Chinatown Life as Contested Terrain: H. T. Tsiang, Jade Snow Wong, and C. Y. Lee

Abstract

Like many authors today, early writers often found that their only means of entry into mainstream discourse was through positioning themselves as cultural representatives. From there, some take the opportunity to assert themselves as artists and political agents, while also negotiating new ways of understanding China as a nation or Chinese Americans as a group. Still others capitalize on the general receptivity toward autobiography to achieve different aesthetic and ideological goals. While early Chinese American writers desired access to mainstream print culture for various reasons, and while many mainstream readers desired knowledge of China and Chinese culture through their auto ethnographic works, present-day scholars in Asian American studies sometimes turn to their life writings for documentary reasons. The origins of Chinese American autobiography reside in the idea that a Chinese American self must be constructed and new models can be forged, no matter the social and literary constraints.