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.Day in and day out, year in and year out, that is the life of a Chinese laundry-man, and Wong Wan-Lee was one of them (27).The space behind the curtainof the Chinese laundry is thereby stripped of its dangerous exoticism for whitereaders and is instead exposed as a humdrum site of recuperation from endlessand unnecessary toil.The message to would-be Chinatown tourists is also clear:there is nothing here to see.For Tsiang, the American tourist gaze is part of a larger Orientalist popu-lar culture that works to prevent revolutionary agency.He develops this posi-tion mainly through his character Pearl Chang.She demands that Wan-Leeprepare her chop suey and chow mein because her Chinese identity has beenmediated by American radio, tabloids, and Hollywood film.She also expectsWan-Lee to have a pigtail, since all Chinese she has seen in the movies havequeues, and is disappointed when he does not (37).Pearl has a photo of amovie star by her bed, and her nightly reading of tabloids both deepens herlove of film stars and deludes her into dreaming she can actually become astar herself (51).So while Wan-Lee s early naivety revolves around his faith inupward mobility and his investment in a bourgeois form of Chinese national-ism, Pearl s naivety wholly revolves around her investment in U.S.mass cul-ture.Given that Tsiang wrote at a moment in which the most well-knownChinese individual in American popular culture was still Dr.Fu Manchu,created by Sax Rohmer over a series of novels dating from 1913 to 1959, andmade into film with The Mask of Fu Manchu in 1932 (starring Boris Karloff),and that Chinese men had been consistently represented as a sexual threatfrom the very beginning of American film in titles such as The Cheat (1915)by Cecil B.DeMille and Broken Blossoms by D.W.Griffith (1919), this invest-ment in U.S.mass culture by a person of Chinese descent could only be self-destructive (Lee Orientals 117 20).But unlike his character Pearl, Hollywood Carlos Bulosan, H.T.Tsiang, and U.S.Literary Market 127was not a complete abstraction for Tsiang.Though little is known about hisbiography, his experience as an actor in Hollywood in which he was alwaysrelegated to minor roles must have fueled the frustrations with mass cultureas rendered in Hands.11Thus, unlike many 1940s and 1950s narratives of Chinatown, Hands doesnot skirt troubling issues of exclusion to make its case for Asian inclusion.Foralmost a century leading up to its publication, a string of nativist bills had lim-ited the Chinese presence by thwarting their attempts to form families in theU.S.The Page Act of 1875 made it very difficult for Chinese women to enter tocountry, while the Expatriation Act (1907) and the Cable Act (1922) removedU.S.citizenship from American-born women who married Chinese men.Theselaws helped ensure that Chinese communities in the U.S.would remain bach-elor societies. It is significant, within this legislative context, that Wan-Lee isnever able to establish a family in the U.S.His union with Pearl occurs only atthe moment of his death, and his passing on American soil with only a sym-bolic union reflects a reality of anti-Chinese legislation.Wan-Lee s desire to savemoney as an independent businessman is also repeatedly handicapped by themachinations of whites: namely, the building inspector who demands exorbi-tant bribes (80 83) and the white laundrymen who spread vicious rumors abouttheir Chinese competitors (107).Indeed, there is not a single positive whitecharacter in the entire text; more than this, apart from the building inspectorand a waiter named Butcher Face mentioned only in passing (21), there areno white characters in the novel at all.Whites exist as an otherwise menacingand faceless force that threatens to either co-opt Wan-Lee s culture or drag himinto poverty.This white peril is also part of a much larger threat that crosses nationalborders: fascism.The other characters who seek to destroy Pearl and Wan-Leeare fascistically aligned Chinese.Tsiang tells of a Chinese loan shark who exploitsthe protagonist: He had recently finished his Ph.D.thesis How to Sell ChinaMore Profitably and he had also made great progress in studying Japanese (88).The cafeteria s Chinese American owner, a self-proclaimed member of the Chinese Nationalist Party, fires the multiracial Pearl, bluntly telling her, I haveto respect the national race purity.You have scorned my racial theory! Getout! (102).12 The mutual desire to thwart the ambitions of Wan-Lee and Pearlaligns whites and Chinese fascists within a common bloc.The novel s equation of domestic racism and international fascism arestandard Popular Front fare.So is its antidote to domestic racism.The song ofthe picketers in the final strike scene, for example, tellingly rebukes the cafeteriaowner s intolerance of racial hybridity: 128 Carlos Bulosan, H.T.Tsiang, and U.S.Literary MarketThey were marching on, singing their song:The song of the white,The song of the yellow,The song of the black,The song of the ones who were neither yellow nor white,The song of the ones who were neither yellow nor black,The song of the ones who were neither black nor white,And the song that knows nothing of white, yellow, or black.(124)Though the song goes beyond the black/white frame common within U.S.Popular Front racial vision and shows an unusual accommodation of in-betweenness, it remains along the same basic continuum, as Tsiang replacesfascist racial theory with a multiracial class solidarity.However, it is also unlike both the Popular Front and later Chinatown nar-ratives in another important sense.To be sure, the strike shows the possibility ofmultiracial unity in the U.S [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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.Day in and day out, year in and year out, that is the life of a Chinese laundry-man, and Wong Wan-Lee was one of them (27).The space behind the curtainof the Chinese laundry is thereby stripped of its dangerous exoticism for whitereaders and is instead exposed as a humdrum site of recuperation from endlessand unnecessary toil.The message to would-be Chinatown tourists is also clear:there is nothing here to see.For Tsiang, the American tourist gaze is part of a larger Orientalist popu-lar culture that works to prevent revolutionary agency.He develops this posi-tion mainly through his character Pearl Chang.She demands that Wan-Leeprepare her chop suey and chow mein because her Chinese identity has beenmediated by American radio, tabloids, and Hollywood film.She also expectsWan-Lee to have a pigtail, since all Chinese she has seen in the movies havequeues, and is disappointed when he does not (37).Pearl has a photo of amovie star by her bed, and her nightly reading of tabloids both deepens herlove of film stars and deludes her into dreaming she can actually become astar herself (51).So while Wan-Lee s early naivety revolves around his faith inupward mobility and his investment in a bourgeois form of Chinese national-ism, Pearl s naivety wholly revolves around her investment in U.S.mass cul-ture.Given that Tsiang wrote at a moment in which the most well-knownChinese individual in American popular culture was still Dr.Fu Manchu,created by Sax Rohmer over a series of novels dating from 1913 to 1959, andmade into film with The Mask of Fu Manchu in 1932 (starring Boris Karloff),and that Chinese men had been consistently represented as a sexual threatfrom the very beginning of American film in titles such as The Cheat (1915)by Cecil B.DeMille and Broken Blossoms by D.W.Griffith (1919), this invest-ment in U.S.mass culture by a person of Chinese descent could only be self-destructive (Lee Orientals 117 20).But unlike his character Pearl, Hollywood Carlos Bulosan, H.T.Tsiang, and U.S.Literary Market 127was not a complete abstraction for Tsiang.Though little is known about hisbiography, his experience as an actor in Hollywood in which he was alwaysrelegated to minor roles must have fueled the frustrations with mass cultureas rendered in Hands.11Thus, unlike many 1940s and 1950s narratives of Chinatown, Hands doesnot skirt troubling issues of exclusion to make its case for Asian inclusion.Foralmost a century leading up to its publication, a string of nativist bills had lim-ited the Chinese presence by thwarting their attempts to form families in theU.S.The Page Act of 1875 made it very difficult for Chinese women to enter tocountry, while the Expatriation Act (1907) and the Cable Act (1922) removedU.S.citizenship from American-born women who married Chinese men.Theselaws helped ensure that Chinese communities in the U.S.would remain bach-elor societies. It is significant, within this legislative context, that Wan-Lee isnever able to establish a family in the U.S.His union with Pearl occurs only atthe moment of his death, and his passing on American soil with only a sym-bolic union reflects a reality of anti-Chinese legislation.Wan-Lee s desire to savemoney as an independent businessman is also repeatedly handicapped by themachinations of whites: namely, the building inspector who demands exorbi-tant bribes (80 83) and the white laundrymen who spread vicious rumors abouttheir Chinese competitors (107).Indeed, there is not a single positive whitecharacter in the entire text; more than this, apart from the building inspectorand a waiter named Butcher Face mentioned only in passing (21), there areno white characters in the novel at all.Whites exist as an otherwise menacingand faceless force that threatens to either co-opt Wan-Lee s culture or drag himinto poverty.This white peril is also part of a much larger threat that crosses nationalborders: fascism.The other characters who seek to destroy Pearl and Wan-Leeare fascistically aligned Chinese.Tsiang tells of a Chinese loan shark who exploitsthe protagonist: He had recently finished his Ph.D.thesis How to Sell ChinaMore Profitably and he had also made great progress in studying Japanese (88).The cafeteria s Chinese American owner, a self-proclaimed member of the Chinese Nationalist Party, fires the multiracial Pearl, bluntly telling her, I haveto respect the national race purity.You have scorned my racial theory! Getout! (102).12 The mutual desire to thwart the ambitions of Wan-Lee and Pearlaligns whites and Chinese fascists within a common bloc.The novel s equation of domestic racism and international fascism arestandard Popular Front fare.So is its antidote to domestic racism.The song ofthe picketers in the final strike scene, for example, tellingly rebukes the cafeteriaowner s intolerance of racial hybridity: 128 Carlos Bulosan, H.T.Tsiang, and U.S.Literary MarketThey were marching on, singing their song:The song of the white,The song of the yellow,The song of the black,The song of the ones who were neither yellow nor white,The song of the ones who were neither yellow nor black,The song of the ones who were neither black nor white,And the song that knows nothing of white, yellow, or black.(124)Though the song goes beyond the black/white frame common within U.S.Popular Front racial vision and shows an unusual accommodation of in-betweenness, it remains along the same basic continuum, as Tsiang replacesfascist racial theory with a multiracial class solidarity.However, it is also unlike both the Popular Front and later Chinatown nar-ratives in another important sense.To be sure, the strike shows the possibility ofmultiracial unity in the U.S [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]