Struggles of Immigration in Bates' Midnight at the Dragon Cafe and Kroetsch's "Elegy for Wong Toy"

Judy Fong Bates’ Midnight at the Dragon Café and Robert Kroetsch’s “Elegy for Wong Toy” use the representation of the Café to place focus on the hardships of immigration. Kroetsch’s “Elegy for Wong Toy” “is a thank you poem” (Kroetsch 321), which focuses not only on the life events the narrator is thankful for experiencing in Charlie’s café, but also the isolation and alienation Charlie experienced in that “prairie town” (Kroetsch 321). Much like Charlie in Kroetsch’s “Elegy for Wong Toy,” the Chens, specifically Su-Jen’s parents and Lee-Kung, also experience alienation and isolation in the town of Irvine. Bates’ Midnight at the Dragon Café and Kroetsch’s “Elegy for Wong Toy” are both works that use their respective cafés in order to represent the struggles of identity, the discovery of self, and the hardships and sacrifices of immigration.

The function of the Chinese Restaurant in Midnight at the Dragon Café acts as a bubble of protection for the Chens. Su-Jen, however, lives both inside and outside of this bubble, inside both worlds of China and Canada; this is shown very early on in the novel when Su-Jen adopts a “Canadian name” (Bates 21), in order to assimilate into the Canadian culture. Unlike Annie, her parents and Lee-Kung keep their Chinese names, and by extension they keep themselves separate from Canadian culture. The restaurant provides a sanctuary for Annie’s parents and Lee-Kung, since the restaurant seems to be the only place they truly belong in Irvine. In Toronto with the established Chinese (China Town) community, the older Chinese-minded Chens feel more at ease because they are surrounded by people who speak the same language, are going through the same struggles, whom they can talk to and understand, nothing l...

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...he Dragon Café symbolize hardship, struggle, opportunity, sanctuary, and most importantly both café’s are a place of self discovery that allows each narrator to realize who they are and appreciate all that they have experienced in these café’s. For Su-Jen (Annie), the café was a world in which she no longer belonged, but where her family found sanctuary and solace. In “Elegy for Wong Toy,” the café was an escape from the outside world to the narrator, a place he went to experience life, while for Charlie it was his only sanctuary away from the alienating world that surrounded him the moment he stepped outside.

Works Cited

Bates, Judy F. Midnight at the Dragon Café. Toronto: Emblem Editions, 2005. Print.

Kroetsch, Robert. "Elegy for Wong Toy." Canadian Literature in English Texts and Contexts Volume II. Toronto: Pearson Longman, 2009. 320-321. Print.