LOSS OF SELF
ASSIMILATION OF
CHINESE AMERICAN
WOMEN
1898-1930
Stereotypes
• Humble & Submissive
• Sneaky
• Condescend to other
races
• All know Kung Fu
• Poor Communicators
• Greedy
• Grocery Store Owners
The Joy Luck Club
An-Mei Hsu vs. Rose Hsu
Jordan
An-Mei Hsu
• “A girl in China did not marry for love. She married for
position, and my mother’s position, I later learned, was
the worst.” (228)
• “my mother, she suffered. She lost her face and tried to
hide it. She found only greater misery and finally could
not hide that. There is nothing more to understand. That
was China. That was what people did back then. They
had no choice. They could not speak up. They could not
run away. That was their fate.” (241)
• “…I was raised the Chinese way: I was taught to
desire nothing, to swallow other people’s misery, to
eat my own bitterness.” (215)
Rose Hsu Jordan
• “I have to admit that what I initially found attractive in
Ted were precisely the things that made him different
from my brothers and the Chinese boys I had dated: his
brashness; the assuredness in which he asked for things
and expected to get them; his opinionated manner; his
angular face and lanky body; the thickness of his arms;
the fact that his parents immigrated from Tarrytown,
New York, not Tientsin, China.” (117)
• “Over the years, I learned to choose from the best
opinions. Chinese people had Chinese opinions.
American people had American opinions. And in
almost every case, the American version was much
better. It was only later that I discovered there
was a serious flaw with the American version.
There were too many choices, so it was easy to get
confused and pick the wrong thing.” (191)
Lindo Jong vs. Waverly
Jong
Lindo Jong
• “I missed my family and my stomach felt bad,
knowing I had finally arrived where my life said I
belonged. But I was also determined to honor my
parents’ words, so Huang Taitai could never accuse
my mother of losing face.” (55)
• “It’s hard to keep your Chinese face in America. At
the beginning, before I even arrived, I had to hide
my true self.” (258)
• “I taught her how American circumstances work. If
you are born poor here, it’s no lasting shame. You
are fist in line for a scholarship…. In American,
nobody says you have to keep the circumstances
somebody else gives you. “She learned these
things, but I couldn’t teach her about Chinese
character. How to obey parents and listen to your
mother’s mind. How not to show your own
thoughts, to put your feelings behind your face so
you can take advantage of hidden opportunities,
worth and polish it, never flashing it around like a
cheap ring. Why Chinese thinking is best.” (254)
Waverly Jong
• ‘What if I blend in so well they think I’m one of
them…What if they don’t let me come back to the
United States?’ ‘When you go to China,’ I told her,
‘you don’t even need to open your mouth. They
already know you are an outsider…Even if you put
on their clothes, even if you take off your makeup
and hide your fancy jewelry, they know. They know
just watching the way you walk, the way you carry
your face. They know you do not belong.’” (253)
•
“Only her skin and her hair are Chinese.
Inside—she is all American-made.” (254)
• “If you are Chinese you can never let go of China in
your mind.” (183)
Ying Ying St. Clair vs. Lena
St. Clair
Ying Ying St. Clair
• “For woman is yin…the darkness within, where
untempered passions lie. And man is yang, bright
truth lightening our minds.” (81)
• “Saint took me to America, where I lived in houses
smaller than the one in the country. I wore large
American clothes. I did servant’s tasks. I learned
the Western ways. I tried to speak with a thick
tongue. I raised a daughter, watching her form
another shore. I accepted her American ways.’
(251)
Lena St. Clair
• “Most people didn’t know I was half Chinese, maybe
because my last name is St. Clair. When people
first saw me, they thought I looked like my father,
English –Irish, big boned and delicate at the same
time. But if they looked really close, if they knew
that they were there, they could see the Chinese
parts.” (104)
• “I had stopped eating, not because of Arnold, whom
I had long forgotten, but to be fashionably anorexic
like all the other thirteen-year-old girls who were
dieting and finding other ways to suffer as
teenagers.” (153)
Suyuan Woo vs. June Woo
Suyan Woo
• “And each week, we could hope to be lucky. That
hope was our only joy. And that’s how we came to
call our little parties Joy Luck.” (25)
• “I talked to her in English, she answered back in
Chinese.” (34)
June Woo
• “My mother and I never really understood one
another. We translated each other’s meanings and
I seemed to hear less than what was said, while my
mother heard more.” (37)
• “ ‘What will I say? What can I tell them about my
mother? I don't know anything. . . .” The aunties are
looking at me as if I had become crazy right before
their eyes. . . . And then it occurs to me. They are
frightened. In me, they see their own daughters,
just as ignorant. . . . They see daughters who grow
impatient when their mothers talk in Chinese . . .
who will bear grandchildren born without any
connecting hope passed from generation to
generation.” (40-41)
Stereotypes in Schools
• Genius
• Great in Math
• Uninterested in
Fun
• 4.0 GPA
• Nerdy
Asian Assimilation within the
Schools
• Desire to be
accepted
• Loss of
language
• Loss of culture
• Assimilation
through sports
and clubs
Pop Culture
The End