Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Racism in literature
Racial Discrimination in Literature
Racial stereotypes literature
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
This read was overall very eye opening for me because I had never really thought about the prejudices that whites had towards the Chinese. Mrs. Spring Fragrance is a collection of short stories written by Edith Eaton. She took the pen name Sin Sui Far to embrace her Chinese heritage and these short stories have a strong focus on Chinese characters. In class we were shown a passage from “Leaves from the Mental Portfolio of a Eurasian” which showed us one of Eaton’s own experiences. “I cannot reconcile myself to the thought hat the Chinese are humans like ourselves. They may have immortal souls, but their faces seem to be so utterly devoid of expression that I cannot help but doubt… Their bodies are enough for me. A Chinaman is, in my eyes, more repulsive than a nigger… They always give me such a creepy feeling… I wouldn’t have one in my house” (Leaves from the Mental Portfolio of a Eurasian). These statements are examples of the types of stereotypes and racism that Chinamen were victims of. I think these short stories are Eaton’s way of using her platform as a writer to battle the stereotypes that are given to the people that are apart …show more content…
In “Its Wavering Image” we see an example of this through the character Pan. A white man by the name of Mark Clarkson is trying to have Pan identify her as white because he believes that if she is Chinese she is not worthy of him. One night while they are together he sings for her and she shows her emotion. “Listening to that irresistible voice singing her heart away, the girl broke down and wept. She was so young and so happy” (Its Wavering Image). Later on in the short story Mark is thinking of Pan and in his head describes her as “so appreciative, so inspiring, so loving” (Its Wavering Image). To Mark, he sees this as her being white when in reality she is a Chinese woman that proving the stereotype of the Chinese being emotionless is
Although Mrs. Spring Fragrance has only lived in America for a short amount of time, her husband states “There are no more American words for her learning” (865). It is obvious through reading this statement that Mrs. Spring Fragrance has become quickly acquainted with not only the English language, but also with American customs and traditions. However, not every character in Mrs. Spring Fragrance adjusts to American culture as easily as Mrs. Spring Fragrance; some characters have a difficult time leaving their Chinese traditions of marriage and accepting that in America, love comes before marriage. Throughout Mrs. Spring Fragrance, Sui Sin Far describes the process that the Chinese characters experience as they slowly begin to alienate traditional Chinese culture and becoming Americanized through accepting American culture as their own.
“The minute our train leaves the Hong Kong border and enters Shenzhen, China, I feel different. I can feel the skin on my forehead tingling, my blood rushing through a new course, my bones aching with a familiar old pain. And I think, my mother was right. I am becoming Chinese. (179). In the story A Pair of Tickets by Amy Tan, the protagonist character, Jing-mei, finds herself in several difficult situations due to how her social and cultural upbringing has shaped her. She finds herself pulled between her Chinese DNA and her American background. While she was raised being told that she was Chinese and “it’s in her blood”, she does not identify as such, because she grew up in America and only sees herself as an American. After her mother’s passing,
In the early 1920's, many generational Americans had moderately racist views on the "new immigrants," those being predominantly from Southern and Eastern Europe. Americans showed hatred for different races, incompatibility with religion, fear of race mixing, and fear of a revolution from other races. At the time, people believed the Nordic race was supreme.
June-May fulfills her mother’s name and life goal, her long-cherished wish. She finally meets her twin sisters and in an essence fulfills and reunites her mother with her daughter through her. For when they are all together they are one; they are their mother. It is here that June-May fulfills the family portion of her Chinese culture of family. In addition, she fully embraces herself as Chinese. She realizes that family is made out of love and that family is the key to being Chinese. “And now I also see what part of me is Chinese. It is so obvious. It is my family. It is in our blood.” (Tan 159). Finally, her mother’s life burden is lifted and June-May’s doubts of being Chinese are set aside or as she says “After all these years, it can finally be let go,” (Tan 159).
Interestingly, the other dominant media depiction of Asian women, to a certain extent, is the opposite of the China doll/geisha girl stereotype. The dragon lady stereotype often features cunning, powerful, icy, merciless yet sexually aggressive Asian female characters. This line of stereotyping is said to originate from the fear of the inscrutable East and from Yellow Peril (Biswas, Kim, Lei, &Yang, 2008; Prasso, 2005). The history of competition for jobs in the frontier rationalizes people in the U.S. to distort the representations of Asians as evil, profit- seeking aliens feeding on the innocent White, which gives rise to the negative stereotype of the dragon lady.
One striking similarity in the writings is that all characters lose their heritage over time. In “The Struggle to Be an All-American Girl”, Elizabeth was forced to attend Chinese school by her mother to retain her Chinese heritage and to speak proficient Chinese. However, she hated the Chinese School and strongly preferred speaking English over Chinese. She...
Chin-kee tries very hard to be friends with his cousin and to fit in. He is always embarrassing his cousin and his race. Jin Wang, being American born Chinese has a hard time fitting in because of all the stereotypes about him and his race. The author is revealing that people will always have stereotypes and be racist, its just human nature. People do this because they are insecure about themselves so they fun of someone else to make themselves feel better. Its hard for people to People try to change who they are but need to stay true to themselves.
Frank Chin is considered to be one of the pioneers in Asian American theatre. In his work, he mainly depicts the effects of human stereotyping. His vision on the fate of Chinese Americans works as a background to his depiction of individuals and their families who are damaged by the roles that they are forced to play in white America’s society. The particularity of Chin’s work is that he stresses the great damage of preconceived opinion more on the relations between family members than on the individual
June May has never met her mother’s first twin daughters, who try and contact their mother, not knowing she has passed away. June May must take on a dual role by telling the girls of their mother’s death as well as a sister’s introduction for the first time. This is a significant burden forced upon June May; going to her ethnic land unaware of the culture, baring bad news. The train ride into china is significant because it is a cross over between how June May feels right up until being confronted with her ethnic background. She explains the feelings she is having while on the train and says, “I am becoming Chinese” (Tan, 1989, p. 263). Her first impressions of china create the feeling that she was wrong in the past; China is reminding her of the lifestyle back home. An article discussing June May’s journey states that at this point in her story she “begins to view life through a new and evolving prism of light” (Richards, 2009). Seeing China for herself, June May can now forget the ideas she once had about china and replace them with her own
The novel Hidden figures, written by Margot Lee Shetterly, exposes the truths about racism and sexism in professional work settings throughout the 1930-60s. The novel explains a story of three African American women who worked as human computers at NACA, now known as NASA, and their efforts to solve problems to benefit the scientific community. The three main women featured in the novel include Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson and Katherine Johnson. Their efforts in the space race against the Russians led to great scientific accomplishments. Although brilliant, they are restricted from reaching their full potential due the fact that they were woman and African American. Shetterly offers a perspective of the past which proves the benefits of change
Sui Sin Far portrays the effects of "Americanization" on the Chinese who arrived in America during the early 1900's, in her story of "Mrs. Spring Fragrance". She describes the processes that the Chinese characters in the story undergo as they slowly begin to accept the American culture as their own. She shows how they become "Americanized", yet shows how they are still rooted in the Chinese tradition. The piece is presented in a lighthearted tone yet deals with issues of national and cultural identity.
Though many of these stereotypes seem unwarranted, some stem from a historical background of Asian discrimination. For centuries Asians were viewed as “oriental” because of the apparent difference between Western and Eastern cultures such as choice of clothing and pronunciation of native languages. In doing so, many individuals were mystified by the mysterious and foreign Asian customs. Consequently, Americans treated Asians as if they belonged to a lower social class. With the ongoing disparagement of Asians, women faced much of the prejudice; “the few women who did emigrate to America were harassed through legislation and stereotyped as prostitutes or objects of white male sexual fantasies” cite. As a result, the perceptio...
...able they really are with overtly racist stereotypes; and even with all the “human right”’ movements that spring about there is still the need for long-lasting solution against combating prejudices. By displaying stereotypes jokingly, especially ones that pertained for the Asian population, Yang proves not only do people hold prejudice against other groups with his examples of Asian stereotypes, but that stereotypes are still prevalent in today’s society.
Understanding the Chinese culture was confusing for Kingston. “Chinese-Americans, when you try to understand what things in you are Chinese , how do you separate what is peculiar to childhood, to poverty, insanities, one family, your mother who marked your growing with stories, from what is Chinese? What is Chinese tradition and what is the movies?” (Kingston 223). Kingston questions her tradition and she doesn’t seem very sure what it is. She questions whether what her mother did by...
The newspaper has a way of swaying the audience one way or another, capturing them with sensationalist titles and material. Falsified ideas are spread unbeknownst to the reader because they take what they read as truth. Racialization was a practice that the media used to segregate a group of people and ascribe certain stereotypes to fulfill a certain idea that was comfortable to them. The assimilation of various races in American culture was discouraged and to be avoided, an idea that Sui Sin Far reinforced in her short story “It’s Wavering Image”. The newspaper article that was written through the lens of a white man interpreted Chinese culture in a fallacious way, making it a spectacle and exploiting the trust between races. In addition,