A Paradise Lost - KOPS - Universität Konstanz

however dissimilar.” 166 However, even when looking at a single ethnic group, its diversity
is obvious: generation, gender, and class differences as well as other factors subdivide
any given group.
Chinese American literature provides a pertinent and well-known example: In
1974, Frank Chin, sometimes called “the conscience” or “the godfather” of Asian
American literature, co-edited Aiiieeeee!, an anthology that set out to salvage a tradition,
establish a canon, and refute common stereotypes that cast the typical ‘Chinaman’ as
inscrutable, effeminate, and potentially cruel:
Briefly stated, the Aiiieeeee! group valorizes works written in English by
American-born writers on American subjects addressed primarily to fellow Asian
Americans, preferably with a pronounced anti-Orientalist agenda, working-class
sympathies, and an interest in rehabilitating Chinese American masculinity. 167
Both the group’s androcentrism and its assessment that the “subject matter of minority
literature is social history, not necessarily by design but by definition,” 168 were seriously
challenged by Maxine Hong Kingston’s feminist and personal 1976 book The Woman
Warrior. Advertised by Alfred A. Knopf as autobiographical non-fiction, 169 the novel
became a bestseller and has sparked a controversy the repercussions of which are still at
work today. Sau-Ling Cynthia Wong notes that “the female writer’s relationship to
American culture is much more vexed than the male’s, for, given her subject position in
Chinese patriarchy, the women’s first contact with Western ways typically had some
liberating effects.” 170 This can be applied to Kingston’s exploration of the difficulty of
growing up with two conflicting cultures. Far from attempting to write ‘social history,’
the author “problematizes generic definitions and the idea of representational
responsibility in ‘ethnic’ writing.” 171 The story of an American born daughter’s
interpretation of her Chinese immigrant mother’s stories contains its own disclaimer of
166 Cheung 1997: 5.
167 Sau-Ling Cynthia Wong, “Chinese American Literature,” in: Cheung 1997: 39-61, here 40. The
anthology and its successor are: Frank Chin/Jeffrey Paul Chan/Lawson Fusao Inada/Shawn Hsu Wong
(eds.), Aiiieeeee! An Anthology of Asian American Writers, Washington 1974, and The Big Aiiieeeee! An
Anthology of Chinese American and Japanese American Literature, New York 1991.
168 Chin et al. 1974: xxxv.
169 Probably because of the previous successes of Chinese women’s autobiographies that endorsed the
‘model minority’ viewpoint, namely Pardee Lowe’s Father and Glorious Descendant (1943), and Jade
Snow Wong’s Fifth Chinese Daughter (1945).
170 Wong in Cheung 1997: 46-7.
171 Ibid.: 50.
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