“Neglected Elements in Sui Sin Far’s Depictions of American Chinatowns and Ethnic Neighborhoods” by Shreya Patel
For newly arrived immigrants, no one tells them how their mother tongue will slowly crumble away alongside their memories. No one warns them just how badly they will want to reach into the city’s guts just to find food that smells like home. They will have crossed oceans but find that English is their biggest barrier of all. To become familiar with the feelings of love and joy once again, finding a home within an ethnic enclave is a vital step for immigrants to save their cultural identities. Despite their bruised streets and chewed up land, these neighborhoods provide vital resources for immigrants to start afresh. Building roots in these zones of transition can make it much easier for immigrants to look back at their motherland and realize just what it takes to make a home. From the perspective of Sui Sin Far and other scholars, the ghetto-like neighborhoods rooted in a dark history have more of a negative effect over the immigrant experience. During the time of the Chinese Exclusion Act, segregation, racism, housing constraints, and the inability to live freely amongst white Americans all gave rise to densely populated ethnic neighborhoods called Chinatowns. Chinatowns developed across the country out of necessity for a space of refuge against blatant racism and exclusion. Because of these dark origins and Far’s experience with double identities, she conjectures that Chinatown forces immigrants to feel like they are neither American nor Chinese enough to belong in a larger society; all they are left to do is survive in it. Sui Sin Far takes Chinatown, a place born out of racism and fear, and characterizes it to fit her notions of environment and its power over ethnic identity formation. Far asserts that racial hybridity in the space of Chinatown is unfeasible through several of her descriptions of these fabricated neighborhoods that appear in her short story collection, Mrs. Spring Fragrance. While Far only depicts the uncultured and uncivilized characteristics of these communities for the sake of her arguments, she undermines the distinct benefits of life in the ethnic neighborhood for newly arrived immigrants.
Although Sui Sin Far’s work reveals her distaste with American Chinatowns, she undoubtedly understood the unique advantages of life in these neighborhoods. Homebound individuals and the elderly find companionship with those who speak their mother tongue. The youth are given a home which facilitates their growing relationship with their culture as they adapt to succeed in the host society. The boundless strength in numbers provide the minority group with a way to hold power in the operations of the larger society. The accessible authentic restaurants, international markets, and houses of worship all act as pillars that support the culture of the neighborhood. Although the list of benefits continues on, Far purposefully neglects to praise any them in her later short story collection. While in her earlier writing she does acknowledge and appreciate the integrity of Chinatowns, a layer of her developing skepticism still channels through the pages. In “A Visit to Chinatown,” Far writes:
When the morning came I looked out of my attic window. I could see very little but the tops of squalid houses, glorified by the beautiful morning sunlight; but the colored woman, housekeeper for the two hundred Chinamen above mentioned, informed me that those roofs sheltered some of the noblest souls in the world, which intelligence, though cheering, I was cynic enough to consider somewhat doubtful. (242)
This passage emphasizes the position Far holds as she experiences Chinatown for the first time alone. As she judged the superficial elements of Chinatown from above in her attic window, she had failed to even begin immersing herself in the life of the neighborhood before commenting. Even though she “could see very little but the tops of the squalid houses,” she did not expand her perspective enough to truly hear the words of the “motherly” housekeeper woman (242). Her usage of the word “glorified” indicates that Far thought of Chinatown as a romanticized illusion upheld by the community to accept their outsider status. While she quickly depicts the “unsavory smells,” “dark alleys on Mott Street,” singing drunkards, and opium dens, she does not appreciate the essence of the neighborhood which lies within the “noblest souls in the world” (243-244, 246). She was welcomed without hesitation by the protective Chinamen, the motherly housekeeper of two hundred people, each wife and mother that shared a cup of tea with her, and her guide, Mrs. Toy, the half-Spanish and half-Chinese woman who was considered the “daughter of Chinatown” (244). One would think that these warm experiences with this group of international people would lessen Far’s cynicism; however, it only further develops throughout the rest of her early writing and permeates into the Mrs. Spring Fragrance collection. In the ending “A Visit to Chinatown,” she includes:
On the whole the Chinese people of Chinatown are a more moral and a much happier lot than I had expected to find them. The odor of opium permeates many of the homes, but all nations have their vices, and I do not deem it my duty to exaggerate the Chinese man’s especially as there are many persons who are only too willing to look after that matter for me. (246)
Although her expectations were sorely proven wrong, she still walked away from Chinatown focusing on its “vices.” While she assures the readers that she will not amplify the flaws of the people of Chinatown, it appears that she makes a routine pattern of it in her later writings, specifically in Mrs. Spring Fragrance.
One of Sui Sin Far’s most expressive depictions of the faults in American Chinatown can be found in her short story, “The Wisdom of the New.” Once Wou Sankwei immigrates to America and establishes himself as a successful partner at a firm in San Francisco, he sends for his wife to join him. Her rejection of assimilation into the very country her husband has chosen to build their life causes marital and parental conflicts. Sui Sin Far uses the outcast perspective of Pau Lin to examine Chinatown as both uncultured and inhospitable:
The American Chinatown held a strange fascination for the girl from the seacoast village. Streaming along the street was a motley throng made up of all nationalities . . . A fat barber was laughing hilariously at a drunken white man who had fallen into a gutter; a withered old fellow, carrying a bird in a cage, stood at the corner entreating passersby to have a good fortune told; some children were burning punk on the curbstone. . . A Chinese dressed in the latest American style and a very blonde woman, laughing immoderately, were entering a Chinese restaurant together. Above all the hubbub of voices was heard the clang of electric cars and the jarring of heavy wheels over cobblestones. (35-36)
Far’s physical and detailed descriptions of the American Chinatown are telling of the larger issues associated with the American neighborhood housing the diaspora. For example, the young woman dressed in American clothing is a metaphor for the masking of Chinese values. As she walks hand in hand with the blonde woman, she is laughing wildly, despite having just downgrading her culture to belong in American society. A man carries a caged bird, a widely recognized symbol for confinement and oppression. The Chinese diaspora are confined to the limits of Chinatown due to the blatant racism and xenophobia of the surrounding American cage and its policies. The old man carrying the cage asks Chinese residents to have their fortune read, implying that the fate of the diaspora’s future lies in the overpowering hands of the executives. The description of “the electrical cars and the jarring of heavy wheels” guides the reader’s attention towards the industrialized America that is fixated on wealth and technological advancements at the risk of the people (36). Even the image of the fat barber who laughs at the shameless drunk reveals key differences between the two cultures; the Chinese culture has a more structured, formal, time-honored society, while Americans take a more free, candid, and individual-centric approach to life. With these clashing values, Far emphasizes how difficult it is to belong in either territory as American principles have seeped into Chinatown.
While it is distressing to see these faults in the space that holds the beating heart of the Chinese diaspora, readers can also optimistically choose to see Chinatown as a unique hub for a “throng of nationalities” (35). As the American woman walks through Chinatown into a restaurant, we are reminded that ethnic neighborhoods also provide a portal for people of all ethnicities to engross themselves within the culture of the community. Despite the neighborhood’s impoverished and excluded status, countless immigrants have used these communities to build connections with individuals of various nationalities who share their common interests as outsiders. In describing the negative features of Chinatown, Far neglects to include details that uplift the community. For instance, by mentioning that the Chinese restaurant was likely owned by an immigrant family, she would have exemplified the resourceful and self-made personalities that lie at the heart of the neighborhood. Far focuses on how unsavory and inauthentic ethnic neighborhood are compared to the homeland for the sake of her argument; however, readers must be reminded that Chinatown and other ethnic neighborhoods are unique and vital intersections of culture. These intersections are not only special to the immigrants who intend to build a new home here but are also unique to America and its status as a cultural “melting pot”.
To unmask the difficulty of maintaining double identities within ethnic neighborhoods, Far effectively builds Chinatown as a forceful character that imposes upon the protagonists in her short stories. In “Its Wavering Image,” a young mixed woman who is seemingly stable with her identity encounters, Mark Carson, an outsider who saw the Chinatown neighborhood as a ghetto fixed within the city of San Francisco. Before Carson gets the chance to insult the neighborhood and introduce a hostile view of Chinatown, Pan describes the neighborhood as a friendly and magnificent place for people of all backgrounds:
Even the little Chinese women in the midst of their babies, received him with gentle smiles, and the children solemnly munched his candies and repeated nursery rhymes for his edification. . . And when the afternoon was spent, there was always that high room open to the stars, with its China bowls full of flowers and its big colored lanterns, shedding a mellow light. Sometimes there was music. A Chinese band played three evenings a week in the gilded restaurant beneath them, and the louder the gongs sounded and the fiddlers fiddled, the more delighted was Pan. Just below the restaurant was her father’s bazaar. (50)
Sui Sin Far includes this passage to highlight the wonderful attributes of the enclave, including the welcoming characters and warm atmosphere. The imagery of “China bowls full of flowers and its big colored lanterns” raise striking visuals linked to the Chinese culture in the minds of the readers. The sounds of gongs struck by the Chinese band also evoke the same feelings associated with the grand culture. By including mothers and their babies as one with the environment, readers understand how the same family values significant in Chinese culture still prevail in the new culture of the ethnic neighborhood. The final sentence which notes the location of her father’s bazaar is indicative of her ties to the neighborhood. With this physical building representing all that has come to fruition from their family’s sacrifices, it becomes easier to see the neighborhood as the embodiment of the immigrant’s dream. Given that a majority of the depictions of Chinatown are negative observations, this unique description provides a very hopeful and illuminating perspective in comparison to the first passage analyzed. Although this is the case, Far erases all that collected hope once Carson “had stepped across the threshold,” giving access and power to a white man to criticize Pan’s identity and the only space where she feels “natural and at home” (49). As they gaze at the “lantern-lighted, motley-thronged street beneath” with the stars above them, Carson comments: “How beautiful above! How unbeautiful below!’ (51). Pan nervously defends Chinatown by replying, “Perhaps it isn’t very beautiful. . .but it is here I live. It is my home” (51). This discussion between Mark and Pan reveals the ongoing debate surrounding ethnic enclaves. In the eyes of Pan, the comfort provided by the familiarity of a tight-knit ethnic enclave can ease the challenges of multigenerational immigrants and reinforce cultural ties while in America. Scholars like Sui Sin Far theorizes that the space of inauthentic American Chinatown does not allow for Pan to exist peacefully with her racial hybridity. Pan, along with other first and second-generation immigrants, can only turn to Chinatown for an artificial haven to seek refuge from the social hostility which overwhelms the host society.
While the distinct benefits of life in a familiar ethnic neighborhood are indisputable, Far’s concerns do become increasingly pressing as the immigrant’s initial challenges pass with time. For instance, bearing the culture shock, learning the language and customs, finding financial stability, and building a home from scratch are just the first tests of endurance immigrants must overcome. By first living in a community similar to home and slowly easing into the host society day by day, the loaded burdens of the immigrant experience can be extremely lightened just by surrounding yourself with others who can relate. Once these initial trials are completed, the next step of establishing a hybrid cultural identity and navigating ethnic boundaries within the larger society become reach the top of the list of concerns. In “Children of Peace”, Far reflects on the experience of immigrants who arrived young and have already spent several years building a life and fostering a warm atmosphere for their children. Early in their journey, Liu Venti and Pau Tsu sacrificed their familial bonds for the chance to explore their love and build a life together. In this passage written to jump through time, Far gives us a brief summary of the couple’s triumphs and sorrows:
It was seven years since Liu Venti and Pau Tsu had begun their work in San Francisco’s Chinatown; seven years of struggle and hardship, working and waiting, living, learning, fighting, failing, loving—and conquering. The victory, to an onlooker, might have seemed small; just a modest school for adult pupils of their own race, a few white night pupils, and a free school for children. But the latter was in itself evidence that Liu Venti and Pau Tsu had not only sailed safely through the waters of poverty, but had reached a haven from which they could enjoy the blessedness of stretching out helping hands to others. (169)
The first sentence of the passage contains a list of words which, when taken separately, do not express a fraction of the power as when they are read together as a single unit. Each carefully chosen word pieced together works to reveal the wide assortment of emotions that appear at each stage of immigration. The language “working,” “waiting,” “struggle,” and “fighting” accurately define the initial stage of immigration as a battle to keep their head above water. It is in this stage where a support circle commonly found in these ethnic neighborhoods is a vital source of strength. The next phase, which includes “living,” “failing,” and “learning,” describe Far’s path of navigating cultural hybridity and balancing double identities. Finally, the phase of “conquering” comes to fruition as each proceeding sacrifice and loss cultivates this final stage of enjoyment. While ethnic enclaves have their advantages in the early stages of immigration, it is fair to say that Far’s issues with Chinatowns are inevitable for settled immigrants as well.
While Pau and Liu successfully conquered this journey to America, “sailed safely through the waters of poverty,” and were able to “enjoy the blessedness” of helping others, their home still did not feel whole; they remained existing in emotional and physical “exile” from their family and homeland (169). In this short story, Far reuses many of the same descriptions of Chinatown as in “The Wisdom of the New,” including the “motley throng… of all nationalities,” “the fat barber… laughing hilariously at a drunken white man, and “a withered old fellow, carrying a bird in a cage”(170-171). The couple filters their disappointment in the American Chinatown through these physically unappealing features; however, the couple really sees Chinatown as the embodiment of every reason for why their family was split. Just as many immigrants never feel truly at home in America, Liu Venti and Pau Tsu feel that America does not measure up to China. Afterall, that is where their unfinished journeys with their parents will conclude and their new futures will begin. While Sui Sin Far must repeat her descriptions of an unforgiving Chinatown to show that the couple is ready to reconcile with their past, she neglects to focus on the years where the couple accomplished immense personal growth and victories in the “haven” of Chinatown (169). While the assimilation process is not one to glorify, depicting only the flaws of Chinatown in order to reject the notions of Americanization also degrades the neighborhood that many honorable immigrants call home.
In “The Inferior Woman,” the second short story of the Mrs. Spring Fragrance collection by Sui Sin Far, the leading lady reveals her “desire to write an immortal book” (19). As one of the first of many Chinese writers in America to share her experience with torn identities, Far’s writing has successfully traversed through several decades to reach us. The “immortal” beating heart of her words remains alive through her sensitive characters, their dreams, and their astonishing sacrifices. Unfortunately, many of the fundamental issues she had with ethnic neighborhoods and specifically Chinatown still remain alive as well. Far wrote to reach each and every immigrant, whether they felt American, Chinese, or somewhere in between. She believed that Chinatown was not a proper portal to China and that America had too powerful of a grasp. However, instead of looking at Chinatown as a place that is meant to belong to either, we can view the neighborhoods as an intersection of cultures, uniquely built to bring its residents closer together and closer to their extraordinary identity.
Although Sui Sin Far’s work reveals her distaste with American Chinatowns, she undoubtedly understood the unique advantages of life in these neighborhoods. Homebound individuals and the elderly find companionship with those who speak their mother tongue. The youth are given a home which facilitates their growing relationship with their culture as they adapt to succeed in the host society. The boundless strength in numbers provide the minority group with a way to hold power in the operations of the larger society. The accessible authentic restaurants, international markets, and houses of worship all act as pillars that support the culture of the neighborhood. Although the list of benefits continues on, Far purposefully neglects to praise any them in her later short story collection. While in her earlier writing she does acknowledge and appreciate the integrity of Chinatowns, a layer of her developing skepticism still channels through the pages. In “A Visit to Chinatown,” Far writes:
When the morning came I looked out of my attic window. I could see very little but the tops of squalid houses, glorified by the beautiful morning sunlight; but the colored woman, housekeeper for the two hundred Chinamen above mentioned, informed me that those roofs sheltered some of the noblest souls in the world, which intelligence, though cheering, I was cynic enough to consider somewhat doubtful. (242)
This passage emphasizes the position Far holds as she experiences Chinatown for the first time alone. As she judged the superficial elements of Chinatown from above in her attic window, she had failed to even begin immersing herself in the life of the neighborhood before commenting. Even though she “could see very little but the tops of the squalid houses,” she did not expand her perspective enough to truly hear the words of the “motherly” housekeeper woman (242). Her usage of the word “glorified” indicates that Far thought of Chinatown as a romanticized illusion upheld by the community to accept their outsider status. While she quickly depicts the “unsavory smells,” “dark alleys on Mott Street,” singing drunkards, and opium dens, she does not appreciate the essence of the neighborhood which lies within the “noblest souls in the world” (243-244, 246). She was welcomed without hesitation by the protective Chinamen, the motherly housekeeper of two hundred people, each wife and mother that shared a cup of tea with her, and her guide, Mrs. Toy, the half-Spanish and half-Chinese woman who was considered the “daughter of Chinatown” (244). One would think that these warm experiences with this group of international people would lessen Far’s cynicism; however, it only further develops throughout the rest of her early writing and permeates into the Mrs. Spring Fragrance collection. In the ending “A Visit to Chinatown,” she includes:
On the whole the Chinese people of Chinatown are a more moral and a much happier lot than I had expected to find them. The odor of opium permeates many of the homes, but all nations have their vices, and I do not deem it my duty to exaggerate the Chinese man’s especially as there are many persons who are only too willing to look after that matter for me. (246)
Although her expectations were sorely proven wrong, she still walked away from Chinatown focusing on its “vices.” While she assures the readers that she will not amplify the flaws of the people of Chinatown, it appears that she makes a routine pattern of it in her later writings, specifically in Mrs. Spring Fragrance.
One of Sui Sin Far’s most expressive depictions of the faults in American Chinatown can be found in her short story, “The Wisdom of the New.” Once Wou Sankwei immigrates to America and establishes himself as a successful partner at a firm in San Francisco, he sends for his wife to join him. Her rejection of assimilation into the very country her husband has chosen to build their life causes marital and parental conflicts. Sui Sin Far uses the outcast perspective of Pau Lin to examine Chinatown as both uncultured and inhospitable:
The American Chinatown held a strange fascination for the girl from the seacoast village. Streaming along the street was a motley throng made up of all nationalities . . . A fat barber was laughing hilariously at a drunken white man who had fallen into a gutter; a withered old fellow, carrying a bird in a cage, stood at the corner entreating passersby to have a good fortune told; some children were burning punk on the curbstone. . . A Chinese dressed in the latest American style and a very blonde woman, laughing immoderately, were entering a Chinese restaurant together. Above all the hubbub of voices was heard the clang of electric cars and the jarring of heavy wheels over cobblestones. (35-36)
Far’s physical and detailed descriptions of the American Chinatown are telling of the larger issues associated with the American neighborhood housing the diaspora. For example, the young woman dressed in American clothing is a metaphor for the masking of Chinese values. As she walks hand in hand with the blonde woman, she is laughing wildly, despite having just downgrading her culture to belong in American society. A man carries a caged bird, a widely recognized symbol for confinement and oppression. The Chinese diaspora are confined to the limits of Chinatown due to the blatant racism and xenophobia of the surrounding American cage and its policies. The old man carrying the cage asks Chinese residents to have their fortune read, implying that the fate of the diaspora’s future lies in the overpowering hands of the executives. The description of “the electrical cars and the jarring of heavy wheels” guides the reader’s attention towards the industrialized America that is fixated on wealth and technological advancements at the risk of the people (36). Even the image of the fat barber who laughs at the shameless drunk reveals key differences between the two cultures; the Chinese culture has a more structured, formal, time-honored society, while Americans take a more free, candid, and individual-centric approach to life. With these clashing values, Far emphasizes how difficult it is to belong in either territory as American principles have seeped into Chinatown.
While it is distressing to see these faults in the space that holds the beating heart of the Chinese diaspora, readers can also optimistically choose to see Chinatown as a unique hub for a “throng of nationalities” (35). As the American woman walks through Chinatown into a restaurant, we are reminded that ethnic neighborhoods also provide a portal for people of all ethnicities to engross themselves within the culture of the community. Despite the neighborhood’s impoverished and excluded status, countless immigrants have used these communities to build connections with individuals of various nationalities who share their common interests as outsiders. In describing the negative features of Chinatown, Far neglects to include details that uplift the community. For instance, by mentioning that the Chinese restaurant was likely owned by an immigrant family, she would have exemplified the resourceful and self-made personalities that lie at the heart of the neighborhood. Far focuses on how unsavory and inauthentic ethnic neighborhood are compared to the homeland for the sake of her argument; however, readers must be reminded that Chinatown and other ethnic neighborhoods are unique and vital intersections of culture. These intersections are not only special to the immigrants who intend to build a new home here but are also unique to America and its status as a cultural “melting pot”.
To unmask the difficulty of maintaining double identities within ethnic neighborhoods, Far effectively builds Chinatown as a forceful character that imposes upon the protagonists in her short stories. In “Its Wavering Image,” a young mixed woman who is seemingly stable with her identity encounters, Mark Carson, an outsider who saw the Chinatown neighborhood as a ghetto fixed within the city of San Francisco. Before Carson gets the chance to insult the neighborhood and introduce a hostile view of Chinatown, Pan describes the neighborhood as a friendly and magnificent place for people of all backgrounds:
Even the little Chinese women in the midst of their babies, received him with gentle smiles, and the children solemnly munched his candies and repeated nursery rhymes for his edification. . . And when the afternoon was spent, there was always that high room open to the stars, with its China bowls full of flowers and its big colored lanterns, shedding a mellow light. Sometimes there was music. A Chinese band played three evenings a week in the gilded restaurant beneath them, and the louder the gongs sounded and the fiddlers fiddled, the more delighted was Pan. Just below the restaurant was her father’s bazaar. (50)
Sui Sin Far includes this passage to highlight the wonderful attributes of the enclave, including the welcoming characters and warm atmosphere. The imagery of “China bowls full of flowers and its big colored lanterns” raise striking visuals linked to the Chinese culture in the minds of the readers. The sounds of gongs struck by the Chinese band also evoke the same feelings associated with the grand culture. By including mothers and their babies as one with the environment, readers understand how the same family values significant in Chinese culture still prevail in the new culture of the ethnic neighborhood. The final sentence which notes the location of her father’s bazaar is indicative of her ties to the neighborhood. With this physical building representing all that has come to fruition from their family’s sacrifices, it becomes easier to see the neighborhood as the embodiment of the immigrant’s dream. Given that a majority of the depictions of Chinatown are negative observations, this unique description provides a very hopeful and illuminating perspective in comparison to the first passage analyzed. Although this is the case, Far erases all that collected hope once Carson “had stepped across the threshold,” giving access and power to a white man to criticize Pan’s identity and the only space where she feels “natural and at home” (49). As they gaze at the “lantern-lighted, motley-thronged street beneath” with the stars above them, Carson comments: “How beautiful above! How unbeautiful below!’ (51). Pan nervously defends Chinatown by replying, “Perhaps it isn’t very beautiful. . .but it is here I live. It is my home” (51). This discussion between Mark and Pan reveals the ongoing debate surrounding ethnic enclaves. In the eyes of Pan, the comfort provided by the familiarity of a tight-knit ethnic enclave can ease the challenges of multigenerational immigrants and reinforce cultural ties while in America. Scholars like Sui Sin Far theorizes that the space of inauthentic American Chinatown does not allow for Pan to exist peacefully with her racial hybridity. Pan, along with other first and second-generation immigrants, can only turn to Chinatown for an artificial haven to seek refuge from the social hostility which overwhelms the host society.
While the distinct benefits of life in a familiar ethnic neighborhood are indisputable, Far’s concerns do become increasingly pressing as the immigrant’s initial challenges pass with time. For instance, bearing the culture shock, learning the language and customs, finding financial stability, and building a home from scratch are just the first tests of endurance immigrants must overcome. By first living in a community similar to home and slowly easing into the host society day by day, the loaded burdens of the immigrant experience can be extremely lightened just by surrounding yourself with others who can relate. Once these initial trials are completed, the next step of establishing a hybrid cultural identity and navigating ethnic boundaries within the larger society become reach the top of the list of concerns. In “Children of Peace”, Far reflects on the experience of immigrants who arrived young and have already spent several years building a life and fostering a warm atmosphere for their children. Early in their journey, Liu Venti and Pau Tsu sacrificed their familial bonds for the chance to explore their love and build a life together. In this passage written to jump through time, Far gives us a brief summary of the couple’s triumphs and sorrows:
It was seven years since Liu Venti and Pau Tsu had begun their work in San Francisco’s Chinatown; seven years of struggle and hardship, working and waiting, living, learning, fighting, failing, loving—and conquering. The victory, to an onlooker, might have seemed small; just a modest school for adult pupils of their own race, a few white night pupils, and a free school for children. But the latter was in itself evidence that Liu Venti and Pau Tsu had not only sailed safely through the waters of poverty, but had reached a haven from which they could enjoy the blessedness of stretching out helping hands to others. (169)
The first sentence of the passage contains a list of words which, when taken separately, do not express a fraction of the power as when they are read together as a single unit. Each carefully chosen word pieced together works to reveal the wide assortment of emotions that appear at each stage of immigration. The language “working,” “waiting,” “struggle,” and “fighting” accurately define the initial stage of immigration as a battle to keep their head above water. It is in this stage where a support circle commonly found in these ethnic neighborhoods is a vital source of strength. The next phase, which includes “living,” “failing,” and “learning,” describe Far’s path of navigating cultural hybridity and balancing double identities. Finally, the phase of “conquering” comes to fruition as each proceeding sacrifice and loss cultivates this final stage of enjoyment. While ethnic enclaves have their advantages in the early stages of immigration, it is fair to say that Far’s issues with Chinatowns are inevitable for settled immigrants as well.
While Pau and Liu successfully conquered this journey to America, “sailed safely through the waters of poverty,” and were able to “enjoy the blessedness” of helping others, their home still did not feel whole; they remained existing in emotional and physical “exile” from their family and homeland (169). In this short story, Far reuses many of the same descriptions of Chinatown as in “The Wisdom of the New,” including the “motley throng… of all nationalities,” “the fat barber… laughing hilariously at a drunken white man, and “a withered old fellow, carrying a bird in a cage”(170-171). The couple filters their disappointment in the American Chinatown through these physically unappealing features; however, the couple really sees Chinatown as the embodiment of every reason for why their family was split. Just as many immigrants never feel truly at home in America, Liu Venti and Pau Tsu feel that America does not measure up to China. Afterall, that is where their unfinished journeys with their parents will conclude and their new futures will begin. While Sui Sin Far must repeat her descriptions of an unforgiving Chinatown to show that the couple is ready to reconcile with their past, she neglects to focus on the years where the couple accomplished immense personal growth and victories in the “haven” of Chinatown (169). While the assimilation process is not one to glorify, depicting only the flaws of Chinatown in order to reject the notions of Americanization also degrades the neighborhood that many honorable immigrants call home.
In “The Inferior Woman,” the second short story of the Mrs. Spring Fragrance collection by Sui Sin Far, the leading lady reveals her “desire to write an immortal book” (19). As one of the first of many Chinese writers in America to share her experience with torn identities, Far’s writing has successfully traversed through several decades to reach us. The “immortal” beating heart of her words remains alive through her sensitive characters, their dreams, and their astonishing sacrifices. Unfortunately, many of the fundamental issues she had with ethnic neighborhoods and specifically Chinatown still remain alive as well. Far wrote to reach each and every immigrant, whether they felt American, Chinese, or somewhere in between. She believed that Chinatown was not a proper portal to China and that America had too powerful of a grasp. However, instead of looking at Chinatown as a place that is meant to belong to either, we can view the neighborhoods as an intersection of cultures, uniquely built to bring its residents closer together and closer to their extraordinary identity.
Works Cited
Chapman, Mary, and Sui Sin Far. Becoming Sui Sin Far: Early Fiction, Journalism, and Travel Writing by Edith Maude Eaton. McGill-Queen's University Press, 2016.
Far, Sui Sin. “Mrs. Spring Fragrance.” Mrs Spring Fragrance, by Sui Sin Far, Project Gutenburg, 16 Aug. 2020, https://www.gutenberg.org/files/62940/62940-h/62940-h.htm.
"Children of Peace"
Far, Sui Sin. Mrs. Spring Fragrance: A Collection of Chinese-American Short Stories. Dover Publications, Inc., 2013.
"Its Wavering Image" and "The Wisdom of the New"
Chapman, Mary, and Sui Sin Far. Becoming Sui Sin Far: Early Fiction, Journalism, and Travel Writing by Edith Maude Eaton. McGill-Queen's University Press, 2016.
Far, Sui Sin. “Mrs. Spring Fragrance.” Mrs Spring Fragrance, by Sui Sin Far, Project Gutenburg, 16 Aug. 2020, https://www.gutenberg.org/files/62940/62940-h/62940-h.htm.
"Children of Peace"
Far, Sui Sin. Mrs. Spring Fragrance: A Collection of Chinese-American Short Stories. Dover Publications, Inc., 2013.
"Its Wavering Image" and "The Wisdom of the New"