"So I roam backward and forward across the continent. When I am East, my heart is West. When I am West, my heart is East. Before long I hope to be in China. As my life began in my father’s country it may end in my mother’s.
After all I have no nationality and am not anxious to claim any. Individuality is more than nationality. “You are you and I am I,” says Confucius. I give my right hand to the Occidentals and my left to the Orientals, hoping that between them they will not utterly destroy the insignificant “connecting link.” And that’s all."
Excerpt from "Leaves From the Mental Portfolio of an Eurasian" by Sui Sin Far, Independent, 21 January 1890
What are the limitations we construct while defining identity, both in ourselves and others? This week's readings help to clarify the chasm that can occur with lack of exposure to texts like these and reassure us that we are not alone in our struggles and discoveries. The writer Sui Sin Far, a half-Chinese, half-British immigrant, wrote widely during the era of the Chinese Exclusion Act, during a time where prejudice and racial violence against the Chinese was socially, legally, and racially condoned, as portrayed in her journalism and fiction. Sui Sin Far enters the United States at the age of seven in Hudson City, New York, and as she comes of age and traverses across America, we follow her through extensive trials and tribulations living within an American society and canvassing the continent, in a time and place where overt racism is somewhat less disguised than it is today. Sui Sin Far absorbs countless remarks and injuries both physical and emotional, as when she witnesses a conversation between her employer and others that includes the statements, "A Chinaman is, in my eyes, more repulsive than a nigger," and “They always give me such a creepy feeling," unaware that Sui Sin Far herself is Chinese before she reveals her identity. The following passage was especially moving and it will be relatable to many people who reluctantly find themselves inside moments of subtle prejudice today, in the present-day forms of microaggressions, body language, vocal tone, and facial expressions. Sui Sin Far describes her emotional turmoil before revealing her identity:
A miserable, cowardly feeling keeps me silent. I am in a Middle West town. If I declare what I am, every person in the place will hear about it the next day. The population is in the main made up of working folks with strong prejudices against my mother’s countrymen. The prospect before me is not an enviable one—if I speak. I have no longer an ambition to die at the stake for the sake of demonstrating the greatness and nobleness of the Chinese people.
Discovering that the daily motions and emotions of life were not so different, even over a hundred years ago, is highly refreshing - examining patterns in literature can help us project our own identities into the future and imagine new paths and decisions, because we have seen that it has been done before by someone very similar to us. In particular, the quote "Individuality is more than nationality. You are you and I am I" was highly transformative and affirmative of my personal beliefs, especially coming from cultural figures like Sui Sin Far and Confucius. Growing up Chinese American, the concept of collectivism as an essential part of the culture I was born into was frequently enforced by people of all races - those who expected certain behavior based on subjective standards of fitting in with an ethnic group, and those outside the race who either expected compliance with harmonious and submissive stereotypes stemming from collectivism and became angered upon any deviation, or attempted to "help" me by painting any signs of quietude or passivity as a fatal character flaw. I was either rewarded by positive attention or ignored and denigrated. Most, if not all behavior, was solely based on my appearance, without knowing who I really was on the inside. Like Sui Sin Far says, there were exceptional individuals as well who looked beyond everything and supported me. This passage gave me hope that there are many ways to define and redefine Asian American identity.
As a child Sui Sin Far loves poetry and fairy tales, and as the pressures of a racist society begin to burden her with conflicts and ostracization at a young age, she rejects narratives of Chinese inferiority along with her family and has dreams of dying at the stake as a great genie proclaims to the world the greatness of the Chinese people. However, she describes herself as weaker than her sisters despite being the eldest girl with greater expectations from her family, and she has "no organic disease, but the strength of [her] feelings seems to take from me the strength of my body. I am prostrated at times with attacks of nervous sickness. The doctor says that my heart is unusually large; but in the light of the present I know that the cross of the Eurasian bore too heavily upon my childish shoulders. I usually hide my weakness from the family until I cannot stand. I do not understand myself, and I have an idea that the others will despise me for not being as strong as they." The idea of unifying a personal as well as racial identity while facing societal expectations is extraordinarily moving, and Sui Sin Far's sensitivity allows her to transcend the boundaries and restrictive physicality of her body and emotions through writing balanced opinions of both her races as well as calling out the hatred she faces: "Fundamentally, I muse, people are all the same. My mother’s race is as prejudiced as my father’s. Only when the whole world becomes as one family with human beings be able to see clearly and hear distinctly. I believe that some day a great part of the world will be Eurasian. I cheer myself with the thought that I am but a pioneer. A pioneer should glory in suffering."
However, the extensive prejudice and racism of American society is far greater than any slights Sui Sin Far faces in the Chinese American communities, because American racism extends to multiple realms, ranging from the legal racism of the Chinese Exclusion Act to the inability to escape her many encounters of social racism and violence that are shown to permeate American society in the late 1800s and early 1900s. This means that Sui Sin Far allies with her Chinese identity, choosing a Cantonese name to write under and narrating the kindnesses and cruelties she encounters from individuals from all races. Having changed my own legal name in order to include my Chinese one as a middle name upon reaching adulthood, this decision was especially intriguing as it opens up a whole world of investigation into the environmental influences behind name changes, and how Asian Americans can decide which is the right name for them to write under.
Sadly, near the end of her life, after a lifetime of the types of events that she narrates, Sui Sin Far's writing style appears to have been corrupted by the racist thinking of her enemies, where her arguments are described as shallow, focusing on the "college-graduate and influential" former laundrymen and Chinese children who wear American clothes, a far cry from her earlier, more incendiary works such as "Leaves From the Mental Profile of an Eurasian." Worn down by the assimilatory pressures of America and her lack of success - by her death the newspapers were favoring keeping Asian children out of public schools and the Chinese Exclusion Act had been extended indefinitely - Sui Sin Far's life and career becomes a reminder of the price of being oneself and the power of American racism to warp anyone's force of will over a long enough period of time. We are faced with the image of a strong young woman, one who is forced in her later life to grasp at straws and grovel in her writing after her previous attempts have failed to spur institutional change - what is assimilation, and some buffing up of the image of Chinese Americans as successful instead of emotionally fraught underneath the scourge of racism as in her previous depictions, to the threats of deportation, abuse, and school inaccessibility that the American government at the time had enacted, and which its people carried out through smiles, smirks, taunts, and violence?
Today, the narratives Sui Sin Far depicted appear to occur again in methods transformed - in coronavirus taunts and school bullying, microaggressions that prematurely age victims and contribute to mental illness and suicide, and the struggles for happiness, belonging, and fulfilling work among members of marginalized populations. By following the decisions that Sui Sin Far makes in her writing and literary life, we can come to places of safety and crossroads of familiarity as she tussles with these issues well over a century ago, and predict events and patterns in our own lives if we make choices or happen to live in environments that echo hers. We don't know what trauma and prejudices the COVID-19 pandemic will leave behind for many years into the future, but through the eyes of Siu Sin Far I saw a realistic version of an America I have experienced at moments, for the first time. She helps us come to terms with life long before it comes to us.
Links to this week's readings:
"Leaves from the Mental Portfolio of an Eurasian," Sui Sin Far
"Sui Sin Far, the Half Chinese Writer, Tells of Her Career," Sui Sin Far
"In the Land of the Free," Sui Sin Far
Sources:
https://wams.nyhistory.org/modernizing-america/xenophobia-and-racism/edith-maude-eaton/
https://faculty.georgetown.edu/bassr/heath/syllabuild/iguide/eaton.html
https://www.pbssocal.org/shows/asian-americans/micro-aggressions-large-lasting-effects
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/2020/09/asian-american-racism-covid/
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