with the enforcement of silence women.
And the effects of trauma do not disappear as family lineage and history grows. Imposing
silence, enacting erasure, and ignoring the effects on future generations only leads to a
build-up of emotions, frustration, and even anger; with nowhere to put it. An example of
transgenerational trauma can be found within the pages of Kingston’s memoir, “The
mementos of grievances are on her back because the Chinese American warrior is 30
fighting against hurt she cannot see—prejudices that make her American...” (169,
‘“Don’t Tell’: Imposed Silences in The Color Purple and The Woman Warrior”, 1983).
In her memoir, Kingston shows readers the history behind her mother’s behavior.
She shows how her mother was expected to be and act a certain way, which in turn was transferred to Kingston because she is a girl. Kingston is expected, in her memoir, to uphold the expectations of women and girls within the Chinese culture. The pressure to conform becomes too much for her, and at one point uses another girl as an outlet to vent her frustration27 through abusive and bullying tactics; similar to how Chin treated
Kingston and other Asian American women writers referenced in his article “Racist
Love.” Chin’s claims that the women writers that he refers to in his article are denying their culture, or exaggerating it, can be countered in the introduction to Articulate
Silences: Hisaye Yamamoto, Maxine Hong Kingston, and Joy Kogewa (Reading Women
Writing) (1993). Cheung writes “Until we cease reading from the exclusive vantage point of the hegemonic culture and stop reducing diversity to uniformity, we will not be ready to venture ‘beyond ethnicity’” (21).
There are differences in any culture, differences that include gender and the differences between the two. These differences need to be the starting point for why cultural identity norms need to be loosened. If Chin’s idea of cultural representation were to remain in-tact, then other identities will continue to be denied, tying into Chin’s own denial of Asian American masculinity by the American society. I believe that in order for
27 “A Song for a Barbarian Reed Pipe”, p. 163-209 31
the causes fought by Asian American men for equal representation in American to
prevail, they need to collectively work with Asian American women to dismantle the
internal hegemonic ideals of Asian America first; this will allow for a solid, less
distracting and splintered cause. In doing so, Asian Americans can provide a united front. 32
Chapter Two
Representation vs. Renditon
In her essay titled “The Woman Warrior versus the Chinaman Pacific: Must a
Chinese American Critic Choose between Feminism and Heroism?” (1990), King-Kok
Cheung asks a very important question within the realm of Asian American literature; “Is it not possible for Chinese American men to recover a cultural space without denigrating or erasing ‘the feminine’?” (242) Cheung’s question is important within the genre of
Asian American literature because of the critique of Asian American women writers and the works that have been produced since the inception of Asian American literature.
Kingston’s Woman Warrior contains only five chapters: “No Name Woman,”
“White Tigers,” “Shaman,” “At the Western Palace,” and “A Song for a Barbarian Reed
Pipe.” The five chapters combine tales and memories of Kingston’s life as a child, and as one of the few Chinese Americans where she grew up. Kingston’s talent as a writer allows her to combine Chinese folklore with Chinese American life in America. In the first chapter titled “No Name Woman,” Kingston tells a story about a female relative, her aunt, who had killed herself by drowning in the family well (3, The Woman Warrior).
Kingston recounts the history of her aunt and her death juxtaposed with Chinese cultural and old village tradition. In doing so, Kingston is able to give readers who may not have grown up in a Chinese household an insider view. She allows outsiders into a culture without knowing how the outsiders would use this information or appropriate the memoir culturally. 33
Kingston sums up her “White Tigers” chapter when she writes “This was one of the tamer, more modem stories, mere introduction. My mother told others that followed
swordswomen through woods and palaces for years. Night after night my mother would talk-story until we fell asleep” (19). The story that Kingston tells in “White Tigers” is a
different version of the story of Fa Mu Lan, a version told by her mother and retold by
Kingston herself. “White Tigers” became one of the chapters of Kingston’s that was the
most contested due to its supposed inaccuracies28. But the tale that Kingston writes about
in her chapter is just a different variation told to her by her mother. Kingston’s retelling
of her mother’s version is the same as the passing of oral histories down through
generations, or “talking story.” Kingston’s version portrays Fa Mu Lan as a strong,
determined woman warrior fulfilling what she saw as her duty in order to save face for
her family during war time. “Shaman” focuses mainly on Kingston’s mother and her life
in China.
Kingston details her mother’s stories when she was in nursing school, when she
purchased a servant, and the differences that her mother sees in the two countries of
China and America. The entire chapter leads into the next chapter, “The Western Palace”
in that it’s an introduction of the mother’s sister and shows the differences in a woman
assimilated to American culture and a woman from Chinese culture. The majority of the
chapter details Kingston’s mother adamant about bringing her sister to her husband, to
force her sister to stand up for herself and demand her husband return to her.
28 See “Kingston’s Handling of Traditional Chinese Sources” (1991) 34
The chapter concludes with the mother’s sister slowly losing her mind and her mental deterioration can be interpreted in many ways. Was it because of the difficulties of being in America, being away from a country and culture that she was used to? Was it from being denied by her husband, who chose to stay with his American wife and practice? Or was it a combination of both? Either way, the situation was too much for her sister to handle and process. “The Western Palace” shows the distinct differences in how culture can affect one’s ability to stand up for their self. The mother emulates the standard feminist, direct way of doing things; whereas the sister stays with the subservient, meekness that Chinese cultural nationalists believe a woman should follow.
“A Song for a Barbarian Reed Pipe” combines Chinese cultural lore with modem day events when Kingston was a child. The chapter deals with the themes of silence and strangeness. Kingston starts off writing about her silences as a child, and the silences around her. It is in this chapter that we find out that Kingston’s mother was slowly conditioning Kingston to be the opposite of the Chinese woman; through her stories, she was encouraging her daughter to be anything but silent.
Kingston’s memoir was often reviewed and exotified through the lens of
Orientalism by non-Asian Americans (“Cultural Mis-Readings by American Reviewers”,
1982). But non-Asian American reviewers were not the only ones to misunderstand
Kingston’s memoir. One Asian American critic, Frank Chin, for example, made similar critiques of Kingston’s memoir, emphasizing the claim that Kingston’s memoir was not an accurate portrayal of Chinese culture due to the ways she portrayed Chinese men. 35
Chin and other Asian American male critics argued that Kingston was propagating the stereotypes that they and cultural nationalists were trying to negate through their own writing and stories29. Ironically, more attention was given to the negative critics like Chin than to non-Asian American critics. The end result of Chin’s views on Kingston’s memoir is a reminder of continuance of Kingston’s mother’s attempt at raising her daughter the opposite of what cultural nationalists wanted her to be.
Cultural Chauvinism Cultural nationalism is the in-between ideal or concept based on traditions continually followed throughout a nation’s existence. Applying this concept to Asian
American literature, but more specifically to Kingston’s book, means a separation from
Chinese American cultural accuracy and gender roles or stereotypes. In other words,
Kingston’s memoir does not follow the Chinese cultural nationalist view of passiveness in Chinese women. Instead of the women portrayed in her memoir being silent and following orders of the patriarchy, they are depicted as independent and with ideas of their own that do not represent the Chinese cultural ideal. Kingston’s memoir is the opposite of cultural nationalism through the stories told by Kingston’s mother. The first example being the first chapter, instead of going along with the cultural norms of silence,
Kingston’s mother speaks about the aunt; she gives the aunt an identity.
In “Racist Love,” Chin argues that “The general function of any racial stereotype is to establish and preserve order between different elements of society, maintain the
29 See Chin’s “Racist Love” 36
continuity and growth of Western civilization, and enforce white supremacy with a minimum of effort, attention, and expense.” Both Chin and Chan are arguing that racial stereotypes were created as a way to degrade people of color to maintain subservience within the American racial hierarchy30. That argument is supported by numerous published articles, informational campaigns, and propagandized leaflets used during the
19th century in order to promote the fear of “Yellow Peril.”
Chin wanted to combat those stereotypes; but in doing so, Chin emphasized that all Asian American writers, regardless of gender must combat the stereotypes as well.
Chin wanted Asian American writers to give up creativity for accuracy, and in the process, removing the notion of what literature is; what creativity is. This battle also affects the argument for an individual being able to represent themselves or their work in that instead of producing a piece of literature that defies a type of standard, it is the standard; that piece of work becomes no different than others created before it. If Asian
American writers were to adhere to Chin’s call for cultural accuracy, then most, if not all
Asian American novels after Kingston’s memoir would be the same story, with the same characters and plotlines.
In “Racist Love”, Chin and Chan argue about language and the freedom that it allows for a person to speak on their own identity and experience; and to take away that language shows that “...he no longer is a man, but a ventriloquist’s dummy at worst and at best a parrot” (77, “Racist Love”). These thoughts on language and its use, from Chin
30 See “Racist Love” 37
and Chan, are problematic in two ways. One, Chin and Chan continue to argue about
language and culture, but from a gendered perspective. They advocate for language and
how it is used, but solely in a way that shows Asian American men as masculine, strong,
and dominant. The second problem stems from Chin and Chan’s argument in stopping
the “tongue31”, in preventing a man (or person) from speaking for themselves. Both are
arguing for the freedom to speak on and about things that they know from experience,
that taking away that freedom will in a sense force them to lose their individuality and
create monotonous voices that echo the white majority. Their argument that it is worse to
be a “ventriloquist” or “parrot” is self-righteous; especially through their assailment of
Maxine Hong Kingston and her memoir, The Woman Warrior.
Chin and Chan criticize Kingston for keeping with the American stereotype of
Chinese American men. What they fail to realize is that Kingston’s stereotypical
portrayal of male characters in her memoir is her way of expressing how she viewed the
male figures in her life while growing up. She is not parroting the white American
sentiment of Chinese American men, she is using her creative ability to help build up the
strength of female characters; it is coincidental in that male characters in her memoir are
not in the forefront of the overall narrative. Kingston is exercising her creativity in the
way that Chin and Chan call for in “Racist Love.”
“Language is a medium of culture and the people’s sensibility, including the style of manhood. Language coheres the people into a community by organizing and codifying the symbols of their own common experience. Stunt the tongue and you’ve lopped off the culture and sensibility. On the simplest level, a man, in any culture speaks for himself.” From “Racist Love.” 38
Constructive Cultural Criticism
In her chapter, Sau-ling Wong pays close attention to critics’ claims that Maxine
Hong Kingston is perpetuating stereotypes of Chinese persons and culture within her memoir The Woman Warrior. Wong herself believes that Kingston does not do what
Chin claims Kingston is doing, instead, she suggests critics should question The Woman
Warrior in a way that draws out underlying themes, delving deeper into the memoir and past the surface of the stereotype (28, Wong). Wong states that “...to strike a balance between pedagogical effectiveness and interpretive rigor is to approach the question of
‘Chineseness’ indirectly...” (28) through analysis of Chinese literature that Kingston loosely based parts of The Woman Warrior. To use an accurate version of the story of Fa
Mu Lan would be nearly impossible because “...a number of versions exist in various genres, with authors fabricating episodes and secondary characters as they see fit” (28-29,
Wong).
Because there are so many variations, it is difficult today to understand why
Kingston’s version of Fa Mu Lan was so highly criticized and seen as culturally false when compared to other versions. Wong also points out that the Fa Mu Lan chapter was never meant to be looked at as an historical accuracy or to be culturally accurate; but meant to be looked at as fiction, as just another variation on the legendary figure and story of Fa Mu Lan. Chin, Chan, and other critics of The Woman Warrior argue against
Kingston’s version of Fa Mu Lan and its cultural inaccuracies, but in the same breath, they argue that there must be a separation of cultural nationalist ideals that perpetuate the 39
stereotyping of Asian American men. This is a perplexing situation because of the want for accuracy in terms of a woman character, that in original Chinese lore is not deemed a hero, and the want for accuracy of male characters to no longer be seen as effeminate.
Maintaining stereotypes, as Chin claims, was also Kingston’s way of showing how differently culture is viewed through the generations. Cultural nationalism is passed down from generation to generation, but when incorporating an outside culture, in
Kingston’s case American culture, the stories and practices are viewed as oddities. Wong writes “Because of their nativity and upbringing, the descendants of immigrants are destined to lose touch eventually with the Chinese civilization deemed so superior by their elders; emotionally it is difficult to summon loyalty toward an ancestral family and state one has never seen; and, if for their sanity alone, the American-born cannot believe that the different ways of life they encounter daily are irreconcilable” (34). Wong points out the internal confusion that first-generation, American bom Chinese Americans face with the constant changing of cultures that they travel through on a daily basis. Frank
Chin’s emphasis of American bom Chinese American writers and their ignorance of stereotypes of Chinese America does not take into account the possibility that including such stereotypes is a way for a first-generation American bom Chinese to cope and process their cultural confusion. 40
Body Politics and Character Representation
Chin’s argument against the use of stereotypes in literature stems from a fear of continuing the views of representation, meaning, where one person is seen in a certain way, all those who come from the same category could be seen in that same way. Wong better explains this when she writes “Because writers of color face the ever-present threat of gross misreadings, as well as a tacit demand from their own groups to act as custodians and representations, such writers may feel constrained when they use material from their cultures as a point of departure” (36). Asian American writers can begin their stories with examples of the culture that they know, and at some point, the direction changes and turns into less of a cultural aspect and more of using culture as inspiration.
Viet Thanh Ngyuen elaborates more on this idea in the physical aspect when he writes “For Asian American culture, on particular object invested with both symbolic and economic capitals is the body. In this book, I use the term ‘body politic’ to describe the vast formal entity that arises in the literature when authors use the bodies of their narrators or characters to represent Asian Americans and their collective relationship to both nation and capitol” (17, Race and Resistance: Literature and Politics in Asian
America, 2002). The contents within an Asian American novel that involve the “body politic” does not stop at the surface of Asian America, but proceeds deep under the surface to also encompass the idea of class, gender, and race as separate notions to be explored. 41
The genre of Asian American literature itself is a recent genre as compared to other genres such as European or African American literatures. Prior to the 1960s, racial politics in America revolved mostly around black vs. white; African Americans fighting against Whites for a piece of the proverbial ideal of obtaining the “American Dream.”
But in the fight for equality, what African Americans fought for soon became the goals of people of color within the United States. As the fight for equality gained strength, “Asian
Americans became increasingly aware of their identity as a racial group, both as defined by the state and in self-defined methods...Asian Americans are evaluated through the lenses of either resistance or accommodation, the bifurcated responses to American racism’s desire to either suppress or incorporate Asian Americans” (15, Nguyen). The fight for equality within the Asian American community went from being a collective whole, to a more individualized fight for recognition as no longer being “perpetual foreigners.” Asian Americans started fighting for equal representation among American citizens; African Americans included.
The Asian American community wanted to be seen as average Americans, and not “legally acceptable but culturally inassimilable foreigners” (17, Nguyen). This was the push that the community needed to make sure that the representation of the Asian
American community was equal and fair for the collective group. The Asian American community did not want to be seen as less than or as a community to be fearful of. Asian
Americans wanted a panethnic32 identity that “gathers the heterogeneous communities of
32 “...under what circumstances, and to what extent groups of diverse national origins can come together as a new, enlarged panethnic group.” From Asian American Panethnicity: Bridging Institutions and Identities by Yen Le Espiritu. 42
immigrants and citizens of Asian descent into one identifiable body” (15, Nguyen). The idea of panethnicity repeats the treatment of the Asian American community by non-
Asians through unequal representation. During the 1970s and 1980s, Chinese and
Japanese Americans were fighting to separate their racial markers from stereotypes created through communism and war33. They were fighting to prove that they were just like white America.
This panethnic view of Chinese and Japanese Americans soon spread to other
Asian ethnicities. Upon arrival in the United States, Vietnamese and Laotian refugees (for example, but this applies to all newer Asian ethnic groups in America) were not viewed as individuals by non-Asian Americans; Asian refugees were lumped into stereotypical categories that were already established decades earlier through the immigration of the
Chinese, Japanese, and Filipinos. The inclusion of Asian refugees into the panethnic
Asian American identity took away the independent experiences and histories that Asian refugees entered into America with. Asian American refugees were likened to Chinese and Japanese Americans, despite the fact that Asian American refugees were unable to begin their lives in America in the same manner as the Chinese and Japanese were. Asian
American refugees came to America with nothing but the clothes on their backs, while
Chinese and Japanese immigrants were able to bring personal items to America that would help them start their new lives. When comparing Kingston’s novel to a novel
33 During WWII, Japanese Americans were seen as enemy combatants, regardless of origin of birth. Chinese Americans were often mistaken as Japanese and went as far as to identify themselves as Chinese, not Japanese. Later, as communism came to fruition, Chinese Americans were seen as potential spies, regardless of origin of birth. Enter the 1970s and 1980s, both Chinese and Japanese Americans worked to gain their own identity separate from the other and the past grievances that have followed them. 43
written by a Vietnamese American refugee, the differences in their families are visible.
For Chin to push the idea of panethnic identity upon all Asian American writers would take away from the historic aspect of the Vietnamese American writer’s story.
The urge to lump all Asian American ethnicities into one category takes away from the individualities of one person. It is done purposefully to make public behavior easier to accept, to propel an image toward a positive model. Nguyen writes “The Asian
American body politic as a term, a formal entity, speaks to the fact that merely invoking the identity ‘Asian American’ erases the distinction between the individual and the collective, gesturing instead to the United States’ long history of treating Asian
Americans as an indistinguishable group rather than as an aggregate of individuals— hence inevitably politicizing them and their bodies” (17). Asian Americans have been fighting against being seen as a passive collective, but have contradicted the intention of individuality through the use of panethnic ideals. The contradiction of a demand for being seen as separate from past assumptions of Asian America, and instead seen as an addition to America is reflected on how Asian American literature is received by Asian American critics.
Chin views Kingston’s memoir as “misrepresenting Chinese and Chinese
American culture, and for passing fiction for autobiography” (238, Cheung). Chin viewed
Kingston’s memoir through a gender lens in that his contempt for the memoir was mainly for her representation of the Chinese American man. In Chin’s eyes, she was supposedly supporting the stereotype of emasculating the Chinese American male. Chin and others 44
are arguing for equal representation within the literature, to no longer be cast as an effeminate; which they claimed as perpetuating the myth that Chinese American men were non-sexual beings. The cost of this argument is the individuality men and women as separate genders with separate and complex identities; the very thing the Asian American community was constantly fighting for.
Nguyen makes the claim that Asian American literature “attempts to re-signify the body, inherently assuming its status as a politicized body, and makes the body itself a
‘prime vehicle of narrative signification’ that produces different meanings at different historical periods” (19). To say that the body politic that surrounds an Asian American protagonist and how they’re viewed by readers is a correct ideal in that writing fiction or non-fiction about Asian Americans by Asian Americans leaves an interpreted view of the lives and culture of Asian American appearance from either a positive or negative aspect.
Chin’s argument of Asian American cultural production hindering creativity and must be regulated to highlight positive aspects of Asian American culture is dangerous in that the logic behind it emulates the domination of whites over Asian Americans and how Asian
Americans are regulated within American society; as positive and passive.
Word Choice
Chin’s claim, that non-Chinese only know, about Chinese culture, is what Maxine
Hong Kingston and fellow author David Henry Hwang tell them through their stories - stories that Chin claims are an incorrect representation of Chinese culture. Chin’s claim reeks of bitterness, as well as a generalization of non-Chinese readers to not want to 45
explore more about Chinese culture. The accusation of a bitter attitude from Chin comes from the last paragraph of “The Most Popular Book in China,” Chin writes “Charlie Chan was short and fat and walked with the light, dainty steps of a woman, in white fantasy.
Chang Apana was tall and wiry; he walked through sun and shadow with a bullwhip over his shoulder, in Chinese-American myth and history” (12). Chin uses the words “fantasy” and “myth”; one meaning “the faculty or activity of imagining things, especially things that are impossible or improbable34” and the other “a traditional story, especially one concerning the early history of a people or explaining some natural or social phenomenon, and typically involving supernatural beings or events35”.
Chin’s use of “fantasy” and “myth” when comparing a stereotype of a Chinese
American fictional character to that of a figure from Chinese folklore cancels out the point he was trying to make providing a more masculine character to combat that of
Charlie Chan, in that comparing a mythical character with a fictional character shows no accuracy because they were both created with a specific fantastical idea. Fantasy and myth are not reality; Charlie Chan, and Chang Apana’s abilities to walk “through sun and shadow,” is not “real”; it is not factual within Chinese American lives. The average
Chinese American male doesn’t walk “with the light, dainty steps of a woman,” nor do
Chinese American males have the ability to walk through the sun. Chin’s argument for factual writing of Chinese American literature is impossible to uphold according to his vision offactual Chinese American literature.
34 As defined by www.dictionary.com 35 As defined by www.dictionary.com 46
There is no one way to see a novel. Chin’s focus on “fantasy” and “myth” compared to what he sees as historical figures and mythical figures are no different than what Kingston writes. In the idea of “myth” and her “White Tiger” chapter, Kingston writes “The swordswoman and I are not so dissimilar. May my people understand the resemblance soon so that I can return to them. What we have in common are the words at our backs. The idioms for revenge are ‘report a crime’ and ‘report to five families.’ The supporting is the vengeance - not the beheading, not the gutting, but the words. And I have so many words—‘chink’ words and ‘gook’ words too—that they do not fit on my skin” (53).
The last paragraph in Kingston’s “White Tigers” chapter closes out with a comparison of her and her version of Fa Mu Lan. The one thing that Kingston finds in common with the character are words; the ability to speak words, the ability to write words, and the ability to hear words and the feelings felt from those words36. Kingston writes elsewhere about the tattooing of words on the back of the woman warrior, words that would tell a story about the woman warrior, her family and history, to whomever would find her body if she were to perish in a battle (34, The Woman Warrior).
Kingston’s chapter, and book, serves the same purpose. Frank Chin’s main grievance with Kingston’s memoir is the stereotyping of Chinese, but what Chin fails to realize is that the words on the pages of Kingston’s novel are her legacy; her words that others can read to tell a story about her and her family’s history.
36 53, The Woman Warrior. 47
Kingston was also using her words in a way to come to terms with the confusion that she felt growing up amid two different cultures, the Chinese culture of her family and ancestry and the culture of the Western world in which she grew up in. Kingston writes
“To make my waking life American-normal, I turn on the lights before anything untoward makes an appearance. I pushed the deformed into my dreams, which are in
Chinese, the language of impossible stories. Before we can leave our parents, they stuff our heads like the suitcases which they jam-pack with homemade underwear” (87).
Kingston’s writing gives a feeling of antiquity about the story and narration as a way to blend her two worlds into a more concise world for her to understand.
The words choices made by Kingston are metaphors for how she has processed the old-world stories of her mother’s life in China, into an adaptation that can be understood by other Chinese Americans navigating their own worlds. In the chapter titled
“Shaman,” Kingston combines the mythical and legendary figures from Chinese lore with how those mythical figures had an impact on her childhood. “My mother has cooked for us: raccoons, skunks, hawks, city pigeons, wild ducks, wild geese, black-skinned bantams, snakes, garden snails, turtles that crawled about the pantry floor and sometimes escaped under refrigerator or stove, catfish that swam in the bathtubs” (90, The Woman
Warrior), all of which are foods that are not a staple in Western culture. But Kingston’s use of food in her “Shaman” chapter highlights the oddity and extravagance that was her childhood; Kingston knew very well that not all children grew up eating turtles or had fish swimming in their bathtub, but her words help to bring the reader into the world that 48
she grew up in as a way to connect the reader showing non-Chinese Americans a snippet of her childhood, and at the same time, allowing Chinese Americans to relate through shared experience.
Frank Chin’s issue with Kingston stereotyping Chinese Americans can readily be seen throughout Kingston’s descriptions of her childhood, but these are her memories and her memories alone. Chin’s grievances with Kingston negates an individual’s own personal experiences; Chin’s argument reduces the reality that Chinese American children of immigrant parents experienced. Even though Kingston is writing about her memories, Chin argues that they’re not representative of factual Chinese American culture in the Western world, taking away from her reality and by extension, denying her existence as a Chinese American. With every chapter in Kingston’s memoir, there is a theme or a thematic message that Kingston is trying to convey. For example, in “White
Tigers,” Kingston is sending a message about self-empowerment as a woman in a male- centered world; in the “Shaman” chapter, Kingston combines ghosts, old-world Chinese lore, and extrinsic foods as a way to highlight the differences that she experienced between two worlds while growing up.
The Contradiction o f Chin
In a short bio associated37 with his short story “Food for All His Dead,” Chin is portrayed as being able to give a true representation of what it means to be a Chinese
37 47, Asian-American Authors (1972). 49
American in America. As stated in the bio: “As to the Chinese of the postwar era, in
Frank’s view their Chineseness is being rapidly absorbed by the white-American values.
And those young Chinese, either championing the cause of, or resisting the emergence of, a new China, are so busy fighting on the active front of politics that they unavailably fall short of being fully sensitive to all the subtle pressures and forces operating on each individual” (47, Asian-American Authors [Multi-Ethnic Literature]). The furtherance of the bio lays the claim that Chin himself sees Chinese American youth as losing their
“Chinese” identity to the “American” identity, as well as not being fully politically conscious of the fight that they need to be fighting. In summary, Frank Chin believes that he knows the right way to be a true representative of Chinese Americaness, and everyone else is doing it wrong.
In his short stories “Food for All His Dead” and “Yes, Young Daddy,” Frank
Chin portrays two different personalities of characters who are all Chinese American. In
“Food for All His Dead,” the son views himself as different than the other Chinese in
Chinatown, as better than those among him in Chinatown. Chin writes “‘Maybe I’m not
Chinese, pa! Maybe I’m just a Chinese accident... Pa, most of the people I don’t like are
Chinese. They even laugh with accents, Christ!”’ (53) Chin’s character is criticizing
Chinese in Chinatown; distancing himself from who he is and where he comes from. In
“Yes, Young Daddy,” Chin depicts a correspondence between two cousins; with one cousin, Lena writing with horrible grammar, as pointed out by the other cousin, Fred. In both stories Chin is enforcing stereotypes through how he portrays his Chinese in 50
Chinatown characters. They speak broken, pidgin English, don’t seem to have a clear group of Westernized culture, and are portrayed in a way that makes them seem out of place.
How Chin portrays his characters in the two short stories mentioned above is where the contradiction lies. He argues for Chinese American youth to accept their identity, but portrays them as opposite; as fighting against it, as wanting to be separated from it. Also, going back to the idea of language, Chin is showing through his language the point he is trying to make in Chinese American youth forgoing their identity as a
Chinese American, and to just be seen as American. Maxine Hong Kingston is doing the same thing through her work; she is using her language to tell a story that she believes will be a message of sorts to help those trying to contend with their Chinese identity and their American identity. When comparing Chin’s two short stories and Kingston’s two chapters previously mentioned, they are different in language and perspective. Individual experiences are the same as traditional experiences in a way that not everyone shares the same tradition.
Chin’s argument that Kingston’s memoir does not keep up with Chinese tradition discounts an entire community. For example, Asian Americans who are of mixed race will not have the same traditions as monoracial Asian Americans. Nor will they know the same traditional folklore that Chin or Kingston referred to, this however does not take away from their identity, nor does it make them any less able to identify as Chinese or
Asian American. Chin’s argument that Chinese American youth are losing their identity 51
to Western identity should instead advocate for Chinese American youth to find tradition and culture where they can get it; regardless of its accuracy or inaccuracy. Just knowing a little bit of history and tradition is enough to be passed down from generation to generation.
Chin’s attitude in “Racist Love,” towards the racial stereotypes and the supremacy of whites over Chinese Americans, can be turned back onto himself. His experiences as a
Chinese American male in America may have contributed to his viewpoint of white
America, and at the same time, clouded his view of how he sees the Chinese American writer community. The white population that Chin sees as using stereotypes in order to maintain superiority is very similar to what is he doing to writers like Kingston. He is using his authority as a Chinese American male as a way to maintain superiority over how he thinks Chinese and Chinese Americans should be in Asian American literature.
He is silencing the many voices that do not echo the same sentiment as he does, creating an environment in which he is the superior, real Chinese American and others are subordinate and undeserving to be called Chinese Americans; second-class citizens within the Chinese American writers community. Chin’s views of Chinese America and emasculation are similar to the social and political climate in the 21st century, which has not changed much. One minority group has made significant gains in American society38, but seemingly at the expense of another39. Chin’s call for his view of a “correct”
38 Same-sex marriage was federally recognized on June 26,2015. 39 “Lgbt People of Color,” (2015) 52
representation of Asian America came at the cost of representation of Asian American women in Asian America. 53
Chapter Three: Gender Discrepancies in Asian American Literature
Chinese Americans, 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? - Maxine Hong Kingston, The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts On Whose Authority Frank Chin’s bitter criticism of Maxine Hong Kingston for failing to accurately represent the Chinese American male in her memoir is one that continues to haunt Asian
American women writers. When Chin accuses Kingston of negatively portraying Asian
American males, he insinuates that she is a traitor to the Chinese American community as a whole. But what Chin fails to realize, as well as other critics of Asian American women writers, is the way that they themselves limit Asian American expression—and so, might also be considered “traitors” as well—through their urge to censor women’s voices in order to ensure a positive representation of Asian American male characters.
When Chin and others criticize an Asian American woman writer, they are not taking into account the theory of intersectionality—a theory that shows the need for separate identities to converge in order to create an ideal representation—and maintaining privilege of race over gender. They are forgetting that as men of color, they are still held above women of color within a patriarchal society, and instead of calling for Asian
American women to mute their voices in order to help the community as a whole, Asian
American men should help to uphold the platform of representation of all Asian
Americans in literature as a way to combat Orientalist notions of what an Asian 54
American person is supposed to be, notions that can be seen in past and present writings and media created by white America.
In a chapter titled “War, gender, and race in le thi diem thuy’s The Gangster We are All Looking For” (2015), Isabelle Thuy Pelaud writes that “the notion that
Vietnamese American identities and imaginaries are multilayered, complex, and diverse and that Vietnamese American women writers of the 1.5 generation in particular are exponentially burdened by being refugees, people of color, and female” (96-97, The
Vietnam War: Topics in Contemporary North American Literature). There is more to an
Asian American woman’s identity than how she appears. But this argument does not solely apply to Vietnamese American women; this can also be applied to Asian American women who are not refugees.
Pelaud’s focus on the difficulties that le thi diem thuy faced after the release of her book, The Gangster We are All Looking For (2003), is similar to that of Kingston’s novel in that some of the criticism that followed it had to do with how the men in the novel were being presented, le was criticized for how she represented the character of the father in her novel (97, Pelaud). The criticism of how le represented the character of the father as a gangster is similar to the criticism that Kingston received for representing male characters in her memoir in a non-masculine way in what critics call a negative portrayal and cannot be what way because it continues a stereotype of how white
America views Asian American men. Pelaud writes “Not to use the word ‘gangster’ to refer to the father character and by extension, not to speak about his excessive use of 55
physical force toward family members, would have been, from the perspective of the older man in the audience, preferable” (98); this desire of the audience member to euphemize domestic violence is another example of critics silencing women writers who put forward a negative depiction of male characters.
But what critics do not realize is that what they consider a negative depiction is not viewed the same by an Asian American writer, it is actually the writer’s “truth,”: it is what they remember or know from their own perception of events or histories that they have learned or experienced throughout their life. The negative aspects of one’s experience cannot be ignored in order for a writer to capture the fully complexity of their identity and history. Since both le and Kingston are Asian American writers, there is an unwillingness to differentiate between fiction and non-fiction because Asian American stories are not nationally recognized as much as works from white writers, and when writers like Kingston and le have their works nationally recognized, their stories are picked up by white America and viewed as the authority on how Asian American families and life are.
Asian culture in America is not an average, every day entity outside of a few square blocks in big cities and tends to be appropriated in a way that conveys it as rare, unknown, and intriguing. According to Chin40, the lack of knowledge of Asian culture and history has led writers such as le and Kingston to be seen as an authority on Asian
Americans. And why their stories are seen as truth even if they’re a work of fiction, even
40 In “Racist Love.” 56
if the author is adamant that “the names, family compositions, characters’ genders, and the course of events in the novel are different from those in her life” (99, Pelaud).
Writers, especially fictional writers, pull from their own experiences and memories as a way to create and inspire a story. As le points out, “[t]here is a whole pleasure to the process for me about being with these characters and seeing what happens to them...” and being criticized over whether or not the finished product is a true representation of all
Vietnamese American immigrants takes away from the writer’s ability to write with self- awareness41.
A writer’s imagination serves many purposes; it allows one to create, pretend, forget, and often times heal. Trauma to a person that is not physically seen through scars or bruises is harder to understand and accept because of a doubt of authenticity: it cannot be seen, so does it actually exist? Rene Magritte, painter of “Treachery of Images” (1928-
29) poses this question when he painted a pipe and then added the caption “Ceci n’est pas une pipe,” which translates into “This is not a pipe.” Magritte’s point was to elaborate on the philosophy of what humans see as “real” and actual; resulting in the pipe not being viewed as an actual pipe by some, but a representation of an object. Whereas, some viewers of Magritte’s painting saw the representation as an actual object. Maxine Hong
Kingston and le thi diem thuy’s stories are similar to Magritte’s painting of the pipe in terms of objectivity: their novels are not actual and complete events, but representations
41 From “War, gender and race in le thi diem thuy’s The Gangster We Are All Looking For” 57
of those events through events that they have changed and manipulated to fit the direction in which their stories were going at the time that they wrote them.
Asian American women are no longer just mothers and wives; they are sisters, daughters, employees, employers, artists, writers, creators, etc. Leslie Bow, author of
Betrayal and Other Acts o f Subversion: Feminism, Sexual Politics, Asian American
Women’s Literature writes about “how mechanisms of affiliation are constituted and analyzes the sakes of their maintenance, particularly for women who transgress borders drawn by multiple loyalties” (3). Bow questions how women navigate their multiple positions in society; for example, wife, mother, daughter, friend, sister, etc. And do the women authors profiled in her study “betray” one identity for the other. According to
Bow, the idea of cultural alliance, in that “it is intended to deauthenticate some affiliations while reconsolidating others” (7), meaning that one must give up or ignore one cultural identity for another. For example, did Kingston disrupt Chinese American alliances, or did Frank Chin disrupt writer alliances. Did Kingston betray her Chinese
American community’s call to “save face” or did Chin betray his writing community through pushing for censorship of creativity.
Western Expression and Eastern Modesty
Songs o f Gold Mountain: Cantonese Rhymes from San Francisco Chinatown1n
(1987), is a collection poems of Chinese immigrants from the Gold Rush era. One of the
42 I will refer to it as Songs o f Gold Mountain from this point on. 58
sections in Songs o f Gold Mountain looks at the poems written by Chinese immigrant gold miners and criticism of how women freely expressed themselves in public; a portrayal vastly different than the modesty of women in China43. The poetry gives a negative depiction of American women, as well as chastises them for being immodest.
The criticism from the poems, albeit from the mid-1800s, shows that a woman’s freedom in how she portrays herself publicly is a Western ideal. The poems in Horn’s anthology depicting the different views of women in America are negative; freedoms of expression that accentuate womanhood is seen as negative, that a woman who stands up for herself is confrontational and contradicts the “place” that women ought to remain in society. An
Asian American woman cannot fight for her freedom of expression in her womanhood; instead, she must fight for the overall ethnic identity that she is first seen as.
Women authors like Kingston, le, and others cannot write about Asian America if they are not going to write in a way that excludes who they are in order to write about the community they represent, that is in accordance with their individual Asian ethnic community as a whole; that the community they write about is depicted in accordance with the destruction of negative images bolstered by a non-Asian voyeuristic society. The novels written by Kingston, le, and others represents “a form of creative activism for
Asian American women” (11, Bow) in that it allows them to continue to fight against ethnic oppressions such as interethnic racism, patriarchal ideas, and silencing of women’s individuality. Bow asks another question: “Can one ignore the significant role of the
43 “Songs of Western Influence and the American-boms,” p.203-230 59
American state in specifying the privileges bestowed by legal citizenship or defining and delimiting the ‘voluntary’ identifications of individuals?” (15) In other words, can the sexual freedom that Asian American women display in public, and in novels, be only an
American and Western ideal? With the constant change in the Asian American diaspora in America and worldwide, Bow argues that it is not just in an American ideal, but that there is a resistance that extends past the edges of America and into other countries where
Western ideals are gaining strength, and in turn, encouraging minority groups such as women to start creating their own identities away from what their society has constructed for them44.
Critic Frank Chin looks at the words written in Kingston’s memoir and sees a resemblance between stereotypical images of Asian American men and how those images apply to Asian American men. These images can allow the readers to relate to the story that they are reading, or distance them from the story because of what’s missing from the pages. When looking at criticism of Asian American literature by Asian Americans, how their Asianess is depicted be criticized because “[when] marginal groups come to delineate domestic national interests, these critics establish a theoretical basis for the centrality of the oppressed that does not merely respond to a desire for pluralist inclusion” (20, Bow). Critics of color, such as Frank Chin see the story on the pages of
44 “This narrative associated with the ‘old’ immigrant paradigm within Asian American Studies is thus not displaced but put in dialectical tension with transnational, global theoretical models of diaspora as both come to express cultural negotiation in terms of connection and disassociation.” (17, Bow) 60
the novel written by an author of color as only having to do with racial issues and complexities, ignoring the possibilities that the novel is really about.
Not all Asian American women writers relied on their Asianess as a muse in their novels and stories. While Maxine Hong Kingston’s memoir The Woman Warrior is based on her Chinese American family in America, Hisaye Yamamoto’s short story “17
Syllables” (1988) and Jade Snow Wong’s novel, Fifth Chinese Daughter were based around gender, feminism, and patriarchal societies than they were about being Asian in
America. Yamamoto’s “17 Syllables” is a story about a Japanese American poet who is not allowed to write by her husband because there are more pressing matters to be tended to; such as the family business and household. When the woman poet dares to defy the husband with her poetry, she is punished through a physical reiteration that her poetry is a waste of time and of no importance in everyday life. Wong’s Fifth Chinese Daughter tells of the story of a 1.8 generation45 Chinese American woman navigating her way through her Chinese home life and her “American Dream.” Fifth Chinese Daughter is a memoir written by Wong and does not rely heavily on Chinese American culture to tell the story, it is written from the perspective of being a woman amid patriarchy, that she as a woman in a patriarchal run family must work and depend on herself only in order to achieve the future she envisioned for herself.
There are many complexities in the Asian American community, complexities that range from generational gaps to cultural gaps. It is a community that is not black and
45 Not bom in America, but raised in America from a young age. 61
white, it is a community that no longer represents specifically the Asian race compared to white America, it involves many aspects and intrinsic factors that make it what it is today. Pelaud writes “Such selective publishing practices prevents mainstream American society from understanding the experiences, history, and culture of a growing Vietnamese
American community as well as the impact the community had on the larger society”
(109). The minimal access or availability of Vietnamese American literature by
Vietnamese Americans harms the ability for Vietnamese Americans to become a part of
American history and society without the stigma of the American perception and views of the Vietnam War.
le’s objector to how she portrayed the father in her novel is attempting to keep a simplistic view of the Vietnamese American community in order to save face. It is as if le is going hearing the same criticism of her novel that Kingston experienced with hers because they are the first depictions of an Asian livelihood that is unknown to mainstream America. With the inception of novels from new Asian American writers, such as Kingston and le, into the mainstream literature community, they are able to inform Americans with minimal knowledge of Asian America about the culture and how it connects to the American narrative.
The Upper Echelon
In “The Triumph of the Prefeminist Chinese Woman? Incorporating Racial
Difference Through Feminist Narrative,” Bow’s points to “the ways that liberal feminist discourse can produce an intelligible racial subject and in the cultural work that the image 62
of the prefeminist Chinese woman might perform” (76, Bow). In the chapter, Bow looks at two novels written by Chinese American women, at different times. Jade Snow
Wong’s Fifth Chinese DaughterA6 and Amy Tan’s The Joyluck Club*1 were written at two very different times; one prior to the more well-known women’s liberation movement48 and the other after the women’s liberation movement. While both novels were written in two very different times, Bow believes that “both locate ethnic difference within an implicitly liberal racial agenda and a chronology of collective self-improvement” (76).
Both Wong and Tan push the racial aspects of their novels aside, and bring women’s independence to the forefront; changing their novels from a story about an Asian
American women to a novel about a woman who happens to be Asian American.
The criticism that followed after the release of Tan’s novel, and re-release of
Wong’s novel, brought criticism by Asian American literary critics and Asian Americans alike. Bow’s interpretation of a critique of Wong’s novel was that Wong’s novel reinforced the stereotypes that non-Asian Americans held about Asian Americans as
“Model Minorities49.” Bow’s claims that “both locate ethnic difference” is a claim that says that Wong and Tan’s highlight of gender independence over racial politics is one related to a Western ideal in that white feminists’ goals surround around gender solely because as a majority, white feminists have less to incorporate. But critics of Wong and
Tan are also choosing to ignore the complexities that come with being an Asian
46 Originally published in 1945. 47 Published in 1989. 48 The women’s movement started in the early 1900s, but gained major momentum during the Civil Rights Era. 49 • “Model Minority” references passive stereotypes held about Asian Americans, and other racial groups are encouraged to follow the model, albeit a false one. 63
American woman. Frank Chin and other Asian American men have their individual battles to contend with, but so do Asian American women; not just with Asian
Americaness, but with gender and sexuality inside and outside of the Asian American community. Wong’s telling of how she was able to attend Mills College50 revolves around her working for prominent, white families because as a female in a Chinese family, there was no value placed on her success because of the social norms that lie within Chinese family culture51.
Something that Bow points out about Wong’s novel is that “the text positions women’s autonomous selfhood as something to be individually expanded: equality is not necessarily open to all women, but only to those who prove themselves as equal to men through their achievements” (80). Wong herself had to prove to her father that her position in the family did not automatically equate her as “less than.” Being a female in a
Chinese family didn’t mean that she wasn’t worthy of accomplishment or living a life similar to that of her mother. While Wong’s father was a believer in Chinese familial cultural norms that demeaned women’s independence, he was lenient enough to not stop
Wong from trying. Wong’s struggle for individuality and the noted criticism against her are not subject to Asian American women alone; the fight for women’s independence outside of racial equality is something that affects all women of color. When juxtaposing racial hierarchy52 with gender hierarchy, men of color will have a higher place in society
50 At the time that Wong wrote her story, Mills College was a women’s college. 51 Sons were preferred over daughters, in that the sons would be able to continue the family lineage and carry the family name. 52 p. xi, Okihiro. 64
than women of color. For example, an Asian American male will be placed at a higher familial and societal position than an Asian American woman because of gender ideals, but below a white woman because of racial triangulation53. CJ Kim’s theory shows that
Asian American women have more societal and gender obstacles than men, to endure in order to gain equal recognition; whereas Asian American men have significantly less hurdles to overcome to reach equal recognition within American society.
Centering the Decentered
In Margins and Mainstreams: Asians in American History and Culture, covers
The Woman Warrior, Okihiro covers The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston.
Okihiro’s main goal in his chapter titled “Recentering Women” was to tackle the internal gender discrepancies within the Asian American community. Okihiro’s argument is that
“[w]omen...have been relegated to the fringes of Asian American studies by men, who thereby institute and maintain a system of repression and privilege” (xii). Okihiro is solidifying Kim’s theory and points out that Asian American women continue to take a backseat to racial politics put forth by Asian American men. Okihiro also recognizes the trend of eliminating the Asianess within the Asian American community; meaning to not look at Asians in America alone, but to look at Asians in Asia as well and how they affect
Asian women as a whole (Okihiro, xii-xiii).
53 Similar to racial hierarchy in that the comers of the triangle make up whites and two other ethnicities, with the whites always being on top of the triangle. 65
Okihiro begins his chapter by analyzing a passage from Kingston’s memoir. The passage is from the chapter titled “No Name Woman,” and is about Kingston’s mother beginning to relay a story about her aunt on her father’s side:
“‘You must not tell anyone,’ my mother said, ‘What I am about to tell you. In China your father had a sister who killed herself. She jumped into the family well. We say that your father has all brothers because it is as if she had never been bom’” (Kingston, 3) According to Okihiro, this passage and the conversation between Kingston and her mother “is rich with symbolism and lays the foundation for Kingston’s entire collection of ‘talk stories,’ explicating the position of women in Chinese and Chinese American culture” (64). Kingston continues the story by telling readers the reason why her aunt chose to end her own life; she gave birth to a child that wasn’t her husband’s because he had gone to America long before the gestational period had even begun. Kingston then speculates throughout the chapter as to how her aunt could have become pregnant
(Kingston, 6). Kingston’s speculations of her aunt having had an affair, or worse yet, raped, does not mean that her aunt was the victim.
Because the aunt was deemed a disgrace to the family name, she was quickly relegated to the fringes of society by her family and her village community. Kingston makes a strong claim when she writes “Women in the old China did not choose” (6). She then questions whether or not her aunt’s rapist or lover joined the village in ostracizing her aunt after her illegitimate pregnancy was revealed. Because of the disgrace on the family, both with the suicide and pregnancy, the aunt was erased from the family after 66
her death; never to be acknowledged again. Okihiro points out that while the aunt was erased from family existence or existence in general, because of the Chinese social construct, which Kingston chose to ignore when she wrote about her aunt and her mother’s story of her aunt (Okihiro, 65).
The story of “No Name Woman” may not relate to the overall Asian and Asian
American history, it does, however, relate to Kingston’s familial history and therefore is important to her. In his chapter, Okihiro uses a theory proposed by Connie Young Yu: that there are always two different histories. Okihiro writes “Historian Connie Young Yu wrote of two kinds of histories: one written by outsiders about Asian Americans; the other recorded in the collective memories of Asian Americans...” (66). What Yu, and
Okihiro, are implying is that the outsider view on Asian American history relates more toward facts and data that is implicit toward Asian Americans as a whole.
For example, the “official” history of the Vietnam War can be found: dates, places, and names of prominent people and events. But, given that the U.S. deserted
Vietnam while the country was in turmoil, that does not insinuate that is where the historical part ends, it just becomes more individualized. After the end of the Vietnam
War, many Vietnamese worked to escape the turmoil in Vietnam and seek refuge in other countries. The subtle nuances and events of one’s travel from Vietnam to the U.S., as an example, adds to the history of that refugee, the refugee’s family, and future generations to follow. Keeping track of the personal histories allows for a correct depiction of how one came to be and why. This individual history cannot be applied to the overall history 67
of how Vietnamese Americans came to be in the U.S. because not everyone’s experiences were the same. Just how Kingston’s individual experiences that she details in her novel cannot be applied to Chin’s individual experiences as an individual. Kingston’s memoir is her own representation of how she viewed her childhood.
The pushback or criticism from Asian American men, toward Asian American women writers is something that is not experienced by Asian America alone. Other women of color face backlash similar to what Wong and Kingston faced, because of their willingness to write about their experiences within their communities. Maythee Rojas, author of Women o f Color and Feminism (2009), points out that “Part of the project of feminism has been to put women’s stories at the center, to understand the world through the perspective of women” (Prologue). Both Okihiro and Rojas call for women to move from the outer margins of society, and into the center. When looking at the criticism that authors like Kingston and Wong received, Rojas writes “Those who attempted to speak out were regarded as undercover operatives intent on sabotaging the organizations.
Others were labeled traitors for challenging sexism and homophobia, which were assumed to be strictly ‘white people’ concerns” (19). Rojas continues to say that those who did not fit completely into the overall struggle; for example an Asian American woman wanting to address race and gender, were left with no voice or ability to address their individual concerns related to their overall identity. 68
For Wong and Kingston to write, they not only need to consider the future repercussions to what they write, they also have to consider the affect that the act of writing will have on their psyche. In regard to the latter, Patricia P. Chu writes:
In Asian American literature, the portrayal of Asian female subjectivity is shaped by multiple discursive constraints. On one hand, Western accounts of female subjectivity struggle with the paradox of women being nominally included in the concept of the Western, Cartisian, universal self—a self-defined as pure mind—while also being figured as the embodied ‘other’ of that disembodied, rational self. On the other hand, Asian American writers must also address the tradition of figuring Asians, and others of color, as the embodied ‘others’ who represent the boundaries of Western self (69, “‘To Hide Her True Self: Sentimentality and the Search for an Intersubjective Self in Nora Oksa Keller’s Comfort Woman’’’) When Asian American women write, they have to weigh many factors: Asian
Americaness, womanhood, and the East vs. West ideal. Do they choose one over the other in order to satisfy the masses, or do they choose one over the other in order to satisfy the self, and, as a result, must risk being seen as a “traitor” to the overall Asian
American community. Instead of asking Asian American women writers to choose between themselves and their community, we should be asking why do Asian American women writers have to choose at all. 69
Chapter Four: Intersectionality as a Model in Asian American Literature Studies
The Times, They Are a Changin ’
In this chapter, I will be looking at newer works of Asian American women writers and focusing on the direction that they have taken that veers away from aspects of race. In looking at the difference of direction, I will point out just how the intersection of race and gender are used in current literatures. I will show that an Asian American woman’s writing does not focus solely on race anymore because that is not the highest priority in an Asian American woman’s life in the 21st century. Chin’s argument of focusing on race over gender is detrimental to women in the 21st century, as exampled by
Lan Tran in this chapter. Chin’s argument is too simplified, too black and white, and ignores the complexities that revolve around an Asian American woman in the 21st century.
“Who’s Got Us,” a self-described “feminist spoken word anthem,” is a video that can be found on the YouTube platform that asks the question: Who’s got us? In the video are three women of color asking:
“Who's Got Us when we fall? Who will be there to catch us when the sky becomes too heavy to hold up? What does it mean for women to fall, to fail, to break down? What constitutes her slippage in both the literal and figurative sense? Part anthem, part litany and part rhetorical, this spoken word video calls attention to the strength of women and the necessity to build alternative support systems in the face of great hostility and oppression. This poem makes clear that a woman's survival is an act of resistance and resilience54.
54Anida Yoeu Ali, ©2013, Studio Revolt LLC. 70
Societal norms hold an expectation of women to be the ones to hold the family together, to be the ones to support the spouse and children and if that is the case, then who is there to uphold the women? The women in the video are saying that they have to be there for each other because no one else will. Because of society and it’s “rules,” women are left to their own devices, especially after they have worn themselves out taking care of their husbands, children, work obligations, social obligations, etc. The spoken word video is just another form of women speaking what’s on their mind, for what they believe in, and how they feel they should be treated. It’s no different than a story written by women like
Kingston, or a poem written by Lan Tran. The downside to all the progress women have made in terms of autonomy is that there are still too many examples of how Asian
American women are still in the margins, as referred to by Okihiro55.
Times have changed since the days of Frank Chin’s critique of Maxine Hong
Kingston. Women’s Liberation has paved the way for women to go from the kitchens of suburbia to the offices of big cities without being considered or looked at as an obscure blight and daredevil for trying to make an independent life for themselves without the reliance of men. It’s not uncommon in the current day and age for a woman to be head of a company, for a woman to be leading a country, or ruling over society. This is a great step forward for womankind, the women of today are the examples that little girls see and want to be, continuing the cycle of independence among women. But, while a positive step in regard to gender roles in modem society, these apply mainly toward non-Asian
55 In Chapter Three of this thesis. 71
persons. Asian Americans tend to still hold onto the Old World customs of obedience and passivity, of which still enables a false perception of Asian American women in mainstream media56.
Society has progressed significantly since the Third World Strike. But other issues that affect not only Asian American women, but women in general have surfaced. Issues like domestic violence, sexual assault, assault, and misogyny are still rampant within the
Asian American women community due to the lack of willingness to report out of fear of reprisal from the attacker or offender57. The term “slut shaming58,” as in turning the victim into the villain, is a way to keep women silent after sexual assaults. Not only are women being shamed from the community at large, but from within individual families as well. “Slut shaming” is one of the reasons why Asian American women writers need to keep writing, why they need to keep putting a voice and words to the hurtful things that are continuously used against women as a way to continue to lessen their identities in
American society.
Lan Tran59, author of Remembering the Hour o f Lead: a process (2014) focuses on the death of her mother; the process of her mother’s death and the process of grieving that follows any death. Through the process of death and dying with her mother, Tran was able to confront past abuses inflicted on her by her father; creating a double process of healing: coming to terms with her mother’s eventual passing and the affect that the
56 “The Dangers of Asian Stereotypes,” (2014). 57 “Statistics,” from RAINN 58 “Slut shaming,” from Wikipedia 59 http ://www. iantranonline.com/bio/ 72
abuse had on her and her mother’s relationship and her relationship with others around her. Tran’s stories and poems in her chapbook detail her voicing the words “He molested me,” words that bring about confusion for those hearing it and a release for the one who is able to say it. While being able to voice those words is an achievement in itself, there needs to be more done in terms of support for what comes after those words are spoken.
Do the ones hearing those words fully grasp what they have heard and help support the healing process, or hear them and proceed with confusion and denial about what those words mean?
In two of Tran’s stories, her words are met with denial, confusion, and resistance.
Tran writes:
I saw my mom the day after surgery. She was brittle and exhausted, gray hair askew, clinging to the hospital bed’s metal rail, barely able to lift a Dixie cup. She was so weak, I realized, that she couldn’t do what she always did when I brought it up. She was too feeble to fight me. Too delicate to deny me. I went for it. He molested me, Mom. No, no, you misremember—60
Tran’s attempt to talk about the abuse toward her is met with denial, again, even though she thought her mother would be too weak to fight those words. Tran follows up with how her mother apologizes, words that she had been longing to hear, and then her mother tells her a story about how her grandfather had an affair on her grandmother. What Tran’s
60 “Colostomy, 1995” 73
mother says next ruins any thought that her mother was finally acknowledging the past and truly sorry for what had happened to her daughter:
“What did Grandma do?” I ask. “She forgave him,” my mom says. Then she repeats, “That’s why I’m telling you.” She searches my face for comprehension. My eyes lock onto hers. “Yes, Mom?” “Lan, if Grandma can forgive Grandpa for cheating on her with her sister, surely you can forgive your Daddy61.” The last words about Tran’s mother asking her to forgive her father for his actions because her grandmother was able to forgive her grandmother shows the inability for
Tran’s mother to understand the full extent of how the abuse has affected Tran, as well as not folly understanding the severe difference between being cheated on by a spouse and being abused by someone who is a parent.
In “The Viewing,” Tran is seeing one of her aunts at her mother’s viewing in a funeral home when her aunt says to her “‘Oh Lan, everyone’s saying your mom died of a broken heart because you never visited her and you won’t make peace with your dad.’ I don’t say anything. I nod. I swallow. I nod again. I don’t want to cause a scene” (21).
Tran’s refusal to explain folly to her aunt why she had to be careful when visiting her mother, which greatly reduced the amount of times that she did visit, was a form of
“saving face,” to take the burden in order to not embarrass her family and the situation that brought them there. The idea of “saving face” is the most detrimental to Asian
61 “Colostomy, 1995” 74
American women because of the silence that they must keep in order to not cause a scene or embarrass.
Tran herself had been “saving face” the majority of her life, which forced her to keep everything in, which in turn affected her relationships and her psyche and ability to function in most situations. In “Heritage,” Tran is again being badgered by an aunt about why she cannot forgive her father because of its effect on her visitation with her mother.
She blurts out the words to her aunt and the reaction that she receives from her aunt stuns her in a way. Her aunt offers her an apologetic response and starts to comfort her. At this moment, all Tran can think is “I am stupid. So stupid! My aunt is hugging me! I should have told more family sooner. Why didn’t I? I could’ve—I could have THIS. This open- armed, warm acceptance, not decades-long isolation and estrangement” (18). Her aunt follows this hug and reaction by telling Tran to forget about it, what is done is done.
Whether or not Tran’s aunt’s full comprehension of the confession is there, Tran herself is once again urged to let it go. As a writer, like most writers, Tran is using her writing in Remembering the Hour o f Lead: a process as a way to heal and deal with the loss of her mother and the pain of her past; it is a way for her to get the words, thoughts, and feelings out in order to attempt to heal. While writing is not a permanent solution, more must be done in order to fully heal; it helps writers when there is no other outlet.
Writing for Maxine Hong Kingston appears to have brought a sort of understanding for herself, her Chinese Americaness, and her relationship with her mother. Writing for le thi diem thuy brought an understanding for herself in terms of her refugee identity in 75
America, as well as creating a voice for herself to address what it was like for
Vietnamese refugees in America at a time when confusion over the Vietnam War was rampant; who was to blame, the U.S. or Vietnamese, for countless and unnecessary deaths of GIs and Vietnamese citizens alike. Lan Tran wrote for herself as a way to heal and prove that she was still alive after the death of her mother, that she was still alive in spite of her past abuses by her father.
Through the Generations
In her chapter, “Uncanny Spaces: Trauma, Cultural Memory, and the Female
Body in Gayl Jones’s Corregidora and Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior
Jennifer Griffiths discusses how “the ‘copy62’ passed down includes narratives fixed within a cultural framework that implicates the female body in its own trauma.
Reproduction is not associated with pleasure in these texts; rather pleasure is linked to the disruption of narratives that inscribe the female body with the mark of trauma and with the recognition of traumatic memory in its multiple forms” (353-354). There is no happiness associated with an Asian American woman writer’s ability to write about the trauma that she has endured, as well as the generations of women before her, there is however, a sort of happiness in knowing that readers will see those words. Whether or not those words are acknowledged by a whole community, or a small sect of friends and family of the writer does not take away from the positive feelings that come with
62 “Trinh T. Minh-ha examines the imperative of each generation to claim the cultural narrative of the female ancestor and suggests that the repetition of the story fulfills both giver and receiver, giving each a sense of ‘pleasure in the copy’” (Griffiths, 353) Examine this more 76
knowing that the traumatic experiences have been exposed and are at least at some point being acknowledged.
Kingston’s first story in The Woman Warrior, titled “No Name Woman” is a retelling of family history, orally, from Kingston’s mother to Kingston. The aunt that
Kingston had never known, or heard of until that moment her mother opened her mouth didn’t have a choice in her life, being a woman in China, but she did have a choice in death. Drowning herself in the family well, along with her illegitimate child, allowed her control over how own life and body. The psychological abuses that the aunt endured after her pregnancy was revealed at the hands of her family and residents in her village became too much for her to endure, and assumed by Kingston that rather than dealing with her archaic punishment with regard to her well-being, she chose to end her life on her own terms and in a physical way that she knew would impact those that had hurt her while she was alive.
By writing about her aunt’s death, Kingston is “[rjecognizing the gaps in consciousness created by trauma...[and uses] the body strategically to indicate the limits of language, particularly in relation to expressing post-traumatic experiences and the uncanny figures of female sexuality they have inherited through the false testimony of patriarchal cultures” (Griffiths, 354). Kingston is intentionally sharing a story that she was told not to in order to bring to light the silence that was forced on her aunt; the question of how she got pregnant was never asked, only assumed. Her family, friends, and village did not ask whether she was raped, only assumed that she had an affair by 77
choice. In telling her aunt’s story, Kingston is also pointing out how as a woman, her
aunt’s well-being was never a priority; it was forgone in order for the family as a whole
to “save face” within the village community. The same ignorance can be seen in the
responses that Tran received from her family: she is to continue to ignore and forget her
pain and trauma in order to keep peace. Both Kingston63 and Tran defy this request in
order to prioritize the importance of self over silence.
While the accounts of both Kingston and Tran’s stories cover different
experiences, as well as the time in which the experiences occurred, the theme of (sexual)
trauma and silence is still relatable. Short stories, novels, poetry, and spoken word are
considered to be art forms. They are created, formed, and marketed for the general
public; going to a reading by an author is the same as going to an art gallery, the public
attends a function that allows them an inside view into what one person or persons has
created and why they created it. When looking at the limiting factors that come with
producing art works, Lydia Degarrod writes “Art historians have found that using the
category of race in defining Asian American art is limiting and problematic64” because
race is not the only aspect of an artist or an artist’s work. Degarrod’s theory is backed up
by Elaine Kim, who “finds the term Asian American art inadequate in that it groups
artists in terms only of their racialized ethnicity,” disallowing others who view Asian
American art as something other than just applicable to Asian America (245). Both
63 On page one of Kingston’s memoir, the first words written are “You must not tell anyone.” 64 From “Searching for Catalyst and Empowerment: The Asian American Women Artists Association, 1989-Present.” (2012) 78
Degarrod and Kim make points that relate back to the main argument held by Chin through his push for Asian American writers to write within a racial lens.
While Chin’s argument of Asian American authors’ works being seen as the authority of Asian America can be somewhat conceded, other criticisms of Kingston’s memoir cannot; those are criticisms of ignorance and unwillingness to uncover anything that could show a community in a negative light. Critics like Chin, would rather have their publicly viewed images be positive, and in turn, forcing negative images, such as generational trauma, to the bottom of the community’s priorities. In doing this, critics are enabling a stagnation of progress within the Asian American community. As shown in
Kingston’s telling of her aunt’s story, she shows that although her father’s family ignored the existence of her aunt, her aunt’s legacy still managed to make its way through the generations, essentially transferring her trauma to Kingston’s mother, and eventually to
Kingston herself. Tran’s trauma went backwards, as well as forwards. Her trauma went backwards because it ultimately affected her relationship with the generation before her: her mother and her aunts. It went forward through any future relationships she might develop and not with anyone in particular.
Stigmata and Trauma
Going back to Degarrod and Kim’s points, and looking at that combined with the idea of trauma through the generations, “These multigenerational histories have not been prominent within trauma studies, which has yet to address fully the categories of race and 79
ethnicity. This failure is due in part to a lack of attention to race within psychoanalysis and clinical psychology more generally, although there is now a growing body of work in this area. Moreover, within different area studies, ambivalence about psychoanalytic discourse and its pathologizing uses has sometimes created relevant reception for discourses of trauma65. The Asian American critics’ refusal and denial of trauma inflicted on Asian American women and the stories that they write about those traumas is another form of “saving face.” Asian Americans like Chin will need to loosen their critiques of
Asian American women writers in order to help, because at this point, they are doing more harm to the overall community than good.
Throughout the memoir, Kingston writes about her dreams and their associations to the stories that her mother told her throughout her childhood. The stories of past generations are internalized in a young Kingston’s mind, without fully being able to comprehend the morals of her mother’s narratives. This is another example of trauma being passed down subconsciously because her mother, the protagonist in most of the stories, abiding by the very culture that was ultimately responsible for the no name aunt’s death and erasure from family history, started to relay these stories to her daughter thinking that she was helping her daughter’s growth. These stories had the opposite effect, Griffiths writes “She embodies the uncanny force that threatens the family’s safety...[s]he has internalized the female body’s association with the uncanny that the aunt’s story perpetuates. In a sense, the narrator’s dreams reflect the violence of the
65 “Transnational Trauma and Queer Diasporic Pulics” in An Archive o f Feelings: Trauma, Sexuality, and Lesbian Public Cultures (2003) by Ann Cvetkovich. 80
outside world turned inside” (361). It is not a matter of coincidence that Kingston started her memoir with “No Name Woman,” they story of her aunt sets the background for the rest of the novel in that it connects all of the negativity of her family back to that moment in which the aunt’s pregnancy is discovered by her family and village community. Their reactions and ultimate denial of the aunt’s existence set the stage for future generations of women in Kingston’s family.
In her introduction for Haunting the Korean Diaspora: Shame and Secrecy, and the Forgotten War (2008), Grace M. Cho writes “...an unspeakable trauma does not die out with the person who first experienced it, rather, it takes on a life of its own, emerging from the spaces where secrets are concealed...” (6, “The Fabric of Erasure”), despite attempts by her family, the no name woman lives on through the oral telling of
Kingston’s mother. Griffiths equates Kingston’s mother’s stories, and Kingston’s written versions as “public scenes and family secrets,” in which “the female body becomes marked as the bearer of traumatic invisibility, harboring death, and, through the repetition of stories, continuing to threaten and warn” (361). Kingston’s mother relayed the story of her aunt in order to warn her of what may happen to her after she started menstruating; threatening Kingston in a “don’t end up like her” moment. Kingston wrote about her aunt in a way that showed that she didn’t agree with her mother; that her aunt’s erasure from family history was wrong and that she needed to be recognized as an importance in her family’s history, not a disgrace. Kingston’s mother likening her aunt to a negative existence in the family is equal to society likening women in general as less than. 81
As Tran has written, she kept silent about her abuse by her father, in way keeping in line with the idea of “saving face,” Cho writes “The acknowledgement of a traumatic past is systemically disavowed by a matric of silence, the major components of which include the institutions of U.S. global hegemony and social scientific knowledge production, along with the more intimate forces of familial desire and shame” (12). There is not only a push to erase trauma within history on a smaller intimate scale, but there is also a push to erase on a larger scale because of the lack of understanding on how to deal with it in a community. It is easier to ignore and forget than it is to take responsibility or acknowledge that there really is ugliness in the world. Both Kingston and Tran defy not only their families in the telling and retelling of their stories, but they defy the Asian
American community as a whole.
Defying the Silence
Kingston’s call to end the silence and the strangeness that comes with silence can be found throughout the chapter titled “A Song for a Barbarian Reed Pipe.” Throughout the chapter, Kingston details her many interactions with the voiceless and her view of them as non-talkers. Kingston writes “I thought talking and not talking made the difference between sanity and insanity. Insane people were the ones who couldn’t explain themselves” (186). Her mother asking her to remain quiet about her aunt’s story, as well as her aunt being forced to stay silent, created a lasting effect on her while she was growing up and made her question the silence that surrounded her. Kingston breaks the silence through her memoir because “...articulation creates selfhood. Kingston, unlike the 82
lunatic women who plague her, in the end does not succumb to the silence that imperils her childhood and adolescence. As an adult, as the writer of her autobiography, she eventually discovers her voice and the courage to employ it66.” Kingston’s articulation of words that, when put together and become a novel, releases her from continuing the cycle of silence that started with her aunt.
The silence of both their childhood and adolescent years proved to be detrimental to Kingston and Tran. Kingston’s silence forced her to question everything that she had thought she knew as a child: Old World Chinese customs and views, her family dynamic, her mother as the authority, and the women and girls that she encountered along the way.
Prior to her mother’s death, Tran was able to voice the silence that she had to keep as a child, just not toward her mother directly. And during her mother’s final days, and the days that followed her death, she was required to stay silent and have any chance of closure with her mother overlooked. Tran’s silence continued after her mother’s death, thus denying her access to closure with her mother’s death as well. Tran faced a double dose of imposed silence: silence from others and silence from self. Tran’s “Author’s
Note” in Remembering the Hour o f Lead: a process reads “I spent four years in this silent spiral, unable to find the words to describe what happened and explain how and why I lost my voice...my last expectation was to find my voice again, to finally be able to write about what happened while she was dying, my family history before, and the aftermath following her death” (7). Like Kingston, Tran’s forced and self-imposed silence forced
66 “From Silence to Song: The Triumph of Maxine Hong Kingston” (1987). 83
her to reexamine her relationships with her mother, aunts, and herself; helping her to discover words that she had never considered articulating prior to her mother’s passing.
As mentioned in Chapter Two, Kingston’s historical references and depictions are questioned in terms of accuracy. Chin himself questions the words in Kingston’s memoir as whether or not they represent Chinese American culture accurately. Chin’s main goal in doing this is to make sure that the community at large is being represented positively.
But, the fallacy that lies in Chin’s logic is that as an individual, Kingston’s experiences are separate from the community as a whole. What she experienced as a Chinese
American girl will not be the same as a Chinese American boy, and therefore the experiences will be different.
For Kingston, in the retelling of her aunt’s story, she had to add to it; she had to bring up the possibility in situations that her aunt faced in order to give her back her recognition. In doing this, Kingston infuses the information from her mother with the cultural lore that she grew up hearing, creating a forgotten story (albeit emebellished) of her aunt. In her introduction, Cho argues the same need to do what Kingston did in order to fill in the silence that surrounded the Korean War, or the “Forgotten War67.” Even though Kingston is not able to tell her aunt’s full, accurate story from start to finish does not mean that she didn’t exist. Kingston can’t give an accurate story of her aunt because
67 “But this telling is also a failure to tell these stories in their entirety, because there are too many uncertainties, and the very act of telling them in a way that makes sense would involve smoothing over the gaps.” Cho, p. 17. 84
in doing so, she ignores the unknown that shaped the events leading up to her aunt’s suicide, and Kingston felt that her aunt had been ignored long enough.
Check the Box
Race as a construct is not a simple binary. An Asian American cannot make the choice to be an Asian or to be an American. The social issues that Asian American women face cannot be equated into one issue alone, there are many issues. Similarly, as
Elaine Kim and other Asian American critics have insisted for over a decade, Asian
American women cannot be asked to only fight against racism when they also have to fight against sexism, misogyny, and other social issues that equate to being a fully represented woman in America. Asian American women need to be able to address sexism and racism. If she chooses to address race, then she is considered a positive image in the Asian American community. If she chooses women’s issues, then she cannot be a proper representation of Asian Americaness and is a negative image in the Asian
American community.
Kingston, who is an American-born Chinese, grew up in California and was a part of the Civil Rights and Free Speech Movements. The world around her was changing, pushing for more freedoms of accessibility for everyone, but in a world where women of color were pressured to prioritize race over gender68. In King-kok Cheung’s words “As minority women these writers are subject not only to the white gaze of the larger society
68 “The third factor, acculturation, had more of a bearing on American-born women. Through church, school, and the popular media, the second generation was encouraged to challenge traditional gender roles at home and discrimination outside, to shape a new cultural identity and lifestyle for themselves.” From “Unbound Feet: A Social History of Chinese Women in San Francisco” (1995). 85
but also a communal gaze. Mediating between dominant culture that advertises ‘free’ speech (but maintains minority silence) and an ethnic one that insists on the propriety of reticence, [Kingston has] developed methods of indirection that reflect [her] female, racial, and bicultural legacies” (16, Articulate Silences: Hisaye Yamamoto, Maxine Hong
Kingston, and Joy Kogewa [Reading Women Writing}), Kingston knew that people in
America had greater freedoms than the China that she had heard about growing up69.
These freedoms allowed her to write Woman Warrior without penalty from government, state police, or any authority that can punish her for publicly voicing western ideals; ironically though, she could not get the same freedoms within her own community of writers that included Chin70.
Kingston grew up in a bicultural world, the East and the West. In Kingston’s words, binaries such as East vs. West were strongly present and enforced by cultural nationalists, and writes about what she knows; yet, it is important to acknowledge, even after 40 years that the idea of silence imposed on Chinese and Asian American women and girls within Asian communities is still important from a cultural standpoint in order to make the community a positive one in order to be accepted as an equal in American society. Kingston writes as both Chinese and American. To read her words as either
Chinese or American does not take into account that many factors; for example, the protagonist’s identity of a Chinese American girl in America, Kingston’s own need to
69 Woman Warrior, 205-206. 70 Refer to Chapter Two. 86
voice her experiences as a child in order to deal with the trauma of oppression that she grew up in, and her individual story and how she chooses to tell it.
When reading Kingston’s novel, the social construct of race is prevalent within gender71. Kingston continually mentions how she was a girl in a Chinese family. She didn’t write these moments as a positive element, but as a way to show the one-sided acceptance of the male gender over the female gender. In ‘“Don’t Tell’: Imposed Silences in The Color Purple and The Woman Warrior, Cheung highlights several points that highlight the negatives of being a girl in a Chinese family:
Maxine also grows up amidst sexist gibes. She is told repeatedly by her parents and relatives: “There’s no profit in raising girls. Better to raise geese than girls.” (54). When her mother yells, “Bad girl!” (54), Maxine screams back, “I’m not a bad girl,” adding, “I might as well have said, ‘I’m not a girl’” (55). Yet her protests fall on deaf ears, for her parents’ culture disapproves of free speech, especially in women: “The Chinese say ‘A ready tongue is an evil”’ (190). Worse still, the Chinese language itself propagates sexism: “There is a Chinese word for the female / - which is ‘slave.’ Break the women with their own tongues!” (56)72.
As Cheung points out, words on the pages demonstrate the consistency in which
Kingston heard anti-female sentiment. These examples exemplify the sexism that was prevalent during Kingston’s childhood and adolescence throughout her family and her community. Her continually being told to stay quiet and silent was a repressive tactic employed by her family in order to maintain old world customs from China while living
71 “A Song for a Barbarian Reed Pipe.” 72 p. 177, Cheung. 87
in new world America. Kingston finds an outlet for internal frustration when she writes about the gender preference of males with her culture; writing allows her to openly defy the custom of silence on Chinese American women.
Chin wanted the Asian American woman writer to represent Asian America in a positive light, but, in doing so, the Asian American literary community would result in a never-changing community73. The purpose of writing and creating stories is to share, inspire, and at times incite. Asian American writers are not all the same, and they cannot be expected to write the same. If Asian American writers all wrote in a similar fashion,
Kingston’s memoir would be vastly different from what it is. Would it have had the same effect on Asian America if it had been written exactly how Chin desired? Would she have been able to find closure with the trauma that her mother’s stories forced on her? For le’s novel, would we have gotten a better view of a child refugee’s story and about how she coped the first years in a new country? In the same vein, would Lan Tran have been able to get past her demons and find some sense of closure with her mother and her past trauma if she had to write how Chin would have preferred? An example of why Chin’s writing preference is the wrong way to write can be found within Tran’s chapbook. If
Tran were to write in the way that Chin would have preferred, I do not believe that she would have found closure because she would still have to remain silent and continually
73 “The teaching of an immigrant female and postcolonial text, like Truong’s, decenters the autonomous notion of Western culture by recentering the complexities of racialized female and postcolonial collectivities and unmasks the developmental narrative as a fiction designed to justify the histories of colonialism, neocolonialism, and forced labor and to erase the dislocations and hybridities that are the resulting conditions of those histories.” p. 58, Immigrant Acts: On Asian American Cultural Politics by Lisa Lowe. 88
bury the traumas that she knew were having a detrimental effect on her relationships with others, as well as her relationship with herself.
The answers to these questions are “no.” The creativity that comes with writing a novel will most certainly create a self-imposed psychological effect on a writer, one that could destroy them completely, or one that can help them heal and move one. bell hooks, a prolific African American writer once wrote:
The wounded child inside many males is a boy who, when he first spoke his truths, was silenced by paternal sadism, by a patriarchal world that did not want him to claim his true feelings. The wounded child inside many females is a girl who was taught from early childhood that she must become something other than herself, deny her true feelings, in order to attract and please others. When men and women punish each other for truth telling, we reinforce the notion that lies are better. To be loving we willingly hear the other’s truth, and most important, we affirm the value of truth telling. Lies may make people feel better, but they do not help them to know love74. hooks is calling for an end to the ways that men and women treat each other over what they choose to voice, and that continuing this behavior adds to the silence that already prevails over talking story. Kingston, le, Tran, and others have found their voices after being silent for so long; a continued silence would’ve affected their long-standing health and relationships with those around them. Writing is truth-telling; and truth-telling is self- love and self-care.
74 From All About Love: New Visions. 89
Conclusion
In Summation
Much of this thesis has been focused on Frank Chin and Maxine Hong Kingston.
The last chapter brings in newer writers; independent writers such as Lan Tran, and points out why it is important for Asian American women to be able to write about what they want and how they want in order to give a voice and recognize that traumas that
Asian American women face in the 21st century are no longer about race, but about intrinsic aspects of their lives that can be found behind the racial identity. My own personal stake in this thesis is not completely about free speech, creativity, and the like. It is more about my need to heal from past trials and tribulations through writing without worrying about consequence from those involved. I believe that the words that are written down on pages of novels are relevant more so to the writer because of the unconscious thoughts that they have carried with them over the years.
Writing has brought me clarity and understanding with the events of my past, it has helped me dissect the reasoning behind the choices that others have made that have directly affected me as an adult, and as a child. This same exercise in healing, I argue, applies to Lan Tran’s reasoning for writing the contents in her chapbook75, it applies to
Kingston’s understanding towards her mother and the relationship that they had when
Kingston was a child, and it even applies to Frank Chin’s want to sort out the negativity that surrounded him as an Asian American male during the many movements that he
75 Remembering the Hour of Lead: a process (2014). 90
experienced that involved identity and acceptance in a time where Asian Americans, men especially, were fighting for recognition of their assertiveness within American society.
During the heyday of the Chin and Kingston criticism and backlash, the fight against racism was the main concern for people of color; this was the one thing that could unite everyone in the Asian American community, men and women alike. As the students and activists fighting for ethnic studies gained ground and their demands were being met76, other minority groups such as women and the LGBT community saw the benefits that could come out of panethnic unification; giving insight into how to organize for more rights: women’s rights, sexual freedom, environmental issues, and everything that was the opposite of the “All-American Family”: a husband, wife, and 2.5 kids. It was in this time that the subject of women’s rights started to rise up into the social justice discourse77.
Women no longer wanted to take a backseat to men, women wanted to their voices to be heard, women no longer wanted to be objectified. Chin accused Kingston of maintaining the stereotypes against Asian Americans in her memoir, but Kingston did the exact opposite through the stories in her memoir. Asian Americans are seen as passive and subservient, Kingston broke those stereotypes when she wrote and made public the cause and effect of sexism that happened behind closed doors, out of public view of
White America. When Kingston viewed how white literary critics saw her memoir, she
76 “The Five TWLF Demands,” from Wikipedia. 77 “The 1970s - Facts and Summaries.” 91
recognized the absurdity in which her words were viewed78, but she also kept in mind the
fantastical aspect of parts of her memoir79, which can be seen in the chapter on Fa Mu
Lan. The book was not an attempt to reinforce the stereotype of Chinese America as
much as it was her way of dissecting the issues with her mother.
Kingston’s way of handling the dysfunction of her childhood was through fiction,
but without the naive notion that her purpose of healing through writing would be easily
understood. Frank Chin, however, was naive in thinking that Kingston’s memoir would
only be seen at face-value by every white critic within the literary community80 through a
need to exotify the unknown Asian culture. Chin’s accusatory tones of perpetuating
stereotypes in Kingston’s book stemmed from how white America would see the book,
yet he never considered how it would be viewed within the Chinese American
community. Asian and Chinese American critics reviewed Kingston’s book, but they
criticized it from a cultural angle; such as Cynthia Sau-ling Wong, Lisa Lowe, and Erin
Ninh. Cynthia Sau-ling Wong wrote an essay81 about Kingston’s memoir, and did so
without demonizing Kingston’s work. In fact, Wong went as far as creating a help guide
in which to teach Kingston’s memoir in classrooms. Wong pointed out where she viewed
Kingston to be erroneous in her descriptions and then gave her constructive criticism
knowing that Kingston’s memoir was one of the first to come out of the social justice
movement of the 1960s. Wong chose to uphold an Asian American, whereas Chin chose
78 “Cultural Mis-Readings by American Reviewers” (1982) 79 “Cultural Mis-Readings by American Reviewers” (1982) 80 “The Woman Warrior at 30,” (2007) 81 “Kingston’s Handling o f Traditional Chinese Sources” (1991) 92
to push an Asian American down. Wong’s choice in using a help guide for teaching
Kingston’s book in classrooms helps others to further understand Kingston’s memoir, past the initial exotification of the memoir, past the initial surface and helps to give a deeper understanding of reasons why authors of color may write what they write.
Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing
Chin’s collaboration with another Chinese American male writer in “Racist
Love,” as well as his anthology and choice of writers in that anthology; most, if not all male, shows a gender discrepancy in that although he is positively critiquing a woman writer82, he is using that positive critique as a ruse to show that he supports women writers. Theoretically speaking, Chin does support women writers, but only if they write in a way that he sees fit. The one writer that Chin saw as having an impact was because she was not raised in America and therefore not influenced by American culture. Chin’s reason was similarly pointed out in Songs from Gold Mountain83.
The slight nuances of the poems included in Horn’s book show an almost disgust for how American women are portraying themselves in public, and later how assimilated and American bom Chinese women and girls took on the Western habits around how they dressed and how they portrayed themselves out in public. The poems and Chin’s criticism are one in the same in that Asian American women need to behave and act a certain way in the public eye. It is as if the cultural restriction that Asian American
82 Refer back to “Racist Love” 83 Refer back to poems from Songs of Gold Mountain (1992) 93
women and girls face within their families behind closed doors also needs to be followed while in the public eye, regardless if their family is present, in order to “save face” for the
Asian American community; showing that Asian American women and girls were pressured to keep in line with the Easter ideal of modesty, removing their womanhood and sexual freedoms even more.
“Saving face,” patriarchy, and Confucianism are relevant to silence and Asian
American women needing to stay silent to help the Asian American community to be a positive contribution to American society. In order to prioritize the fight against racism, women’s issues were not seen as important because it only applies to half of the Asian
American population. And while men’s issues pertaining to emasculation and masculinity were a part of the gender fight for equality, that was the only part that Asian American men were willing to address because of the gender hierarchy; meaning that the issues that affected Asian American men are more important than issues that affect Asian American women.
I initially began this thesis as wanting to look at identity within Asian American literature. I wanted to research how Asian American fictional characters were portrayed by Asian American writers of both genders. That then transformed into how gender identity was portrayed in Asian American literature; which led me to the theme of mother-daughter relationships, which led me to Kingston’s memoir, and eventually led me to Chin and his criticism of Kingston and Asian American women writers. The
Kingston-Chin debate was from the late to early 1960s and 1970s, and helped to create a 94
platform to help Asian American women writers pursue their own stories and narratives.
The debate made visible the patriarchal ideals and constructs within the Asian American community; it started a movement that created voices to address issues that surrounded the voices of Asian American women, and helped lift them up into the other voices wanting and needing to be heard. Works such as Comfort Woman84, that examines the silence that enforced the suffering of Korean women who suffered at the hands of
Japanese soldiers, The Gangster We Are All Looking For*5, that tells the story of a
Vietnamese refugee girl and the trouble with assimilation without support, and
Kingston’s Woman Warrior, which touches on the complexities of being female in an
Old World envisioned Asian America.
Expansion
The final part of this thesis includes curriculum in order to further understanding of Asian American women writers, and the words they write. The curriculum will center on the intersection gender, race, and the reason why the two can no longer stand separate from one another within Asian American women’s literature. My decision in creating the curriculum is because of the want to adopt Wong’s idea of help guides in classrooms for reading Kingston’s memoir, but also to build on that idea and include current literature written by Asian American women and about Asian American women. Examining
Kingston’s story and comparing it to current stories, such as Keller’s, le’s, and others will
84 Nora Okja Keller, 1997 85 16 thi diem thuy, 2003 95
help to show examples of how gender and race intersect and the effects of race and
gender in the Asian American community and how it affects Asian American women in
their everyday lives. In looking at the themes of patriarchy, silence, domestic violence,
and submissiveness; I hope to create a wider lens of how Asian American women are
seen within the Asian American community, as well as how they are seen outside of the
Asian American community. Looking back at how Frank Chin viewed women and
women writers, as can be exampled in “Racist Love” and other short stories, I want to
encourage students to see how far Asian American women have progressed, and at the
same time, show how much further Asian American women have to journey before they
are no longer under a patriarchal rule. 96
Appendix
Syllabus: Asian American Studies - Women’s Agency in Literature
Course Description:
This course is a literature course that focuses on Asian American women writers and Asian American women protagonists.
We will cover stories about Asian American women and the issues that they face as minorities in a majority patriarchal American society, within their cultural communities, and within their family dynamics. Themes such as silence, culture, identity, and simply put; “Where do I fit in?” will be discussed in context with the readings what will be covered in class.
While this is not a history class of Asians in America, there will be some historical elements involved in order to give perspective of the events that occur in some of the works that will be covered.
Course Objectives:
- To be able to critically examine the historical experiences of Asian American women and how they are viewed within American and Asian American society To develop critical reading, writing, and thinking skills To be able to know how to interpret the readings and apply the themes to personal experiences - To question “why” of the literature that is being read in class; i.e. why the writer chose to write the way that she did, why the writer chose to create the situations that the characters were in, etc. - To be able to question Asian American women’s representation in literature, as well as their representation in American society
Grading:
Attendance/Participation (20%) Reflection papers (15%) Midterm (30%) - Final (35%) 97
Required Novels:
Keller, Nora Okja. Comfort Woman. New York: Penguin, 1998. Print. - le thi diem thuy. The Gangster We Are All Looking For. New York: Anchor, 2004. Print. - Ng, Fae Myenne. Bone. New York: Hachette, 2008. Print. Phan, Aimee. We Should Never Meet. New York: Picador, 2004. Print. Yamamoto, Hisaye. Seventeen Syllables and Other Stories. New Jersey: Rutgers, 1998. Print. 98
Course Calendar:
Week Readings Due In Class Assignments Due 1 Syllabus, Beers’ “Questions to First day introduction, Encourage” discussion of Beers’ “Questions...,” and lecture of literary terms 2 “Backdaire” and p. 1-51 of Bone, by Discuss the similarities and Fae Myenne Ng differences in Ng’s “Backdaire” and Bone 3 “The Loom” by R.A. Sasaki, and Look at the similarities of p.52-118 of Bone by Ng the mothers in both readings 4 p. 119-end of Bone by Ng, “Riding “KWL Chart” activity, Reading into California” by Shirley Geok-lin figure out themes of Bone reflection Lim due in class 5 Excerpt from Monkey Bridge by Lan Discuss the differences Cao, and p. 1-3 5 in The Gangster We between the voice of le’s Are All Looking For by le thi diem character and Ng’s character thuy 6 p.36-77 of The Gangster..., and “War, Introduce mid-term gender and race in le thi diem thuy’s assignment, discuss what The Gangster We Are All Looking has been read so far in The For” by Isabelle Thuy Pelaud Gangster... 7 p.78-124 of The Gangster... Peer review of midterm draft 8 p.l25-end of The Gangster..., and Discussion of Americaness Midterm due “The Making of More Americans” by and culture in class Maxine Hong Kingston 9 Read “Different Silences” by Traise Lecture and discussion on Reading Yamamoto, and chapters 1-3 in We the themes of culture and reflection Should Never Meet by Aimee Phan silence due in class 10 Read chapters 4-5 in We Should Discussion on the idea of Never Meet, and “Kelly” by Monique home and identity, identity Thuy-Dung Truong and womanhood 11 Read chapters 6-end in We Should Group discussion on the Never Meet character of Kim; compare to that of the others in the novel 12 Read “Recentering Women” by Gary Lecture on Okihiro piece, Reading Y. Okihiro, and Seventeen Syllables compared to previously read reflection by Hisaye Yamamoto material and Yamamoto due in class 99
13 Read chapters 1-5 of Comfort Woman Lecture and discussion on by Nora Okja Keller, and “Mother the characters of the mothers Tongue” by Amy Tan in what we’ve read so far; silence, matriarchal themes 14 Read chapters 6-10 of Comfort Introduce final paper, group Woman think on possible themes to analyze in final paper 15 Read chapters 11-14 of Comfort Discuss and compare the Woman, and “Into Such Assembly” mother’s immigration to that by Myung Mi Kim of Kim’s poem 16 Read chapters 15-end of Comfort Discuss overall summation Final paper Woman of all of women in what was due in class read over the semester, build up for final, paper, peer reviews 100
Asian American Studies: Teaching Sequence for Midterm
Week 1: Day One -
Students are to print out the syllabus and bring it to class to go over and answer any questions in class. Any time remaining after the syllabus will be geared toward their knowledge of Asian American literature; i.e. what they’ve read, what they liked, didn’t like, etc.
Week 1: Day Two -
Students are to print out and bring to class Beers’s “Questions to Encourage.”
Lecture on literary terms, as well as “Questions to Encourage.” Will cover:
- The “who,” “what,” “where,” and “why” of literature What do the questions by Beers ask? How do they help to understand literature? What can be seen and what is brought up by Bone so far in terms of “Questions to Encourage
Week 2: Day One -
Students are to read “Backdaire” and bring to class, and have finished Bone up to p.51.
Discussion on similarities and differences of both “Backdaire” and Bone. Will cover:
- Does Ng’s short story tie into Bone - Is “Backdaire” separate from Bone, or a deeper look into Bone
Week 2: Day Two -
Continued discussion on both Ng stories. Will cover:
The differences in the sisters Do any of them fit into the mold of Asian American women, from what you know Asian American women to be - How would you have written the story so far; what would you change, keep 101
Week 3: Day One -
Students are to read “The Loom” and bring to class, and have finished Bone up to p. 118
Discussion on mother characters and the idea of “mother” and matriarchy. Will cover:
- How were the mothers portrayed - How did the assimilation, differences in culture affect the mindsets of the mothers
Week 3: Day Two -
Look at the mother in Bone, how significant of a character is she in the novel so far? How does she differ from Leon, Leila, and the other two daughters? Will cover:
- Themes - Matriarchy - Acceptance
Week 4: Day One -
Where do Leila and her mother conflict? Where are they the same? Will cover:
Small lecture on history of Chinese American women in America - How does that history affect their individual behaviors, actions toward each other
Week 4: Day Two -
Students should have finished Bone, and print out “Riding into Calfomia” by Lim and bring to class.
Now that the we’ve finished the novel, use “KWL Chart” to expand on the novel and its ideas, as well as interpretation of author’s ideas. Will cover:
- KWL Chart The words chosen by Lim in her poem, compare to words chosen by Ng in her novel Choice of words as rhetoric; ethos, pathos, logos
Week 5: Day One —
Students should have read the excerpt from Monkey Bridge by Cao and started The Gangster We Are All Looking For by le. Will cover: 102
- Voice; tone, flection - What are the differences in the voices of the two protagonists from Monkey Bridge and from what we’ve read so far in The Gangster...
Week 5: Day Two -
Students should have read up to p.35 in The Gangster... Will cover:
What themes have come up in the beginning? - Is there a difference in the way the story is told, as compared to Bone Child’s eyes vs. adult eyes; views
Week 6: Day One -
Students should have read “War, gender and race in le thi diem thuy’s The Gangster We Are All Looking For” by Isabelle Thuy Pelaud. Will cover:
- Midterm prompt and requirements - Lecture on Pelaud’s chapter “It seems easier for an Asian American woman to find a publisher for a memoir about her relationships with her mother than for a novel that does not address racial and gender identities.” (Pelaud) Examine sentence in a class discussion
Week 6: Day Two -
Students should have read up to p.77 in The Gangster... Continued discussion of Pelaud’s chapter and it’s relation to both Bone and The Gangster...
Week 1: Day One -
Peer review of draft of midterm
Week 7: Day Two -
Students should have read up to p.124 in The Gangster... Will cover:
How has the novel differed with the focus being on a father-daughter relationship Specific look at pages 115-116 103
Week 8: Day One -
Students should have finished The Gangster... Will cover:
Last minute midterm questions Discussion of end of The Gangster...
Week 8: Day Two -
Students should have read, and brought to class Maxine Hong Kingston’s “The Making of More Americans.” Midterm due in class.
Will cover:
What does it mean to be American? - How does culture play a factor in separate identities; social identity vs. professional identity? 104
Week One Handout:
From: Beers, Kylene. When Kids Can’t Read: What Teachers Can Do. Portsmouth: Heinemann, 2003. Print.
Questions to Encourage a Personal Response to the Text:
• What are your first thoughts about this text? What in the text caused those thoughts? • What emotions or feelings did you have while reading the text? Identify the parts that caused those feelings? • Did anything in this text remind you of anything in your own life? • Did this text remind you of any other texts? Movies? Plays? Why? • If you could talk to the author of this text, what would you ask about or comment on? • If you were going to recommend this text to someone, who would it be? What in the text would the person like? • What confused you or surprised you in this text? • As you read this text, describe how you felt. For example, were you bored, caught up, thinking about characters, thinking about how you might react if in the same situation, enjoying the author’s writing style, or enjoying the humor or suspense? • Did you like the cover of the book? Why or why not? If not, how could you change it? • Did you like the title of the book? Why or why not? If not, how would you change it?
Questions to Encourage Reflection About the Plot:
• What went on in this story? • What parts of the plot did you find to be the most significant? Why? • What were the turning points in this plot for you? Why? • What was the most important word in this text? Why? • What idea or image or situation meant the most to you as you read this text? Why? • What did the author of this text do that helped you enjoy the story? That made you not enjoy the story? • If this story were to continue, what do you think would happen next? Why? 105
• If you could change the ending, would you? How would you change it? • If you were to draw a picture that represented what you found to be important in this text, what would you draw? Why? • Evaluate this plot on a scale of 1 to 4 being “Not worth recommending” and 4 being “Everyone should read this” and tell why you gave it the rating you did.
Questions to Encourage Reflection on the Characters:
• Which character or characters did you enjoy most? Why? • Which character or characters did you least enjoy? Why? • Do any of the characters remind you of yourself? Which ones? Why? • Do you think the characters were believable? Why or why not? • Which character or characters did you think learned the hardest or most important lessons in this text? Why did you choose that character? • What surprised you the most about any of the characters? • If you could take on the qualities of any of the characters in this text, what qualities would those be? • Which character changed the most in this text? How did that character change? What did you learn about that character in watching that change? What did you learn about yourself? • If this text were to be made into a movie, which starts would you cast in which roles? Why? • If you were to eliminate a character from this text, which character would you choose? • Why? How you eliminating that character change the text?
Questions to Encourage Reflection About the Setting:
• What was the setting of this text? • Was the setting important to the text why or why not? • How could you change the setting without changing the outcome? • How could you change the setting so that it would affect the outcome? • Does this setting remind you of a place you know? • Which events in the text are most connected to the setting? • How did the author let you know what the setting was? • Did the setting affect what the characters did or didn’t do? • If you could talk to the author about the setting of this book, what would you ask? 106
• If you were to write a story, would you choose the setting first or think about characters and the conflicts they would face and let that dictate the choice of setting? Questions to Encourage Reflection About the Theme:
• What message did you take away from reading this text? Why? • Which passage in the text would you consider most significant or most important? Why? Did that passage help shape what you considered to be the message of this text? • If you were talking with the author, can you speculate what the author might say the theme is? What is in the text that gives hints to that? • How do the title, chapter titles, and/or cover illustration help you make a decision about the message of this text? • Talk with someone else who has read the same text. What does that person see as the message? If you see different messages, discuss what caused those differences. • The plot (the series of events in the text) and the theme (the lesson or message you take away from the text) are not the same. Think of the text you just read. What is the plot? What is the theme? How does the plot relate to or affect the theme? • What affected your interpretation of the theme the most: the plot, the characters, or the setting? • If you were to draw the theme symbolically, what would you draw? • Think about several texts you’ve enjoyed. Do they share similar themes? Different themes? If they share similar themes, what does that tell you about what you are looking for in a book or story?
Questions to Encourage Reflection on the Point of Views, Author’s Style and Author:
• Who told the story in the text you just read? Was the narrator a character in the story or an omniscient narrator? How did the narrator affect you reading of this story? • How would the text have changed if a different character had told the story? Can you speculate on why the author chose the narrator he or she did to tell thisstory? 107
• How did the author make the story come alive in her mind? What specific words or phrases did the author use to help you see events, characters, and the setting vividly? • Find a section of the text that you particularly liked. What did the author do to help you like that section? • Look at the beginnings of chapters. What did the author do there to make you want to read the rest of the chapter? Also look at the endings. Did the author do something special to make you want to read on to the next chapter? • Is there a particular phrase or sentence in the text that you thought was particularly well said? What is there about that passage that makes it stand out in your mind? • Did you like how this author wrote this text? What did you like or not like? Consider things like setting description, use of dialogue, characterization, explanation of conflict, foreshadowing, symbolism, as well as length of chapters, length of sentences, choice of chapter titles, and use of illustrations. • Would you want to read another book by this author? Why or why not? • What other writer or writers does this remind you of? Why? 108
Week Four Handout
“Riding into California” by Shirley Geok-lin Lim, from The Shirley Lim Collection: Passports and other Lives (2011)
Riding into California
If you come to a land with no ancestors to bless you, you have to be your own ancestor. The veterans in the mobile home park don’t want to be there. It isn’t easy.
Oil rigs litter the land like giant frozen birds.
Ghosts welcome us to a new life, and an immigrant without home ghosts cannot believe the land is real. So you’re grateful for familiarity, and Bruce Lee becomes your hero. Coming into Fullerton, everyone waiting at the station is white.
The good thing about being Chinese on Amtrak is no one sits next to you. The bad thing is you sit alone all the way to Irvine. 109
Week Four Handout (2)
Now that we’ve finished Bone by Fae Myenne Ng, we’re going to use the KWL Chart to take a deeper look at the novel, the characters in it, and the plot.
In small groups, fill out the chart, then, focus on the “Want to Know” section. Come up with ideas on how to answer your own questions?
Create possible plots, storyline twists, characters, etc.
Be creative. Use your imagination. Literature is interpretive and there is no right way to read or understand anything. We’ll then come back together as a class and share ideas.
Know Want to Know Learned 110
Week Six Handout
Midterm Prompt:
Context:
Now that we’ve finished both Bone and The Gangster We Are All Looking For, as well as other related short stories, you’re going to take the KWL Chart and expand on a chosen story.
Task:
In groups, you filled out the KWL Chart for Bone, and came up with new ideas regarding the storyline. Your task now, for this midterm, is to use the KWL Chart on your own and the “Want to Know” section and create your own narrative. Your goal is not to rewrite one of the stories we’ve read so far, it’s to expand on one moment that stood out the most. For example, in The Gangster We Are All Looking For, there is the moment when the protagonist becomes enthralled with the butterfly in the paperweight. How would you elaborate? Would you elaborate on the symbolism of the butterfly? Would you elaborate on the feelings and symbolism of being trapped? What would you write to make things more understandable for the protagonist?
Criteria for Success:
Criteria Superior Strong Good Struggling Creativity The story is The story is The story is The story is creative in that it creative in that it creative in that it creative in that it uses description uses description uses description uses description and metaphors to and metaphors to and metaphors, and metaphors, create a clear help start with but the images but the images image creating a clear are somewhat are unclear and image unclear do not relate back to the imagery Originality The story is The story is The story is The story is an creative and creative and creative, but attempt at original; it is not original, and is comes off as a creativity, and is a rewrite of the not a rewrite of rewrite of the a rewrite of the original scene, the original scene original scene original scene but an expansion Mechanics Story contains Story contains Story has quite a Story has many less than five some errors in few grammar, errors for grammar, terms of spelling, and spelling, I l l
spelling, and grammar, punctuation grammar, and punctuation spelling, and errors punctuation errors punctuation Relatability Story relates Stoiy somewhat Story struggles to Story does not back to original relates back to relate back to relate back to novel/story and original original original characters novel/story and novel/story and novel/story and characters characters characters 112
Week Six Handout (2)
The First Rule of Writing
Show, Don’t Tell. Yeah, that sounds easy, but what, exactly, does show mean?
Let’s look at an example: Carey ate breakfast, then he took a shower and went to the store. At the store he met a girl and they talked for a long time. Carey liked her but she blew him off. Then he went home.
Tells you a lot about Carey, huh? Okay - so this example is really exaggerated, but it hits home the necessity of showing and not telling. What can we do to fix it? We need more detail, especially dialogue and action. Consider:
Carey studied the frozen dinners. He ’d had turkey and dressing for the last four days, so Salisbury steak would be good for a change. But did he want the Big Man’s or the regular?
A scent teased his nose. Not the overwhelming smell offish and frostbite, but a fresh smell, like the smell o f skin just out o f the shower. He glanced sideways and saw the most perfect arm he’d ever seen in his life. Long, slender, graceful, full o f sinewy muscle and smooth skin. His eyes followed the arm to the shoulder and then the head. Her head. A head covered with long blond hair and containing a face that made his heart stop.
“Hi, ” she said, her voice rich and melodious.
Carey’s mouth didn ’t work. He tried to return her greetings, but only a grunt came out. He tried to smile politely, but his face erupted with a grin as large and toothy and goofy as a cartoon character’s...
So now you have the idea. We need details. We need to know thoughts, feelings; we need to smell the perfume, taste the wine, feel the cashmere. Anything less cheats the reader from experiencing our imaginary world.
We also get into the “show, don’t tell” problem in less apparent ways. For example, in the description. Mary is a wonderful person, say Molly is always there when anyone needs her. She’s the first to arrive with a casserole when someone is sick, the first to send a note o f encouragement to those who are troubled, the first to offer a hug to anyone - man, woman or child - at anytime. 113
Instead of saying Sam is a talented musician, let us hear the crowds cheer, let us feel his passion. Take us into his head as he strokes the piano keys:
Consummation o f the soul. That’s what Sam called the gratification he receivedfrom music. When his passion became so intense it begged to be satisfied, pleaded to be released, and he was helpless to resist its urges. When his fingers assumed a life o f their own, titillating the ivory keys with the complex music o f Bach and Mozart and Beethoven, and he became one with the cadence, breathing with the crescendos, his fingers caressing the melody, until everything else faded, everything else disappeared, and only the music existed.
Instead of saying Marci is a spoiled child, let us hear that whine. Let us - never mind. Just offer her some cheese to go with her whine and forget it. I really don’t want to hear it.
You can’t tell us someone is a wonderful person, a talented musician or a spoiled child. We won’t believe you. You must show us.
©Copyright 2001 by Sandy Tritt. All rights reserved, expect for those listed here. These pages may be reproduced for educational purposes (such as for writers’ workshops), as long as this copyright notice and the url: http://tritt.wirefire.com are distributed with the pages. For use in conferences or other uses not mentioned here, please contact Sandy Tritt at [email protected] for permission and additional resources at no or limited charge. (Edited for length and some content) 114
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