“Yellow Slavery,” Narratives of Rescue, and Sui Sin Far/Edith Maude Eaton’s “Lin John” (1899)

This article examines Sui Sin Far/Edith Maude Eaton’s “Lin John” (1899), a deceptively simple story about a Chinese prostitute’s refusal to be “rescued,” in relation to the discourse of “yellow slavery,” best exemplified by sensational accounts in late-nineteenth-century San Francisco newspapers that demonize Chinese men, infantilize Chinese “slave girls,” and glorify white missionary women’s heroic rescue efforts. I argue that these representations register the contradictions within U.S. culture of benevolence, which simultaneously promises and limits the agency of racialized groups while obscuring and legitimizing disciplinary actions through displacing racial politics of a transnational political economy onto gender politics of national morality.