Beyond Silence: Chinese Canadian Literature in English by Lien Chao (review)

482 letters in canada 1999 Spinal Tap (essay by Jeanne Hall). Any work of canon formation occasions regret or surprise about choices and omissions. Perhaps sequel volumes will include more French material (Georges Rouquier, Chris Marker, Louis Malle, Marcel Ophuls, Tony Gatlif), more British examples (the Grierson school, the Free Cinema movement , Michael Apted), more women's documentaries (only three of these are), and local voices from Latin America, Africa, Asia, and Australasia. In the meantime, this collection is an excellent start. (DAVID CLANDFIELD) Lien Chao. Beyond Silence: Chinese Canadian Literature in English TSAR. xiv, 206. $21.95 Lien Chao's Beyond Silence is a significant book because it is the first fulllength study of Chinese Canadian writing. In the last decade, there has been a burgeoning interest in the field of what is called `Asian American' in the US and `postcolonial' in Canada. This field, misnamed by our neighbours because it often includes `Asian Canadian' works, has generated numerous critical studies south of our border. Referring to the success and popularity of works by Maxine Hong Kingston, Amy Tan, and David Henry Hwang, Sau-ling Wong, echoing others, noted that thèsilence' that `once shrouded painful Asian American experience has ended in a burst of voices' (Reading Asian American Literature). A few years later (Canadians seem to be always just a step behind), Chao similarly asserts that contemporary Chinese Canadian writers are now `breaking through the historical silence' of over a hundred years, which is a means`to construct the community's unrecorded history in English.' What Chao hopes to do is to `bridge the gap between Chinese Canadian literature and mainstream Canadian literature' by reading everything Chinese Canadians have published up to her cut-off date of 1994. Such an ambition is both laudable and problematic. The `paradigm of silence vs. voice' in official discourse is forcefully poetic, enticing, but a bit simplistic. Chao herself notes that in the early years of the twentieth century, Eurasian writers like Sui Sin Far (Edith Eaton) and Onoto Watanna (Winnifred Eaton Reeve) had already been publishing books. In addition, what Chao calls `silence' effaces the journalist productions of Chinese communities which published some twenty-three newspapers in Chinese across the country at that time. The whole question of history is itself fraught, as one might ask whose history or histories are we referring to. Chao locates Chinese Canadian writers in their `historical' context by beginning her book with a chapter outlining the conditions of China in the mid-nineteenth century, the reasons for Chinese immigration to the `Gold Mountain,' discrimination against early Chinese labourers, and presentday Chinatowns. She argues rightly that `without examining the historical conditions under which the Chinese in Canada have survived as a com- humanities 483 munity, the study of Chinese Canadian literature as a minority discourse becomes totally groundless.' While I agree with her basic premise, there is a strong `us and them,' `mainstream and minor' attitude that troubles me. Recent discussions of ethnicity, particularly Asian American identities, highlight the heterogeneity and multiplicity of the Asian subject in the diaspora. A third-generation Canadian-born Chinese (CBC) has very different experiences, allegiances, and history from an affluent immigrant who arrived before the return of Hong Kong, or from a student from mainland China who stayed in Canada after Tienanmen Square. Rather than binaries of Chinese Canadian vs. Canadian, one might speak more fruitfully of `imagined communities' (Benedict Anderson), `flexible citizenship' (Aihwa Ong), and `postmodern ethnicity' (Ien Ang). Chao tends to mute conflicting interests and distinctions between Chinese Canadians subjects who are by no means homogeneous. Other variations which influence writing, such as linguistic competence (oral and written) of Chinese and differences caused by regional Chinese dialects and customs, are similarly understated. Chao focuses rather insistently on thècollective values' that define Chinese Canadian identity. What Chao's book does provide, however, are intelligent readings and discussions of a wide variety of works by writers of Chinese descent in Canada. Her thesis is that `contemporary Chinese Canadian literature is community based.' Among the works she analyses are two anthologies, Inalienable Rice: A Chinese and Japanese Canadian Anthology (1979) and ManyMouthed Birds: Contemporary Writing by Chinese Canadians (1991), Paul...