Until and unless we grant non-Western authors and texts - be
these texts fiction, theory, film, popular music, or criticism -
the same kind of verbal, psychical, theoretical density and
complexity that we have copiously endowed upon Western authors
and texts, we will never be able to extricate our readings from
the kind of idealism in which the East-West divide is currently
mired.
Rey Chow, Ethics after Idealism
Narrating Memory, Constructing the Future
Chinese American literature, like those of other minority
literatures, is very much shaped and re-shaped by new-found
archives, which include long lost and neglected materials,
journals, letters, and diaries. One of the main reasons for
their neglect is that they are written in Chinese and thus
inaccessible to contemporary readers, especially the English
speaking readership. To make them reach more readers, they need
to be translated into English. Through historical construction
and textual analysis, the meaning of Chinese American cultural
identity can constantly be interrogated and also recuperated and
re-constructed.
I suggest that the collective memory of the marginalized not
only functions as counter memory to the dominant 'History', but
also that Chinese American literature can operate as a
counter-canon in American literary history. In the milieu of
multiculturalism, Chinese American literary texts have received
more attention in classrooms, and yet, are more likely to be
read as ethnographic and socio-anthropological texts, serving
merely as an accessory to mainstream American literature. I
emphasise that Chinese American literature provides a
counter-canon or a different canon to shape and reformulate
American literature. It is simultaneously the same as and
different from other branches of American literature, such as
black literature, Chicano/a literature, Native American
literature, or Euro-American literature and so on. To determine
what an American cultural identity constitutes, it is important
to take into account whole composites within American society.
The reason for disseminating Chinese American literary texts
should not be on the grounds of exotic content that is replete
with descriptions of food conventions and customs, but rather,
on the grounds that it opens up a site for cultural translation
in representational terms. Such a complex understanding would
then enable us to constitute a Chinese American cultural
identity.
I base my argument on the belief that more access and
exposure to Chinese American literature would help valorise the
formation of a Chinese American cultural identity. I therefore,
think that it is important to teach Chinese American literature
in order to enable equal interchange and provide multiple
understandings instead of ethnographic or anthropological bias.
In other words, Chinese American literature functions as a
counter-canon to the works of 'Great Masters' and demands being
treated as a valid canon within American literature. To further
my argument, I address the following questions: How does Chinese
American literature differ from other branches of American
literature, such as black literature, Chicano/a literature or
Anglo-American literature? Why does the creation of the canons
matter?
There is no denying the fact that education is one of the
most important ways of passing on tradition. Since the claiming
of one's cultural identity is intrinsic to sustaining tradition,
the role played by educational institutions in selecting and
defining tradition becomes a crucial one. The redesigning of
education and the reformation of pedagogical practices are
therefore, central to identity formation. Accordingly, debates
about the canon arise in the context of uncertainties about a
national or cultural identity where definitions of 'Americanness'
or 'Britishness' become contested terms. For example, in the
late eighties and early nineties, there were ferocious debates
about which books college freshmen should read and more
importantly, what American identity was and what legacy of the
past should be passed on in the academy in the US. In the
American context, debates about teaching canonical or
non-canonical texts were intrinsically linked to prevalent
notions of multiculturalism and multicultural education.
It seems then that the inclusion of ethnic literature within
the curriculum of American literary studies testifies to a
multicultural pedagogy and to the manifestation of cultural
diversities. However, theorists remind us that the dominant
usually appropriates the rhetoric of multiculturalism while
ignoring historical, social and economic registers and thus
falsely equates multiculturalism with pluralism.1 In other
words, discrimination against minority groups and inequality
between the dominant and the marginalized are inadequately
stressed. Ethnic texts can thus be reduced to a mere 'exhibition
of exotics' and lose their resistant charge. In the following
section, I shall investigate how the legacy of history and
tradition is transmitted and what kind of cultural identity is
constituted through such practices and processes. I shall take
my examination of the problematic of multiculturalism further
and see how it is situated within education as social practice.
It is my concern with education and pedagogic practices that
compel me to examine the process of canonisation of Chinese
American literature. To do this, I shall particularly focus on
the selection and inclusion of Chinese American literary texts
within mainstream anthologies of American literature.
Trained within the academic discipline of English Studies, I
have chosen for my field of investigation Chinese American
literature. I therefore wish to specifically focus on the
teaching of english, especially at level of the higher
education, as an example of a particular type of social
practice, which constructs identities through representations
(i.e., through the formation of canons) within curriculum and
syllabus. Apart from this I also wish to look at the ways in
which notions of cultural identities keep changing, and the
different directions they take, and the ways in which they are
re-shaped and re-inserted into social praxis, in this case,
within pedagogical practices in colleges and universities.
Changing Faces of American Literature
Before focussing exclusively on Chinese American literary
history, I would like to examine the transformation of the
American literary canon and examine briefly how it interacts
with and responds to social change. In exploring change and
transformation within American literature, it is worth taking
note of the fluidity of the category itself, which always
transmutes along social, cultural and historical
transformations. Moreover, the formal inception of American
literature as a discipline only happened in recent decades. A
scholar of American literature, Paul Lauter, states that
'American Literature' only became an academic discipline in the
1920s (1984: 34). At that time, it was dominated by a small
group of scholars and critics, mainly middle-class white males,
who consciously led the direction toward a homogeneous white
Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) heritage. The persistent themes
included the search of the self, individualistic idealism, the
idea that all men were created equal, the American Dream, the
adventures on the Western Frontier, isolation and alienation,
resistance to conformity and, ultimately, what it meant to be
'American'.2
From the academic perspective, the teaching of American
literatures, the compiling and editing of anthologies of
American literature have been very limited and have inadequately
explored the work of women writers and ethnic writers in the
past. In the department of English, the old masters and the
traditional mainstream WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant)
history have been taught and the literary canon has thus been
reinforced. As a result, it has restricted the access of
students to a full picture of the past and has limited the
understanding of the diverse elements which comprise American
society.
It was not until the sixties, stimulated by the Civil Rights
and Women's Liberation Movements and other social movements
(Anti-Vietnam war, gay/lesbian rights and so on), that ethnic
minorities emerged as a more obvious presence and became more
vocal within American society. Society needed a drastic change.
Besides, the demographics of the United States, shifting from a
Caucasian-based majority to a combination of more diverse and
heterogeneous races and ethnicities also boosted a demand for a
multicultural and multiethnic education and pedagogy. [According
to the statistics, by the year 2000 women and people of colour
will account for almost 75 percent of the labour force (C. T.
Mohanty, 1994: 156)]. It was important to challenge and change
the course design and meet the cultural needs of both teachers
and students, and ultimately, those of society. Therefore,
diversity and multiculturalism became the buzz words within
American educational systems.
Universities and colleges confronted these changes and
challenges by setting up Black Studies programs, Women's Studies
programs and ethnic studies programs. In spring 1969, the first
Asian American Studies program was set up within the Department
of Ethnic Studies at the University of California at Berkeley.
Since then, ethnic literatures have been gradually integrated
into the curricula and courses in different departments at
universities and colleges in the United States. In classrooms of
American Literature, works of Chinese American writers have been
included in the syllabus. Kingston's The Woman Warrior, for
example, is taught across a wide range of courses, from high
school courses to graduate seminars in departments of English,
American Culture and Thought, Women's Studies, Ethnic Studies,
and even Sociology. Now it is being claimed as the most widely
taught work written by a living American writer (Wong, 1997:
50).
Various noteworthy and path-breaking publications also
started in the late seventies and the early eighties. The
critical interventions of African American critics, like Henry
Louis Gates, Jr. (The Signifying Monkey, 1988), Houston Baker
(Blues, Ideology, and African American Literature, 1984), and
Robert Stepto (From Behind the Veil: A Study of Afro-American
Narrative, 1979), not only focussed on the uniqueness of African
American literature but also inspired other ethnic writers and
critics to participate in this movement to transform and revise
the American literary canon.
The changing picture of American literature that emerged, as
a result, prompted the Modern Language Association of America
(MLA) to make a progressive move. One of its committees, the
Committee on the Literatures and Languages of America (formerly
the Commission on Minority Literature) urged the reconstruction
of the canon of American literature by organising and developing
seminars and projects on this issue which began from the
seventies. The list of publications is rather substantial and
includes, Minority Language and Literature (1977) edited by
Dexter Fisher; Afro-American Literature: The Reconstruction of
Instruction (1979) edited by Dexter Fisher and Robert Stepto;
Three American Literatures: Essays in Chicano, Native American
and Asian American Literatures for Teachers of American
Literature (1983) edited by Houston Baker. In 1982, the Korean
American scholar Elaine Kim published her book entitled Asian
American Literature. As the first succinct introduction to Asian
American literature, it related Asian American literature to a
broader social context and explored its aestheticisation. In
1990, Redefining American Literary History, edited by A. La
Vonne Brown Ruoff and Jerry W. Ward, Jr., pointed out new ways
of looking at the canon and included critical essays on
Afro-American, Asian American, Chicano/a American, and American
Indian literatures.
I chose to dwell on the changing picture of American
literature for a while in order to emphasise the mutability of
the canon. The changes within the canon were made possible
largely in response to the resistance and challenges from people
of colour. I do not mean to suggest that the counterforces
always succeed in dismantling dominant ideology but they did
manage to foreground the problematic of canonisation and
constructed a counter-canon or many more canons. As Abdul R.
JanMohamed and David Lloyd point out, 'the formation of
different canons permits the self-definition and, eventually,
self-validation that must be completed before any consideration
of integration' (1990: 7). Therefore, the formation of different
canons or counter-canons may be viewed metaphorically as the
battlefields for the minority groups to win their own territory,
within which they can organise their self-definition and
identity formation.
Canon Formation
As we can see, all these efforts have contributed to a change
in outlook towards the American literary canon. In the
particular case of Chinese American literature, some major
publishers have published books which offer information about
the authors, the social and historical backgrounds of their work
and their literary traditions to help teachers and tutors to
teach and understand the work of Chinese American writers.
Cliff's Notes, famous as explanatory notes to literary classics,
published the Notes to Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club in 1994, and
The Kitchen God's Wife in 1996. The Modern Language Association
of America has published a series of Approaches to Teaching
World Literature since the eighties. Along with the canonised
works, such as Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, Dante's Divine
Comedy, Dorris Lessing's The Golden Notebook and so on,
Kingston's The Woman Warrior found a place in the prestigious
'Approaches to Teaching...' series in 1991. It is worth noting
that she is the first Asian American author to be included in
this series. Such inclusions indicate the ways in which Chinese
American writers are contained within American mainstream
literature. Some of them have even been canonised.
To reiterate my earlier point, it was not until the sixties
that the movements for social justice galvanised changes in the
literary scene. Writings by blacks, women and ethnic writers
gradually came to be recognised. However, the danger of tokenism
remained, which is to say that one or two representatives of the
'minority group' could be chosen at the expense of a whole range
of diverse literary talent. Paul Lauter, as Project Director of
Reconstructing American Literature, conducted a survey of the
content of introductory American Literature courses at colleges
and universities in 1981 and found that the change and
recognition were rather limited. While some advanced courses at
universities and colleges presented a relatively altered
content, introductory and basic courses were hardly affected by
the new scholarship. Among the most taught sixty American
authors or so, only eight were women, five were black men.
Neither black women, nor writers from other minorities were
included. Paul Lauter saw the anthology as the most critical
tool for introducing change within American academy. He
suggested an alternative anthology that would replace the
dominant Norton Anthology since many faculties base their course
on that formula and select texts based on that anthology, their
own educational background and available texts.
In the context of American universities and colleges,
The
Norton Anthology of American Literature is by far the most
widely used textbook for undergraduate courses, introducing
students to the 'full' picture of American literature. I would
like to add that in the context of Taiwan too, the same
predominance is evident. This is the case mainly because of the
tremendous influence the United States wields there, both in the
education system itself and the educators, who are mostly
trained in the States.
Students in the Department of English at university in Taiwan
study English Literature, American Literature, Shakespeare,
genre studies and contemporary literary theories. There is no
denying the fact that since English is a powerful language,
Departments of English have a more elevated status within the
hierarchy of higher education in Taiwan. Also, scholars and
cultural critics who are eager to receive the most circulated
cultural theories and texts wittingly or unwittingly apply those
theories to the Taiwanese contexts. In the popular book markets,
the publishers are quick and efficient in buying the copyrights
of 'best sellers' among the American, English and Japanese top
ten book-selling lists and translating them into Chinese for the
Taiwanese market.
The ready application of cultural theories that arises in a
different context to Taiwan prompts me to interrogate what kind
of power relation involved in the dissemination of 'American
literature' through such channels. Since The Norton Anthology is
the main textbook for students to study American literature, it
is worth examining how the anthology has been compiled and
revised over the past twenty years3. It is also worth
considering the anthology as symptomatic of the kinds of
pedagogical practices adopted in colleges and universities. The
first edition of The Norton Anthology appeared in 1979 under the
general editorship of Ronald Gottesman. The general editorship
changed hands to Nina Baym in 1989. The revised editions
appeared successively in 1985, 1989, 1994 and 1998. Departing
from Gottesman, Baym put more emphasis on black writers and
women writers and deleted some of the ambiguous comments on
black writers.4
By comparing the first edition with the latest, we can see
the effort to acknowledge Black, Native American, Chicano/a,
Asian writers and women writers over the past twenty years.
Major changes were introduced in the fifth edition in 1998. The
general editor, Nina Baym, explained in the preface that the
updated edition tried to strike a balance between traditional
interests and emerging critical concerns. Responding to rapid
and significant changes in the American literary scenes over the
last two decades, major innovations were introduced.
In the fifth edition, apart from more emphases on Native
American literary heritage, white women writers, and black
writing, ethnic diversity has gained more attention in the
second volume under the section of 'American Prose since 1945'.
Nina Baym notes that this section is 'entirely recast to convey
five decades of diverse movements in prose, with an emphasis on
ethnic diversity and experimental writing' (1998: xxiv). It is
not until this point that a Chinese American prose writer is
finally selected for inclusion in The Norton Anthology. In this
updated edition, there are three Asian American authors,
including Maxine Hong Kingston ('Trippers and Askers' from
Tripmaster Monkey), Cathy Song (five poems), and Li-Young Lee
(six poems). Total space for these authors account for
forty-three pages of this 3,000-page anthology, 0.01 percentage
of the whole space. Compared to the ratio of population of
Chinese descent in the American census as 1%, this space cannot
be regarded as fair. Especially if we take into account the boom
in Chinese American literature in recent decades, it seems to me
that it deserves more space. Why are these three writers
selected instead of others? Is there any sense of history or
affirmation of Chinese American cultural identity in this
selection? Cathy Song is not, strictly speaking, a Chinese
American writer since her father is Korean and she herself has
refused such a designation by saying that she does not want to
be read only as an ethnic writer and calling herself 'a poet who
happens to be Asian American' (Kim, 1997: 172). Another poet
introduced in this anthology is Li-Young Lee. But in the short
statement about him, there is no distinctive cultural
specificity mentioned except that his father was Chinese and a
personal physician to Mao Zedong. His poems are compared with
Walt Whitman's. The editor again evades the issue of cultural
difference and the rich Chinese images in his poetry are not
elaborated upon in the short statement about him.
In the brief introduction to Maxine Hong Kingston and her
work, however, the editor cannot avoid the issue of cultural
difference. The editor of this section, Jerome Klinkowitz,
emphasises how 'American' Kingston's work is and touches on the
issue of how difficult it is for Americans of Chinese descent to
claim their American citizenship. He indicates that The Woman
Warrior deals with cultural conflicts that Americans of Chinese
descent must confront but stresses that 'what remains in the
mind is its quality of vivid particularity' (1998: 2231). He
eschews the fact that the conflict is partly caused by racism
that people of colour have to face. In discussing Tripmaster
Monkey, again its rich cultural references from Chinese heritage
are downplayed and only William Carlos Williams' In the American
Grain is seen as her true prose predecessor (1998: 2232).
Interestingly, Kingston does admit Williams' influence but at
the same time singles out Virginia Woolf's Orlando as her
inspiration. Needless to say, there is a strong presence of
Chinese classics, such as The Romance of Three Kingdoms and The
Journey to the West in her work. Such a deliberate omission
seems to reinforce the view that her work shares universal
aesthetics with the Anglo-American white male writers rather
than with anyone else. It seems to me that the inclusion of
Chinese American writers becomes more of a gesture, mere
tokenism, rather than a full critical acknowledgement.
Compared to the belated and reluctant inclusion of Asian
American writers in The Norton Anthology, The Heath Anthology of
American Literature shows more awareness of the diversities
within American culture and literature, as well as of canon
reconstruction. Even a glance at the editorial board can provide
us with some understanding as to the effort involved in trying
to convey the diversities and heterogeneities of American
society. There are equal numbers of men and women, minority and
white scholars, and members from different parts of the country
on the board. The project, initiated by Paul Lauter and his
colleagues, initially began with a project supported by the Fund
for the Improvement of Post-Secondary Education and then became
a summer institute held at Yale University, followed by a series
of workshops in different places across the country on the
problem of re-establishing the American literary canon.
The first substantial result of this project was the
publication of the book under the title of Reconstructing
American Literature in 1983, followed by the publication of the
first edition of The Heath Anthology in 1990. The editing and
compiling of this anthology adhered to three main principles:
(a) to provide a wider range of authors from each time frame to
offer students greater access to different kinds of work; (b) to
include relatively familiar but underdeveloped genres, such as
Emily Dickinson's letters - since letter and journal writing
were especially important for women; (c) to relate literature to
its social and cultural milieu without falling into the trap of
reducing it to a banal historical record.
As Paul Lauter in the preface to the first edition claims,
this anthology included by far the widest selection of the work
of minority and white women writers in any anthology of American
literature. Of the 6,216 pages in two volumes, 134 were women of
all races, more than 30 Native American authors, 62 Africans and
African Americans, 19 Latinos and 12 Asian Americans. By
contrast, within 5,529 pages in The Norton Anthology, there were
67 women of all races, 29 Africans and African Americans, 23
Native American authors, 7 Latino(a)s and Asian Americans.
Compared to the figures in The Norton Anthology, The Heath
Anthology has an outstanding selection. It includes more women
writers and gives more space to minority literatures. The second
edition was published in 1994 and the third, and latest, edition
was published in 1998. I will further investigate the selection
of Chinese American writers in the following section.
Under the section of 'New Exploration of an
"American" Self', Edith Maud Eaton (pen name Sui Sin
Far, 1865-1914) is selected in the third edition of The Heath
Anthology of American Literature. As the first popular and
distinct literary voice of Chinese Americans, her name should
not be forgotten in American literary history. Sui Sin Far
defended the Chinese in America against the stereotype of being
dirty, corrupt and incapable of assimilation. Born to an English
father and a Chinese mother, she looked white but had a strong
identification with people of Chinese origin. As previously
mentioned in my third chapter, her sister, Winnifred, also a
writer herself, chose the Japanese pseudonym Onoto Watanna, to
conceal her real identity and became well-known at the time for
preferring Japanese over Chinese culture (I have explained the
historical background in the third chapter). Sui Sin Far's
single status put her in a more difficult situation in her time.
In her autobiographical essay, 'Leaves from the Mental Portfolio
of an Eurasian', she depicted the suffering of being a socially
unacceptable person because of her race and her celibacy in the
white society. Her short stories focused on the daily lives of
Chinese American families in Seattle or San Francisco. Her aim
to bridge two cultures and two races can be seen in the
following sentence, 'I give my right hand to the Occidentals and
my left hand to the Orientals, hoping that between them they
will not utterly destroy the insignificant connection link'
(cited in Ling, 1989: 316). The roles of negotiator and cultural
translator are also assumed by the writers of later generations
like Maxine Hong Kingston and many others.
As I mentioned earlier, the Chinese American literary
tradition is constantly being reconfigured by these new-found
archives. For example, the poems on the barrack walls on Angel
Island were forgotten and locked behind the doors after the
detention centre on Angel Island was closed in 1940. They were
discovered by park ranger Alexander Weiss in 1970. Thanks to Him
Mark Lai, Genny Lim, and Judy Yung, the poetry carved on the
walls by the detainees on Angel Island was translated, edited
and published for the first time in 1980. The Heath Anthology
recognised the importance of these poems and finally gave them
their deserved place within American literary history.
The fact that this anthology included poetry by early Chinese
immigrants deserves high acclaim. Between 1910 and 1940, before
they could enter the golden continent ('beautiful country', Mei
Guo, was the Chinese translation of the United States of
America), Chinese immigrants were detained on Angel Island in
San Francisco Bay. Their traumatic experience of immigration and
detention was inscribed on the barrack walls, depicting their
nostalgia, longing for family and home country, humiliation and
mistreatment by the American immigration officers. Those poems
'[c]ounter the nineteenth-century stereotype of Chinese
immigrants as illiterate, degenerate coolies, many poems express
a consciousness of human rights and ideals of social justice and
patriotism' (Lim, 1997: 295).
By including those poems in the anthology, the early Chinese
immigrants' experiences are given a fuller and more just
picture. Those poems allude to Chinese cultural traditions
('Four days before the Qiqiao Festival', 'When Ziqing was in
distant lands') and depict another landscape and the immigration
ordeal ('The Western styled building are lofty; but I have not
the luck to live in them').5 They describe how the early Chinese
immigrants were forced to leave home with the hope of hitting it
rich on American soil and ultimately regretful and angry because
of their experiences of discrimination and detainment.
Under the contemporary section, the work of David Henry Hwang
(b. 1957), Maxine Hong Kingston (b. 1940), Amy Tan (b. 1952),
Cathy Song (b. 1955), Li-Young Lee (1957) and Gish Jen (b. 1955)
are selected. The genres cover prose, poetry and plays written
by both men and women. All of them confront and deal with
biculturalism. By providing more spaces for eminent Chinese
American writers, the editors deserve praise for their efforts
at not submitting to tokenism and acknowledging the multifarious
composition of American society. My only query here is why the
literary boom happened to the generation born after the fifties?
Between Edith Eaton (Sui Sin Far), the early immigrant poetry
between 1910-1940 and the much praised generation born after the
fifties (apart from Maxine Hong Kingston), were there no
noteworthy writers of Chinese origin to fill in this gap from
the forties to the seventies?
Why the Omission?
Actually, there was no shortage of Chinese American literary
texts during this period and some of them were very popular in
these three decades (1940s-1970s). In Amy Ling's words, 'books
by American-born and Chinese-born Americans suddenly mushroomed'
(Ling, 1990b: 225). For example, Helena Kuo's I've Come a Long
Way (1942), Pardee Lowe's Father and Glorious Descendant (1943),
Jade Snow Wong's Fifth Chinese Daughter (1945), Lin Yutang's
My
Country and My People (1937), Chinatown Family (1948), Han
Suyin's A Many-Splendoured Thing (1952), Diana Chang's Frontiers
of Love (1956), Louis Chu's Eat a Bowl of Tea (1961), and Chin
Yang Lee's Flower Drum Song (1957). Lee's Flower Drum Song was
even adapted to a highly successful Broadway musical and a
popular Hollywood film6.
Chinese American literature in this period (1940s-1970s) can
be divided into three categories. The first is one in which the
writers are more like cultural mediators, confirming the
discursive claim of the American Dream and introducing Chinese
culture to western readers. Many critics have pointed out that
Pardee Lowe, Jade Snow Wong, Lin Yutang and Chin Yang Lee in
many ways reinforce popular stereotypes.7 They are either
introducing Chinese high culture such as Lin Yutang to western
readers, or describing Chinese people as comic and backward,
such as Pardee Lowe and Chin Yang Lee, the stereotypes about the
Chinese are reinforced instead of challenged.
The second category is that in which the writers, such as
Helena Kuo, Han Suyin and Diana Chang are placed. They are
caught in between and deal with the problem of having a double
consciousness. Unlike the majority of Chinese Americans in the
Chinatowns, coming from an elite class and speaking fluent
English (actually Han and Chang are both Eurasians, Han was born
to a Belgian mother and Chang to an American Eurasian mother),
they possess a higher social status. Nonetheless, their work
captures the spirit of in-betweenness and the struggles involved
in living with contradiction and fragmentation.
Compared to the first category of 'assimilation' mode and the
second category of 'elite' mode, the third one, as represented
by Louis Chu's Eat a Bowl of Tea, marks a transitional point. A
portrayal of the poor early Chinese immigrants in New York
Chinatown and the bitter legacy of 'bachelor society', this book
can hardly be called autobiographical writing or cultural
mediation between two cultures. It uses 'Chinatown English'
(Wong, 1997: 48) without ridiculing the early Chinese Americans.
Eat a Bowl of Tea is a vivid portrait of Chinatown life in New
York which does not attempt to create an 'exotic' atmosphere in
order to perpetuate dominant white prejudices and pre-conceived
stereotypes of Chinese people.
Having briefly examined the writers from the forties to the
early seventies, I would suggest that the reason for the
omission of this body of work from the anthologies is that most
of this work falls into the category of popular literature and
thus has not been canonised. For example, the works of Lin
Yutang, Han Suyin, and Chin Yang Lee were among the most widely
read Chinese American texts but they hardly won any academic
attention or serious discussion. Their names are mentioned in
critical essays on Chinese American literature mainly because
their popularity was very much related to the contemporary
social context. There is, however, a more deliberate omission,
which I believe deserves further investigation. Frank Chin was
an important figure in the Chinese American literary scene in
the seventies. He and his associates edited a landmark volume in
Chinese American literary history Aiiieeeee! An Anthology of
Asian-American Writers (1974) which heralded the first
announcement of a Chinese American literary identity. In
addition, he and other Asian American writers organised a group
called Combined Asian Resources Project and prompted a new image
of Asian Americans against Orientalist stereotyping. Though his
ideal of reviving Asian American manhood through the masculine
and militant Chinese tradition is problematic (as I have
discussed in my fourth chapter), his attacks on the distorted
image of Asian Americans and efforts to fight against racism did
establish a landmark in the Chinese American literary
trajectory. His plays and novels included 'Goong Hai Fot Choy'
(1970), 'Chickencoop Chinaman' (1974), which won the East West
Players playwriting contest in 1971 and was produced by the
American Place Theatre in New York City in 1972, The Chinaman
Pacific & Frisco R. R. Co. (1988), and Donald Duk (1991). It
is understandable that, due to limited space, it is difficult to
cover all these interesting authors. I single out the omission
of Frank Chin because I note that there is another concern
behind this omission. I will come back to this point in my later
discussion of the 'model minority'.
One significant fact about the inclusions is that while the
playwright David Henry Hwang and the poet Li-Young Lee are male,
all three prose writers selected in the anthology are all women.
There is no denying that Kingston opened up a new horizon for
Chinese American writing. Her earlier work, The Woman Warrior
and China Men, by bringing in Chinese legends, folklore with
feminist consciousness, pioneered new routes for claiming
Chinese cultural heritage for Chinese Americans. Her latest
work, Tripmaster Monkey, further translates different cultures
of Chinese, American, Chinese American, 'high brow' (the classic
tradition, such as Virginia Woolf, William Carlos Williams and
the German poet, Rainer Maria Rilke etc.), and 'low brow' (pop
culture, movies etc.) into the novel's main character, Wittman
Ah Sing's 'one man show'. However, it seems that her ghost
stories are particularly inspiring. Some literary newcomers
follow her steps to recount 'their memoir among ghosts'. Amy
Tan's The Hundred Secret Senses (1995), and a Korean American
writer, Heinz Insu Fenkl's Memories of my Ghost Brother (1997)
are two examples among many. It seems to me that 'ghosts' to
some extent symbolise the untranslatability of multicultural and
multilingual writing. I suggest that it may explain why many
ethnic writers are fascinated by the topic of 'ghosts'. However,
we would stand in real danger of mystifying and exoticizing the
remote Asian cultures if we do not underscore the
untranslatability of cultural difference.
Tan is another star on the Chinese American literary stage
after Kingston. The Joy Luck Club is full of autobiographical
shadows and immediately hit the New York Times best-sellers list
and remained there for seven months in 1989. The phenomenal
success of this novel is almost a publishing legend. Amy Tan was
completely unknown to the literary circle before, but this book
sold over two million copies, not including the Chinese
translation (In Taiwan, it sold more than ten thousand copies).
Her second book The Kitchen God's Wife did not cause such a
sensation, but it was still a best seller. Both novels deal with
the mother-daughter relationship and join in 'a tradition of
matrilineal discourse that has, as a part of the feminist
movement, been gathering momentum in the United States over the
last ten to fifteen years' (Wong, 1995a: 176).
There is no doubt that Tan's huge success paved the way for
many more new comers. Gish Jen is one among many. Critic Sylvia
Brownrigg wittily describes that Tan stands like a bridge
between those new writers and Kingston is the godmother of them
all (1998: 8). Tan's smart, sweet dialogues and detailed
descriptions of Chinese culture immediately win the heart of the
readers. But why does the glory only fall on women novel
writers? The Japanese American writer, Ruth L. Ozeki, offers one
possible answer in terms of the main character, Jane, in her
novel, My Year of Meat. This character's declaration: 'the
Asian-American woman thing - we're reliable, loyal, smart but
non-threatening' (1998: 189) may explain it well. These words
have become familiar to describe the 'model minority'. The
so-called 'model minority' has the following characteristics:
obedience, loyalty, obligation, passivity, modesty, the ability
to adapt, respect for authority, and being hard-working and
highly educated (Kim, 1982: 177, 306). An examination of the
causes of the underestimation of a writer like Frank Chin can
provide us with a clearer insight.
Frank Chin represents an angry voice in Chinese American
literature. I suggest that he is too militant and bitter to fit
in the category of 'the model minority' and is hence excluded
from the anthology. Even though I do not agree with his position
of establishing Chinese American identity by resorting to a
militant and masculine Chinese tradition, he does deal with the
anger of Chinese men at being emasculated in American society
and the intersection of their frustrations with the social
predicament experienced by early Chinese (mainly male)
immigrants' on account of the Exclusion and Immigration Acts. As
David Leiwei Li suggests, 'Chin's project is a war against such
a denial' (1991: 212). It is crucial for Chin to form a Chinese
American sensibility as a 'noise of resistance' to the racist
order and subversion of the imposed silence and stereotype. His
call for a revival of a heroic tradition is driven by moral
integrity and has to be understood in the rebellious aura of the
sixties which appears to be out of place in today's context of
the new millennium. However, he does represent a distinctive
strand in Chinese American literature. I acknowledge that in
some departments and programs of English the works of Frank Chin
are taught. Nevertheless, I want to underline the significance
of the exclusion and the importance of including his work in
widely used anthologies.
It seems obvious to me that the case of
The Heath Anthology,
which excludes Chin, confirms the representation of a model
minority. If 'culture is a system of exclusion' (Said, 1984:
11), literary texts as cultural products are part of the system
of exclusion. In the process of discrimination and evaluation,
some literary texts are marginalized and ignored because they do
not fit in with the 'canon'. If Chinese American literature has
provided another canon or counter-canon within American
literature, by the same token, there is also another canon or
counter-canon within Chinese American literature itself.
As Lisa Lowe has observed, an ethnic canon may compromise the
critical function if it is forced to match the criteria defined
by the major canon in order to fit into the formal unity of a
literary tradition. However, instead of functioning as a
supplement to the 'major' canon, Asian American literature often
provides diversity and heterogeneity. As Lowe puts it, this
heterogeneity is expressed in 'texts written by authors at
different distances and generations from the
"original" Asian culture' (Lowe, 1995: 53). In
addition, Asian American literature is very much embedded in the
material context of its production and reception. More often
than not, Asian American literary texts are read as sociological
or anthropological statements about the group because readers
are unfamiliar with its socio-cultural background. This factor
inevitably affects the picture of Asian American literature and
some contradictions within Asian American literature remain
unresolved. Thus, Lowe suggests that even if it is canonised, it
does produce a dialectical critique of that function. By
challenging the ideal of the American Dream, questioning the
Caucasian-based literary tradition, and bringing in new insights
(via different waves of immigration and interaction among
various groups), Chinese American literature indeed provides a
dialectical critique of the process of canonisation.
My reason for analysing the selection of widely used
anthologies of American literature is because anthologies
constitute a direct tool of formulating the canon. By using them
in curricula and syllabi at schools and colleges, the important
texts are passed on to later generations. Paul Lauter admits
that it is still necessary in education to stress the importance
of a sense of history and culture to individual self definition
(1984: 33). Fifteen years later, the words continue to resonate.
After all, the canon is not inviolable. As a social construct
that helps a society to interpret the past and prepare for the
future, the canon can transmute over time in response to social,
historical, political and cultural changes. Thus we have seen
that within anthologies of American literature, black literature
is inserted, white women writers are given more space, and
ethnic literatures are recognised. By expanding the canon,
American literary history is constantly redefined and
reconstructed. The dispute over what should be embraced in the
canon involves the larger issue of what constitutes American
identity. The legacy of the past, a fuller picture of American
society may be represented in the challenging and changing of
the canon and its passing on. It is through the transformation
of pedagogy and pedagogical materials that the ways of 'the
making of Americans'8 can be diversified, and cultural
differences can be reckoned with.
In investigating canon formation and how Chinese American
literature is canonised, I suggest that a canon, or more
properly speaking, canons, serve a practical function within
pedagogy. The publication of an anthology helps one to select
for the readers, the best among millions of books written across
hundreds of years. But I oppose the view that there can only
exist a single canon with unchallenged authority. There should
be more canons or counter-canons to question one canon and
provide more selections. Aesthetic judgements are never
value-free. They are over-determined by social, political,
historical and cultural factors. I do not think that it is
possible to discard the canon once and for all, but I do think
that it is possible for educators to choose from more than one
canon, and that they should be allowed and encouraged to do so.
As Henry Giroux puts it, a canon taught in classrooms and
programs should open up fresher possibilities for students and
teachers to engage in dialogue, argument and critical thinking
(1992: 100). This statement not only involves a canon that
invites dialogue and argument but also a critical pedagogy that
encourages both students and educators to engage with the
discussion. I believe education is a primary site through which
a national cultural legacy is passed on, and a national identity
is reproduced and examined. It is thus more important to conduct
a critical pedagogy.
Such a critical pedagogy should enable people, as agents, to
investigate their relationship to the other, empower them to
create new identities and reveal how politics always plays a
part in identity formation. In the next section, I shall discuss
what I mean by a critical pedagogy and the ways in which it
might operate.
A Critical Pedagogy: Translating into Curriculum and Social
Practice
Paul Lauter in The Heath Anthology Newsletter admits, '[t]ranslating
a changed canon into classroom practice presents many problems'
(1996). The major problems may be summed up as being twofold:
firstly, the vast territories of texts written by the ethnic,
racial and gender minority groups were not included in the past
and therefore remain unfamiliar to most students and educators,
and secondly, the limits of the educators' training. I suggest
that the second problem may be tackled by the attempts at
providing the educators with more instructors' guides or
background information and by insightful comments and
interpretations from critics and reviewers. Regarding the first
problem, Lauter suggests that the educators can devise a number
of creative strategies, such as introducing different branches
of literature based on a common theme or comparing gender or
cross-cultural issues in black, Asian, Chicano/a, and Caucasian
literatures (ibid.).
As Gayatri C. Spivak succinctly states, '[c]anons are the
condition of institutions and the effect of institutions. Canons
secure institutions as institutions secure canons' (1990b: 784).
Through institutions and through the institutionalisation of
publishing and teaching, canons are established and reinforced.
By passing and transmitting canonised texts, the business of
publishing and teaching can be sustained. Spivak continues, 'the
matter of the literary canon is in fact a political matter:
securing authority' (1990b: 785). Therefore, though the
movements for social justice have gained some ground since the
sixties, there has been always a reactionary and neoconservative
call for reading Old Masters instead of more diverse work by
women, people of colour and other disenfranchised groups. Those
counter progressive voices bemoan the decline of 'civilisation',
i.e., Eurocentric western culture, and desperately seek to
retrieve the authority it used to have. The consolidation of the
old canon ('the Great Works of the Old Masters') is to
consolidate the straight white Christian man as the Universal
Subject. That is why we should challenge the restoration of the
old canon and constantly keep the canon open and ready to invite
more diverse work to enlarge itself.
However, Robert Hemenway in 'In the American Canon' (1990)
reminds us that one danger of canonisation lies in the
possibility of ghettoisation of ethnic literatures. The
inclusion of ethnic literatures does not necessarily mean they
will be taught in classrooms. Even if they are taught, they are
probably taught in specific courses, such as African American
Literature, Asian American Literature, Native American
Literature and so on. The traditional mainstream classical
texts, such as Hawthorn, Melville, and Emerson, are regarded as
the 'must-read' and remain the apogee of American Literature.
Ethnic literatures therefore fall into the danger of being
ornamental and becoming a 'world as exhibition' (Timothy
Mitchell's term, 1989), which is typical of the Orientalist
attitude.
By the same logic, including ethnic literatures courses and
programs and having ethnic teachers in academia may become
merely a tokenist gesture. It is also worth noting that the
embracing of those texts themselves might make it possible for
the ghost of orientalism to haunt seminars and further
consolidate the prevalent stereotypes of ethnic groups. How are
ethnic literatures taught and read? Such texts should not be
treated as mere ornaments to mainstream literature, providing
exotic, mysterious seasoning to the main course of the old
masters. On the contrary, they should be seen as offering an
opportunity for students and readers to familiarise themselves
with different cultures and groups across race, ethnicity,
gender, class and religion, so that their experience of reading
is no longer confined to white middle-class male values. Spivak
continuously reminds us, if the study of an enlarged canon and a
critique of canonical method does not expand to transnational
culture studies, 'colonial and postcolonial discourse studies
can also construct a canon of "Third World Literature (in
translation)" that may lead to a "new orientalism"'
(1990b: 791).
Gayatri Spivak in 'Poststructuralism, Marginality,
Postcoloniality and Value' further explains that teaching and
reading ethnic literatures and third world literatures should
include 'fully developed transnational culture studies' and
reckon with 'the over-determined play of cultural value in the
inscription of the socius' (1990c: 231). Otherwise, because
'marginality' and 'ethnicity' sell, they are rapidly and
conveniently appropriated by the privileged elite in the academy
to gain more funding and a larger share of the centre at the
cost of the marginalized whose voices are not regarded as
authentic. This is evident in the tendency to categorise
minority literatures in certain ways - Latin American literary
texts must belong to magic realism and Chinese American
literature must involve the mother-daughter relationships. By
that logic, any other work that does not reflect this stereotype
will be excluded.
Kingston's success provides us with an interesting case. It
is true that The Woman Warrior is highly acclaimed by white
reviewers, but she herself criticises them for praising the
wrong things. Reviewers think that her work is good because it
is akin to their oriental fantasy. The reviewing examples
include, 'Mythic forces flood the book [The Woman Warrior]', 'No
other people have remained so mysterious to Westerners as the
inscrutable Chinese', and 'they are "inscrutable."
They are serene, withdrawn, neat, clean, and hard-workers. The
Woman Warrior, because of this stereotyping, is a double delight
to read'9. On the cover of
The Woman Warrior, we find the
following quote from New Society by critic Victoria Radin, 'this
is a delightful book... tell[ing] more than I ever imagined
about the strangeness of being Chinese and a woman....' Time and
again, the ethnic literary text is labelled as strange. Why
strange? Kingston rightly challenges their misreading by asking
the question, 'How dare they call their ignorance our
inscrutability!" (1982: 56)
(Neo)Orientalist discourses appropriate ethnic literary texts
to their own ends and accommodate the marginalized voices to
consolidate the Western centre. We must be cautious of the
effects and surreptitious incorporation of orientalism in the
guise of multiculturalism when celebrating the recognition
granted to ethnic writers within American literary history.
Chandra Talpade Mohanty indicates the pitfalls of
multiculturalism in her essay, 'On Race and Voice: Challenges
for Liberal Education in the 1990s'. She stresses that what is
at stake is not the mere recognition of difference but of what
kind of difference is being acknowledged and engaged with.
Moreover, it is also necessary to consider the specific kind of
voice that is being allowed in. While celebrating the
recognition of cultural difference, we also need to be attentive
to what kind of difference is being embraced (1994: 146, 154).
Rosaura Sanchez points out:
ethnic studies programs were instituted at a moment when the
university had to speak a particular language to quell student's
protests and to ensure that university research and business
could be conducted as usual. (1987: 86)
Taking the course design into account, it cannot be denied
that many ethnic writers and women authors are taught in class.
But most college and university courses such as 'Asian American
Literature to 1980', 'Afro-American Literature since the 1960s',
and 'Topics in Asian American Literature', are offered as
optional courses, while courses such as 'Shakespeare', 'Romantic
Poetry', and 'American Puritanism' are compulsory, required
courses. Therefore, it is important for students and educators
to critique the ways in which knowledge is produced through a
curriculum to reinforce Eurocentric cultural hegemony, and to
confront the imperialist and neo-orientalist exoticism of the
other. Here I would like to use Spivak's argument about the
'impossible "no" to a structure' to pinpoint my stance
(1990d: 16). Spivak suggests that postcolonial persons can
communicate with each other and with the metropolis because they
have had access to cultures of imperialism, which does not mean
that the legacy of the cultures of imperialism have any
supremacy or legitimacy over postcolonial persons. Postcolonial
persons need to say 'no' to the legacy of imperialism but at the
same time they cannot deny the fact that they come from a
background coded with an imperialist legacy. This position at
which one critiques yet 'inhabits intimately' is what she calls
the philosophical deconstructive position. A way of activating
such a practice would be to encourage more open discussions and
questioning within classrooms or other sites of negotiation, to
include more voices from subordinate groups without falling prey
to a false equality, to criticising institutional power
relations and thus, to negotiate more space for the
marginalized.
While some progress has been made in the teaching and
canonisation of ethnic literatures in the educational system,
and its merits for a multicultural society have shown, there is
always a counterforce to suppress and denigrate the battle that
has been won. Henry Giroux points out how the neoconservatives
launch assaults on multiculturalists. Roger Kimball, E. D.
Hirsch, Allan Bloom and others10, even audaciously claim, 'the
multiculturalists notwithstanding, the choice facing us today is
not between a "repressive" Western culture and a
multicultural paradise, but between culture and barbarism'
(1991, cited in Giroux 1992: 93, emphasis original). If after
decades of effort, the call for recognition of multicultural and
multiethnic diversities has gained some ground, the above
comment shows us that there is still a long way to go.
Having examined how Chinese American literature is re-shaping
and re-defining American Literature, I would like further to
elaborate how the reading or counter-reading of the model
minority in Chinese American literature interacts with the
larger social arena.
Demystifying the Myth of the Model Minority
Under the umbrella of the 'Model Minority', Asian Americans
(Chinese Americans are the main constituency in the North
American context) are integrated and assimilated into the
mainstream late capitalist American society. Firstly, this term
suggests how a minority (though covering people across gender,
sexual orientation, class, and national origin), seen as tamed,
hard-working, co-operative and unthreatening by comparison to
other 'more threatening' minorities, say, black people (Chin,
1972/1998: 71-4), fits the American capitalist logic. The
mainstream popular ideology appropriates the voice of Asian
Americans and stresses the achievements of Asian Americans as a
successful example of such assimilation. As theorists point out,
the implication of the 'model minority' is to hold the
individual responsible for failing to find a job, get education
or fit into the mainstream American society11 and to underplay
issues of social justice and the necessity of affirmative
action.
Also in promoting the label of 'model minority', there is a
danger of widening the gap between the Asian groups and other
minority groups and evading the real problems of class and
uneven distribution of power. There are many incidents of racial
attacks all over the United States and the antipathy between
Koreans and blacks is an established phenomenon at least in New
York City. The following incidents are just a few cases among
many to show how common the conflicts are among the minorities.
Some unemployed white males attacked a Chinese American on a
parking lot at night in Los Angeles in 1992 because they thought
he was a Japanese whose strong economic power was the cause for
their being laid-off. Some black people attacked a Korean
American-run corner shop in New York in 1993 because they
thought the goods sold in this shop were overpriced and the
Korean American shop-owner was rude to them. The logic of the
good versus the bad divides the minority groups, and diverts
from the main issue of racism and capitalist exploitation. Some
disenfranchised black, Latino and other ethnic groups project
their discontent onto the newly emerging upwardly mobile 'model
minority'. The 'model minority' group thus becomes an obvious
target of attack, and the conflicts between the classes and
other issues caused by late capitalist market economy elude
closer investigation and serious resolution. This dynamic helps
to reinforce the myth of the American dream. Thus, the
underclass in Asian American communities is rendered invisible
and the struggle against racial discrimination becomes
undermined. Only if you are hard-working, co-operative and
non-threatening, can you get what you want and realise your
dream of becoming successful. In this regard, Kingston's
Tripmaster Monkey makes a clear counterdiscourse. The main
character, Wittman Ah Sing, a graduate from the English
department of University of California at Berkeley, never
achieved any material success. One of the daughters in Tan's The
Joy Luck Club, Jing-mei, unlike the other upwardly class mobile
daughters, is a drop-out from university and does not have a
proper, steady job.
Frank Chin blames the ideology of 'model minority' on the
ideology of 'racist love'. The white mainstream society favours
Chinese Americans over other minority groups, because unlike
blacks, who demand civil rights and assistance, they never cause
trouble. Chin explains that this is based on the logic of
'racist love'. By contrast to 'racist hate', which is manifested
in the stereotypes of black studs, bellicose Indians, and
Mexican bandits, 'racist love' domesticates 'docile, obedient
and controllable' Chinese Americans. However, Chin concludes
that resorting to militant masculine Chinese tradition is the
only means to fight against the stereotype. I have exposed the
dubious polemics of this position in the previous chapter.
Earlier in this article I argued that the neglect of Frank
Chin relates to a deeper concern about the model minority
ideology. Because his militant stance against stereotypes of
Chinese Americans does not fit the rhetoric of the 'model
minority', he is, it seems to me, ignored by prestigious
anthologies. I do not mean to suggest that a writer becomes less
important that by being excluded from an anthology or that the
community of the writer gets fully represented when he/she is
included, but I do think that such an exclusion is symptomatic
and requires serious investigation. In order to resist being
fixed by one unified and stable identity, it is crucial to
invite all kinds of voices and not only voices approved by
whites to represent the diverse composition in the Chinese
American community.
Therefore, as Henry A. Giroux suggests, critical educators
should help students to discover and recover their hidden
histories and equip them with analytical tools to examine the
day-to-day incorporation, which reinforces the margin and the
centre. For example, the popularisation of the myth of 'the
model minority' by the media appears, at the surface level at
least, to portray Asian Americans positively. But a deeper
analysis will show such a myth only serves to draw a clearer
dividing line between the centre and the margins, by suggesting
that Asian Americans are submissive and cooperative and do not
threaten the established hegemony. To view ethnicity as a
politics of representation and to question the boundaries of
cultural containment should be central to the pedagogical
approach. Only such a pedagogical approach would open up the
possibilities of deconstructing dominant histories, codes and
canons (Giroux, 1994: 50-51). I am convinced that such an
approach would encourage critical educators to initiate sensible
pedagogical practices and offer a wide range of texts to read
off ideologies and stereotyping. What seems to be at stake here
is not just ethnic groups and minorities within the US but, from
a global perspective, the Third World peoples as such. Although
Spivak warns us against the inappropriate application of the
situation of internal colonisation within the US to other
processes of colonisation in the rest of world (after all, the
West is not a homogeneous entity, either), certain parallels are
obvious. We can yet trace certain parallels between processes of
internal colonisation and colonisation through issues of
marginalization, otherness and the global Western cultural
hegemony.
What I am suggesting is that, as a Taiwanese researcher
working on Chinese American literature, I feel myself affiliated
to ethnic groups and can identify with the urge to challenge and
contest the prevalent imbalance of power and the inequality
between and among languages and cultures. Similarly, Chinese
Americans and all the composites in American society can
translate their histories and memories into their cultural
identities and recognise differences on a more equitable basis
through the re-shaping of American literary canon, by practising
critical pedagogy and re-examining what the legacy of American
cultures and languages means. By doing so, it also sheds light
on our understanding of our very own cultural identity.
Works Cited
Baym, N. et al., Eds. 1998. The Norton Anthology of American
Literature,
