On Sui Sin Far’s Land of the Free
Alienation and the Melting Pot Myth in Land Of The Free
During a time of virulent anti-Chinese sentiment, writer Edith Maude Eaton (Sui Sin Far) argues that Henry Ford’s “Melting Pot” theory of America was inaccurate. Using the lives of Hom Hing and Lae Choo, a Chinese couple victimized by an overzealous U.S. immigration law, Eaton suggests that American society alienates and corrodes identity in a society that claims duplicitously to be multicultural, at the same time shunning that which is not elusively “American”, what Eaton suggests is nothing more than a monstrously absurd adherence to a depthless cult of display. Eaton argues that American society does not welcome but shuns “the other”, and the American identity is an obsession with bastardized, easily-accessible, materialistic culture that alienates, kills and digests culture, isolating the individual from meaning and identity.
Eaton shows the effects of cultural displacement of the Chinese in America when Lae Choo finally goes to the mission in which her son has been cared for, only to be shunned by him : “the Little One shrunk from her and tried to hide himself in the folds of the white woman’s skirt. ‘go’way, go’way!’ he bade his mother”(329). The American legislation that displaces “Little One” from his family also displaces him from his cultural identity. Parallel to losing their cultural identities is the assumption of an “Americanness”, the absence of the Chinese culture of “the other”, part of a depthless collective-organism of the majority. This alienation illustrates the problematic nature of American identity, that one must renounce one’s cultural identity in order to integrate.
Eaton claims that one has to renounce one’s true cultural identity in order to become part of the American one, an idea contrary to the “Melting Pot”, in which everyone contributes their unique cultural background to a group identity. What Lae Choo and Hom Hing find, however, is a culture that feels itself fully formed and xenophobic, contemptuous of the Chinese who have hitherto been encouraged to emigrate as a source of cheap labor. After the immigration officials take “Little One” into custody, Lae Choo inspects her neighborhood in the early morning, observing an American exclusion of Chinese: “ The star had faded from view and there were bright streaks in the eastern sky. Lae Choo looked down the street and around. Beneath the flat occupied by her and her husband were quarters for a number of bachelor Chinamen, and she could hear them from where she stood”(Eaton 324). The American anti-Chinese sentiment was so fervent that it resulted in the Chinese exclusion act, a bit of legislation that forbade any Chinese from coming into the U.S., so the multitude of Chinese men that came to America for work were unable to send for their families. The potential for the next generation of Chinese culture carrying on was very bleak. Lae Choo and Hom Hing living in this bachelor area, among the stranded and effectively sterilized, reflects their situation; because of a rabid anti Chinese sentiment in America, the next generation of Chinese culture for Hom Hing and Lae Choo is very bleak. Like the bachelors, they have been stripped of their means of carrying on their culture, quite literally, as “Little One” has been taken from them, and he is only returned when White Americans have drained him of all of his “Chinese-ness”.
There are vestiges of Chinese culture in America despite a concerted American effort to limit and suppress it, though the authenticity and effectiveness as a cohesive culture of these remnants is questionable. After Hom Hing convinces Lae Choo that American law would not keep children needlessly from families, Eaton goes on to narrate the events and disorder of unpacking the evening before: “ silks, embroideries, carved ivories, ornamental lacquer-ware, brasses, camphor-wood boxes, fans, and chinaware were scattered around in confused heaps”(324). The gifts from China are symbols of Chinese culture objectified, and the last ties for Lae Choo to that culture. What is left of her past is displaced and thrown into “confused heaps”, and taken out of the reverential position of cultural identity. That the symbols of a Chinese cultural identity are reduced to objects that represent it and thrown into disarray represents the “American” identity withheld from those with an existing history, an identity.
Other displays of Chinese culture or “Chinese-ness” are equally depthless and inauthentic as the displaced “confused heaps” of cultural remnants that Lae Choo clings to. Because identity and cultural identity are reduced to concrete products like silks and ornamental lacquer-ware, the only way to sustain one’s vision of culture is to continually consume the products associated with that particular culture. Consider that Eaton describes the gold embosser Mark Sing’s wife, Kuie Hoe, Lae Choo’s old, wealthy neighbor, and apparent consumer of “Chinese-ness” as “A roly-poly woman in black sateen, with long pendant earrings in her ears”, who is accompanied by her son, dressed in chinese garb, “a yellow jacket and lavender pantaloons”(324-5). Kuie Hoe is able to buy her Chinese identity because she is wealthy (as is suggested by her finery). However, just because she buys Chinese products does not mean that she keeps a thriving Chinese culture alive in America, for herself or for her community. Her ability to sustain her cultural identity is the ability to appease American consumer affinity. Without money, Kuie Hoe would be as displaced as Lae Choo, or rather, she would be as aware of her displacement as Lae Choo is, for the Chinese identity that Kuie Hoe and her son appear to have is nothing more than a display. In fact, the ability to purchase a cultural identity and maintain it through consumption as Kuie Hoe does is what Eaton would describe as very American, for this character renounces old ties for an act of very conscious cultural display that just happens to be her own. Despite outward appearances, Kuie Hoe is very American; consenting to identity devoid of meaning.
The ring that Hom Hing gave to Lae Choo as a gift commemorating their future child is the last remnant they have of their Chinese cultural identity, and embodies ideal that they are only able to hold onto because it is so abstract. For the Chinese couple, it is important for their son to know who he is in America, or perhaps even more important than that is for their son to know who they are, to understand and be able to connect with them. However there is no connection between Hom Hing and Lae Choo and their son because his identity is defined by American culture, not Chinese culture. Eaton indicates that Hom Hing’s desire for his son to be culturally aware may be the origin of the family’s cultural alienation, for after stating that he wanted his “son to be born in [his] country” he goes on to say that “After [his] son was born [his] mother fell sick [..] then [his] father, too, fell sick” (323). The ring is important because their past has died or been sold off (quite literally) for the sake of their son. Furthermore, a paradox of American identity alienates the parents from the son: the more of their cultural Chinese Identity that Lae Choo and Hom Hing bestow on Little One, the more they either alienate him from the depthless American culture that they presumably want him to succeed in, or they alienate themselves, as “others”, from him as an American. In either scenario, the pressures of American society displace the family’s identity.
Just as Little One’s displacement reflects Hom Hing and Lae Choo’s cultural displacement, their entrance into American society reflects their connection, or lack thereof, with others. When we meet James Clancy, the American lawyer supposedly advocating Little One’s citizenship, he and Hom Hing and Lae Choo are negotiating the return of Little One by means of purchasing immigration documentation. With accountant like precision, Lae Choo sums up her assets for Clancy: “See my jade earrings-my gold buttons-my hairpins-my comb of pearl and my rings-one, two, three, four, five rings; very good-very good-all same much money. I give them all to you. You take and bring me paper for my Little One”(328). Clancy, Hom Hing and Lae Choo bring Little One into American society through a transaction, a base economic exchange of goods and services as well as identities, Chinese for American. The transaction represents a hollow American life, a movement that is partly voluntary, Lae Choo and Hom Hing engaging in this barter hoping and looking forward to getting little one back, but for the most part American society coerces Hom Hing and Lae Choo, as America has more or less conspired to legally keep the Chinese disenfranchised and powerless. Hom Hing and Lae Choo enter American society by shedding their traditional values for American values; self made but wanting meaning. Clancy’s cigarette replaces Lae Choo’s gold bracelet: a debased substitute of something once meaningful that cannot perform the same spiritual function, providing ony the empty comfort of Americanism, our constructed selves.
In Lae Choo and Hom Hing’s investment in American society, Eaton illustrates a one sided primacy of America that sees “Americanness” as a recognition and refusal of the “other”. Their entry into American society is bitterly ironic, because for them to integrate into the American society that Eaton illustrates would be to force other Chinese into the same position that they themselves have been forced into, which is to say forced to reject their meaningful cultural identities for an assumed American artifice. Because they fear that they may not get back little one, they invest in the society that would force other Chinese to discard their culture. This coercion illustrates the cyclical nature of the “American cultural machine” that uses humanity to fuel its growth, grinding down individual and cultural identity.
Eaton, Edith Maud. “The Land of the Free”. The Literature Of California: Writings From The Golden State. Ed. Jack Hicks [et al]. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000. 321-329.