Intersections of Social History and Literature: The Changing Sensibilities of Chinese Immigrants

Abstract

HISTORY AND LITERATURE CAN ACT AS A TWIN SET OF LAMPS, REVEALING TOGETHER what each singly would not have the power to illuminate. Xiao-huang Yin's study of Chinese immigrants and their descendants in America connects history and literature to create a framework that charts the collective identity of one of the country's earliest and largest immigrant minorities. A few generations ago, this interdisciplinary approach was fruitfully applied by Perry Miller in his studies of Puritan writings and William R. Taylor in his exploration of themes in antebellum, sectional literature. Yin's ethnic history sets a new standard for this style of historical analysis.1 Yin's subject lends itself effectively to this type of investigative methodology. Chinese Americans represent a robust case study for the dual matrix of literary and sociohistorical analysis. Chinese Americans have continuously produced over a century and a half an extensive literary tradition whose richness and vitality have recently been exhibited by the popular works of authors such as Maxine Hong Kingston and Amy Tan. The Chinese also constituted one of the first major waves of immigrants in the new American republic, arriving in large numbers about the same time as the Irish Catholic and German