Douglas Street

Document Type

Book

Publication Date

1989

Abstract

I am much better now .... My parents—they don’t know nothing about the world, about watching Benson at the Roxy, . . . downshifting onto the Ventura Freeway at midnight. They’re yellow ghosts and they’ve tried to cage me up with Chinese-ness when all the time we were in America. So, I’ve had to work real hard—real hard—to be myself. To not be a Chinese, a yellow, a slant, a gook. To be just a human being, like everyone else. I’ve paid my dues. And that’s why I am much better now. I’m making it, you know? I’m making it in America. (FOB 36)

Traditionally, the predominant images of the Asian and the Asian-American in popular culture have been created and exploited by Westerners. This historical evolution of the “coolie” laborer and laundryman, Bret Harte’s so-called “heathen Chinee’,” has largely resulted from Old West myth-making. The Chinese railroad worker of the last century hammered together America’s backbone while his own was being broken. Yet generations of Asian-Americans have chosen to forget this heritage. As articulated above by playwright David Henry Hwang, it stands as an obstacle to assimilation into the majority culture. Instead they risk becoming “yellow ghosts,” trapped within stereotypes, the perpetual “Hop Sings” of the American “Ponderosa.” But for Hwang and a new generation of Asian-American voices, the keys to unlock the vitality of their heritage are to be found in the American West—the railroad, the Mother Lode, the bygone joss houses in gold rush towns like Chinese Camp. In these lie the Oriental heritage and the anguish of forgotten Western American trailblazers.

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