Thursday, September 25, 2008
The Chinese in America
I know that she is writing positively about Chinese Americans to contrast what is already being said, but to make the stories more truthful she should write about both the wrong and the right things Chinese Americans do in equal amounts. She is so one sided in her characterizations they are hard to get through today because we know that people are not this one-dimensional. People are complex and I think she should have made that known. Her audience is not the most intelligent group, if she wrote more honestly it might have appealed to the intellectual and maybe would have benefited her people more. Its just really repetitive and we get the picture, Chinese people are good, what else is there to these stories. It does not grab you the way her first biography does, Leaves from the Mental Portfolio of an Eurasian.
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2 comments:
One has to remember that Far is simply writing from her personal experiences which were not all that positive according to her autobiography. If one seems to have nothing but negative experiences throughout their lives, it's going to be difficult for them to see the other side of the story.
While I agree that Sui Sin Far's personal experience was not all positive, I agree with the idea that by writing stories that showcased both the positive and negative aspects of Chinese immigrants in America, Sin Far would have produced a more realistic image. In reading the stories she has written, many portray the same general idea of Chinese American who rarely catch a break and are constantly abused by the American system. By portraying more positive aspects, Sin Far may have been able to affect more readers.
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