Fifth Chinese Daughter by Jade Snow Wong

Based on her distinct personae in the Common Ground essays, in Fifth Chinese Daughter, and in her life following the book's publication, I suggest that Wong's construction of different selves for different audiences indicates her artistic and psychological strength. However, they also show the complexity of Wong's position as an Asian American author in the postwar era, and an understanding of that complexity may lead to a more sympathetic reading. If judged along the lines of the old resistance/accommodation framework, these early works do not vindicate Wong at times, they demonstrate that she provided an increased level of exoticism in writing for a broader audience in Fifth Chinese Daughter.

Her earlier essays, published in the magazine Common Ground in 19, provide a kind of fossil record documenting the evolution of her self-presentation. Wong's own (perceived) personal failings have been integral to criticism of her book.īecause Wong's accommodation of a white readership is central to her reputation, it is surprising that no critic has yet examined her writing leading up to Fifth Chinese Daughter-writing that offers clues about the nature of that accommodation. Similarly, Frank Chin questions her integrity both as a writer and as a Chinese American, stating in the introduction to Aiiieeeee! that she was 'obviously manipulated by white publishers to write to and from the stereotype' of Asian Americans (13). Kim, for example, grants that the book 'is valuable as a document of Asian American social history' but considers the author herself 'psychologically vulnerable' to racist demands and ultimately, 'in light of today's changing attitudes, rather pathetic' (72). (3) This debate focuses not only on the text itself, but also on Wong's 'personal integrity,' to borrow a phrase from Sau-ling Cynthia Wong's account of the 'pen wars' concerning Maxine Hong Kingston and The Woman Warrior (29).

(1) Scholars continue to debate Wong in these terms, whether by attempting to recuperate her reputation (2) or by cautioning that Wong's accommodations of her white majority audience are still reason for concern. Comparisons of the book to contemporary writing took place at Wong's expense, and she was accused of capitulating to her readers' tastes for exotic stereotype in an era that prized overt resistance to such demands.

Ever since the 1970s, as writers and critics began to develop an Asian American canon and search for role models for their own writing, Jade Snow Wong and her 1950 autobiography, Fifth Chinese Daughter, have been forcefully criticized.

Fifth Chinese Daughter by Jade Snow Wong