Chinese American Literature since the 1850s (review)

Chinese American Literature since the 1850s both draws upon and departs from current Asian American literary criticism. In its sociohistorical approach, Yin’s analysis is in the mould of Elaine Kim’s Asian American Literature: An Introduction to the Writings and their Social Context (1982): Yin relies on few literary theorists and critics but quotes extensively from historical and sociological sources, primarily in order to “understand the social experience and cultural heritage of Chinese Americans” (8). In some ways, this approach makes for a curiously old-fashioned study, with no mention of postcolonialism or theories of transnationality so fashionable in contemporary Asian American criticism. Yet it also allows a refreshingly straightforward discussion of the social and cultural determinants and contexts of Chinese American writing across a range of genres and historical periods.

One of Yin’s innovations is to include work not written in English (here he follows the pattern set by Sheng-mei Ma’s recent work on Chinese immigrant literatures) precisely because, as he observes, “its impact on the Chinese American community cannot be underestimated” (2). This means that his discussion includes both well- and lesser-known writers and nonliterary examples; in so doing, Yin introduces a much needed focus upon class differences within the population of Chinese America. For instance, in his chapter on Chinese-language literature after the 1960s, Yin explores the work of Chinese immigrant professionals, whose work is different from that of earlier writers in the genre, who were preoccupied with immigrant issues such as crime in Chinatowns, poverty, and interracial sex. Those concerns are not as relevant for a post-1960s professional Chinese American community, whose members primarily live beyond the geographical (and cultural) confines of exclusively Chinese communities. Yin also draws distinctions among various language communities in Chinese America: Cantonese, Hakka, and Fujianese. Such attention to detail is the result of painstaking primary research, also evident in Yin’s refutation of common misconceptions about Chinese American immigrants, such as the assumption that most early immigrants were contract laborers.

The strengths of Yin’s book, however, also constitute its (one, slight) weakness. Although the title suggests that the scope of the study will reach from the 1850s to the present day, in fact, Yin only deals with literature up to 1989, thereby omitting the many voices and rising stars of Chinese American literature who have emerged in the late 1990s. Although mentioned in passing, they are barely discussed. Yin’s chapter on contemporary Chinese American literature thus excludes the vital literary renaissance following both civil rights struggles and the success of Maxine Hong Kingston and Amy Tan. This chapter is devoted to the well-documented war of words between Kingston and Frank Chin following the publication of Kingston’s The Woman Warrior. This conflict, although pertinent to Yin’s study, is covered at length in other recent works, notably David Leiwei Li’s Imagining the Nation and Jinqi Ling’s Narrating Nationalisms (both 1998). Yin’s lengthy discussion of it at the expense of an analysis of recent works risks producing a skewed picture of the state of the Chinese American canon.

That objection aside, Chinese American Literature since the 1850s offers much of interest to the lay reader as well as the Asian Americanist. The text, with its marvellous illustrations, is a useful resource for and a valuable contribution to Chinese American scholarship.