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Situating the Essential Alien: Sui Sin Far’s Depiction of Chinese-White Marriage and the Exclusionary Logic of Citizenship
- MFS Modern Fiction Studies
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Volume 54, Number 4, Winter 2008
- pp. 654-688
- 10.1353/mfs.0.1561
- Article
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This essay looks at how Sui Sin Far’s short stories contested an emerging model of national citizenship that attempted to expand the rights of blacks and women by excluding Chinese immigrants. It argues that her depiction of Chinese-White marriage strategically redresses anxieties about black-white miscegenation that were fueled by Progressive and post-Reconstruction reform. While Sui Sin Far counters Chinese national exclusion by strategically pointing up the more offensive threat of black racial difference, she also exposes the disingenuous logic that attempted to situate national and racial exclusions on opposite sides of a hinge.