Chinese American literature
Encyclopedia
Chinese American literature is the body of literature
produced in the United States
by writers of Chinese
descent. The genre began in the 19th century and flowered in the 20th with such authors as Sui Sin Far, Frank Chin
, Maxine Hong Kingston
, and Amy Tan
.
19th century Chinese American writers were primarily workers and students. These early Chinese American authors produced autobiographies as well as novels and poems, mostly in Cantonese. Many wrote in both English and Chinese, sometimes exploring similar themes in each language, sometimes translating their own works from language into the other. Tone as well as content differed, as Chinese American writers in English dealt with rampant stereotypes of the Yellow Peril
.
Among these early writers are Lin Yutang
, novelist Yu Lihua
, and Yung Wing
, the first Chinese student to graduate from an American University (Yale, in 1854), whose autobiography, My Life in China and America, was published in 1909.
, writing as Sui Sin Far, was one of the first Chinese American authors to publish fiction in English, although her works, first published in the teens, were not re-discovered and re-printed until 1995 .
Chinese American authors became more prolific and accepted after the lifting of the Chinese Exclusion Act. Authors who achieved success in the 1950s included C.Y. Lee (author), whose Flower Drum Song was made into a Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, and Jade Snow Wong
, author of Fifth Chinese Daughter.
The 1970s saw further progress. Playwright Frank Chin
's playThe Chickencoop Chinaman
(1971) became the first play by an Asian American to be produced as a major New York production. Maxine Hong Kingston
won the National Book Critics Circle Award
in 1976 for The Woman Warrior
.
In the 1980s, David Henry Hwang
won the Obie
award for his play, FOB
, as well as a Tony Award for Best Play for his M. Butterfly
. Amy Tan
's The Joy Luck Club
was published to immediate popularity and wide, though not universal, acclaim. The book stayed on the New York Times bestseller list for over forty weeks, and won the National Book Award
, the L.A. Times Book Award, and the Commonwealth Gold Award. The Joy Luck Club was produced as a major motion picture in 1993 and was nominated for Best Picture.
The 1990s saw further growth, as David Wong Louie
received acclaim for his short story collection, Pangs of Love. Chang-Rae-Lee received the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award for his novel Native Speaker, published in 1995. Chang-rae Lee is Korean American, and not Chinese American.
, Jean Kwok
, Shirley Geok-lin Lim
, and Sandra Tsing Loh
. Shawn Wong
's novel American Knees, published in 1996, was adapted into an independent feature film entitled Americanese in 2009.
Some of these criticisms are fueled by anger over the way in which female Chinese American authors have portrayed the sexism and patriarchy of Imperial China, ways which male critics feel are sometimes unfair. For example, Maxine Hong Kingston has been criticized for her claim in The Woman Warrior
that, in Chinese, the character for "woman" is also the character for "slave." Critics of Kingston claim that while 奴 (slave) contains 女 (woman), it is only as a radical to indicate the pronunciation of the character; however, this, while true, does not address the questions of why the spoken words for slave and woman should sound so similar, and if that similarity could have its origins in a patriarchal society. On the other hand, there are other words that sound strangely similar, such as 死 (death) and 四 (four,) and, of course, there are other words that also sound and look similar, yet possess completely different meanings.
Literature
Literature is the art of written works, and is not bound to published sources...
produced in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
by writers of Chinese
Chinese people
The term Chinese people may refer to any of the following:*People with Han Chinese ethnicity ....
descent. The genre began in the 19th century and flowered in the 20th with such authors as Sui Sin Far, Frank Chin
Frank Chin
Frank Chin is an American author and playwright.- Life and career :Frank Chin was born in Berkeley, California, but was raised to the age of six by a retired Vaudeville couple in Placerville, California. At six his mother brought him back to the San Francisco Bay Area to live in Oakland Chinatown...
, Maxine Hong Kingston
Maxine Hong Kingston
Maxine Hong Kingston is a Chinese American author and Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley, where she graduated with a BA in English in 1962. Kingston has written three novels and several works of non-fiction about the experiences of Chinese immigrants living in the United...
, and Amy Tan
Amy Tan
Amy Tan is an American writer whose works explore mother-daughter relationships. Her most well-known work is The Joy Luck Club, which has been translated into 35 languages...
.
Characteristics and themes
Chinese American literature deals with many topics and themes. A common topic is the challenges, both inner and outer, of assimilation in mainstream, white American society by Chinese Americans. Another common theme is that of interaction between generations, particularly older, Chinese-born and younger, American-born generations. Questions of identity and gender are often dealt with as well.19th century Chinese American literature
19th century Chinese American literature has only recently come to be studied, as much of it was written in Chinese. These Chinese-language writings of Chinese Americans immigrants have only recently been made available .19th century Chinese American writers were primarily workers and students. These early Chinese American authors produced autobiographies as well as novels and poems, mostly in Cantonese. Many wrote in both English and Chinese, sometimes exploring similar themes in each language, sometimes translating their own works from language into the other. Tone as well as content differed, as Chinese American writers in English dealt with rampant stereotypes of the Yellow Peril
Yellow Peril
Yellow Peril was a colour metaphor for race that originated in the late nineteenth century with immigration of Chinese laborers to various Western countries, notably the United States, and later associated with the Japanese during the mid 20th century, due to Japanese military expansion.The term...
.
Among these early writers are Lin Yutang
Lin Yutang
Lin Yutang was a Chinese writer and inventor. His informal but polished style in both Chinese and English made him one of the most influential writers of his generation, and his compilations and translations of classic Chinese texts into English were bestsellers in the West.-Youth:Lin was born in...
, novelist Yu Lihua
Yu Lihua
Yu Lihua is a Taiwanese woman writer.Yu Lihua was born in Shanghai and went to university in Taiwan, taking history at National Taiwan University...
, and Yung Wing
Yung Wing
Yung Wing . Born in Zhuhai in Guangdong province, he studied in Robert Morrison's missionary schools as a boy where Tong King-sing was a classmate.-Biography:...
, the first Chinese student to graduate from an American University (Yale, in 1854), whose autobiography, My Life in China and America, was published in 1909.
20th century Chinese American literature
Chinese American literature written of the 20th century is written almost exclusively in English. Edith Maude EatonEdith Maude Eaton
Sui Sin Far was an author known for her writing about Chinese people in North America and the Chinese American experience...
, writing as Sui Sin Far, was one of the first Chinese American authors to publish fiction in English, although her works, first published in the teens, were not re-discovered and re-printed until 1995 .
Chinese American authors became more prolific and accepted after the lifting of the Chinese Exclusion Act. Authors who achieved success in the 1950s included C.Y. Lee (author), whose Flower Drum Song was made into a Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, and Jade Snow Wong
Jade Snow Wong
Jade Snow Wong was an American ceramic artist and author of two autobiographical volumes.- Biography :Wong was born in San Francisco and brought her family that maintained traditional Chinese customs...
, author of Fifth Chinese Daughter.
The 1970s saw further progress. Playwright Frank Chin
Frank Chin
Frank Chin is an American author and playwright.- Life and career :Frank Chin was born in Berkeley, California, but was raised to the age of six by a retired Vaudeville couple in Placerville, California. At six his mother brought him back to the San Francisco Bay Area to live in Oakland Chinatown...
's playThe Chickencoop Chinaman
The Chickencoop Chinaman
The Chickencoop Chinaman is a 1972 play by Frank Chin. It was the first play by an Asian American to have a major New York production.-Story:...
(1971) became the first play by an Asian American to be produced as a major New York production. Maxine Hong Kingston
Maxine Hong Kingston
Maxine Hong Kingston is a Chinese American author and Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley, where she graduated with a BA in English in 1962. Kingston has written three novels and several works of non-fiction about the experiences of Chinese immigrants living in the United...
won the National Book Critics Circle Award
National Book Critics Circle Award
The National Book Critics Circle Award is an annual award given by the National Book Critics Circle to promote the finest books and reviews published in English....
in 1976 for The Woman Warrior
The Woman Warrior
The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts is a memoir by Maxine Hong Kingston, published by Vintage Books in 1975. Although there are many scholarly debates surrounding the official genre classification of the book, it can best be described as a work of creative non-fiction.Throughout...
.
In the 1980s, David Henry Hwang
David Henry Hwang
David Henry Hwang is an American playwright who has risen to prominence as the preeminent Asian American dramatist in the U.S.He was born in Los Angeles, California and was educated at the Yale School of Drama and Stanford University...
won the Obie
Obie Award
The Obie Awards or Off-Broadway Theater Awards are annual awards given by The Village Voice newspaper to theatre artists and groups in New York City...
award for his play, FOB
Fob
A fob is an object used to make manual access easier. It may refer to:*Fob pocket, a small pocket in trousers or waistcoats originally intended to hold a pocket watch*Key fob, a medallion used to identify a key ring, or position on the ring...
, as well as a Tony Award for Best Play for his M. Butterfly
M. Butterfly
M. Butterfly is a 1988 play by David Henry Hwang loosely based on the relationship between French diplomat Bernard Boursicot and Shi Pei Pu, a male Peking opera singer....
. Amy Tan
Amy Tan
Amy Tan is an American writer whose works explore mother-daughter relationships. Her most well-known work is The Joy Luck Club, which has been translated into 35 languages...
's The Joy Luck Club
The Joy Luck Club
The Joy Luck Club is a best-selling novel written by Amy Tan. It focuses on four Chinese American immigrant families in San Francisco, California who start a club known as "the Joy Luck Club," playing the Chinese game of mahjong for money while feasting on a variety of foods...
was published to immediate popularity and wide, though not universal, acclaim. The book stayed on the New York Times bestseller list for over forty weeks, and won the National Book Award
National Book Award
The National Book Awards are a set of American literary awards. Started in 1950, the Awards are presented annually to American authors for literature published in the current year. In 1989 the National Book Foundation, a nonprofit organization which now oversees and manages the National Book...
, the L.A. Times Book Award, and the Commonwealth Gold Award. The Joy Luck Club was produced as a major motion picture in 1993 and was nominated for Best Picture.
The 1990s saw further growth, as David Wong Louie
David Wong Louie
David Wong Louie is an American writer of novels and short stories.- Literary career :He received an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Iowa in 1981 and a B.A. from Vassar College in 1977...
received acclaim for his short story collection, Pangs of Love. Chang-Rae-Lee received the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award for his novel Native Speaker, published in 1995. Chang-rae Lee is Korean American, and not Chinese American.
Recent history
Currently active and acclaimed Chinese American authors are Gish JenGish Jen
Gish Jen is a contemporary American writer.-Background:...
, Jean Kwok
Jean Kwok
Jean Kwok is a contemporary Chinese American writer and the author of the national bestseller Girl in Translation.-Biography:Jean Kwok was born in Hong Kong and immigrated to Brooklyn, New York when she was five years old. While living in a roach-infested apartment without central heating, she...
, Shirley Geok-lin Lim
Shirley Geok-lin Lim
Shirley Geok-lin Lim was born in Malacca Malaysia. She is an American writer of poetry, fiction, and criticism. Her first collection of poems, Crossing The Peninsula, published in 1980, won her the Commonwealth Poetry Prize, a first both for an Asian and for a woman...
, and Sandra Tsing Loh
Sandra Tsing Loh
Sandra Tsing Loh is a Los Angeles, California-based writer, actress, performance-artist, pop-culture analyst, and radio commentator.-Biography:Loh is the daughter of a Chinese father and a German mother...
. Shawn Wong
Shawn Wong
Shawn Hsu Wong is an author and Professor of English and former Director of the University Honors Program , Chair of the Department of English , and Director of the Creative Writing Program at the University of Washington where he has been on the faculty since 1984...
's novel American Knees, published in 1996, was adapted into an independent feature film entitled Americanese in 2009.
Chinese American criticism
Frank Chin and others have been vocal critics of popular Chinese American authors, particularly Chinese American women authors, such as Maxine Hong Kingston and Amy Tan. Chin argues that Tan and others paint a world in which Chinese Americans must repudiate "the icky-gooey evil of Chinese culture" . Others have criticized Chinese American women authors for criticizing sexism in Chinese culture; in so doing, critics argue, these women are participating in the "racial castration" of Chinese and Asian American men, who are already "materially and psychically feminized" by mainstream, white American culture .Some of these criticisms are fueled by anger over the way in which female Chinese American authors have portrayed the sexism and patriarchy of Imperial China, ways which male critics feel are sometimes unfair. For example, Maxine Hong Kingston has been criticized for her claim in The Woman Warrior
The Woman Warrior
The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts is a memoir by Maxine Hong Kingston, published by Vintage Books in 1975. Although there are many scholarly debates surrounding the official genre classification of the book, it can best be described as a work of creative non-fiction.Throughout...
that, in Chinese, the character for "woman" is also the character for "slave." Critics of Kingston claim that while 奴 (slave) contains 女 (woman), it is only as a radical to indicate the pronunciation of the character; however, this, while true, does not address the questions of why the spoken words for slave and woman should sound so similar, and if that similarity could have its origins in a patriarchal society. On the other hand, there are other words that sound strangely similar, such as 死 (death) and 四 (four,) and, of course, there are other words that also sound and look similar, yet possess completely different meanings.
See also
- Chinese AmericanChinese AmericanChinese Americans represent Americans of Chinese descent. Chinese Americans constitute one group of overseas Chinese and also a subgroup of East Asian Americans, which is further a subgroup of Asian Americans...
- List of Asian American writers
- Asian American literatureAsian American literatureAlthough immigrants from Asia and Americans of Asian descent have been writing in the United States since the 19th century, Asian American literature as a category of writing only came into existence in the early 1970s...
- American literatureAmerican literatureAmerican literature is the written or literary work produced in the area of the United States and its preceding colonies. For more specific discussions of poetry and theater, see Poetry of the United States and Theater in the United States. During its early history, America was a series of British...
- Asian American Literary AwardsAsian American Literary AwardsThe Asian American Literary Awards are a set of annual awards that have been presented by The Asian American Writers' Workshop since 1998. The awards include a set of honors for excellence in fiction, poetry and nonfiction, chosen by a panel of literary and academic judges; a Members' Choice Award,...
- Asian/Pacific American Awards for LiteratureAsian/Pacific American Awards for LiteratureThe Asian/Pacific American Awards for Literature are a set of literary awards presented annually by the Asian/Pacific American Librarians Association...
Further reading
- Bloom, Harold. Asian American Women Writers. 1997.
- Chin, Frank, et al. Aiiieeeee! An Anthology of Asian-American WritersAiiieeeee! An Anthology of Asian-American WritersAiiieeeee! An Anthology of Asian-American Writers is a 1974 anthology by Frank Chin, Jeffery Paul Chan, Lawson Fusao Inada, Shawn Wong and other members of the Combined Asian Resources Project...
. 1974. - Hagedorn, Jessica. Charlie Chan is Dead: An Anthology of Contemporary Asian American Fiction. 1993.
- Him Mark Lai, Jenny Lim, and Judy Yung, eds. Island: Poetry and History of Chinese Immigrants on Angel Island, 1910-1940.
- Hom, Marlon K., ed. Jinshan Geiji: Songs of Gold Mountain.
- Ling, Amy. Between Worlds: Women Writers of Chinese Ancestry.
- The Voice of the Shuttle. Chinese American Authors. http://vos.ucsb.edu/browse.asp?id=3132
- Yin, Xiao-huang. Chinese American Literature Since the 1850s. University of Illinois Press, 2000.