Immigration of Female Chinese Americans:  Adapting to Dual Identity

            Amy Tan and Maxine Hong Kingston are two very successful Chinese-American authors in the United States today.  Both women incorporate biographical as well as historical accounts into the stories they write.  The two women share the fact that they are second generation immigrants of Chinese born mothers.  In the last decade, other young Chinese girls have begun coming to live in the Unites States, but as adoptive children to live with new parents who were born in the United States, of the dominant culture.  This subject interests me so much because of the apparent “disposability” of Chinese female infants. On a personal level, our family has a lovely new member who happens to have been born in China. Being a Chinese-American female with dual cultural identity is challenging and, hopefully, liberating to women who would be treated as second class citizens or as simply a disposable person.  I do not intend to explore why the Chinese culture behaves in this manner, but rather how two Chinese-American women have adapted to dual identity through their narratives and what it entails to adopt a little Chinese girl into a family in the United States. My husband’s cousin and his wife, Ken and Lisa, have adopted a beautiful little girl, Caroline, from China.  An interview with them proved fascinating as well as inspirational. Studying the stories of Tan and Kingston can help us to understand the difficulties associated with growing up female in China as well as the strength necessary to adapt to a dual cultural identity in the United States as the second generation.  The reasons why this adoption procedure is becoming more prevalent in the United States becomes evident through the interview with Ken and Lisa. 

            Amy Tan is arguably the most popular Chinese-American writer.  Her novels were perhaps the first to bring the struggles and experiences of an Asian American woman to an American majority audience.  Her work tends to focus on the problems experienced by Chinese immigrants and demonstrate the complexity relating to preserving a dual cultural identity.  Usually, she demonstrates the conflicts experienced between first and second generation immigrants, mother and daughter, as in Joy Luck Club.  The mothers’ stories describe the life left behind in China, depicting systems and social rules imposed on Chinese women through a patriarchal society. Even though the mothers see the faults in such a society, they still wish to teach these traditional values to their daughters, as part of their rightful heritage.  As first generation immigrants, the mothers grapple with culture shock in a new land.  The conflict arises between the generations when the daughters strive to assimilate into the American culture, sometimes even changing their “look” to appear more like the dominant culture.  The mothers simply do not understand what issues the daughters face in their dual cultural identity lives.  At the end of the story, the daughter has an epiphany when she realizes that “[a]nd now I also see what part of me is Chinese.  It is so obvious.  It is my family.  It is our blood”(Tan 331).

            Maxine Hong Kingston is another example of a successful Chinese-American writer, bringing out cultural issues for all to read about.  However, she differs in her presentation of cultural dilemmas.  In her novel, Tripmaster Monkey: His Fake book, Kingston combines her Chinese experience combined with traditional Chinese mythology to create her story.  In her novel, “Kingston defiantly asserts the idea of transformation of identity through assimilation”(Zeng 10).  Zeng goes on to argue the obvious, that Kingston believes it is simply not possible, for physical reasons, for the Chinese American to blend into the dominant culture of the United States. However, Kingston feels resolution will only occur when the citizens of the United States rejoice in the idea of the oneness of the people in our multicultural country.  In her novel, her character states, “[w]e need to be part of the daily love life of the country, to be shown and loved continuously until we’re not inscrutable at all”(Kingston 310).  However, Ms. Kingston is not without her critics.  In her article, Patricia Linton notes that Kingston’s “narratives appropriates the lives of real people, the facts of history, the tales of another culture, and makes them tell the American story she needs to hear,” falsifying the original story.  She goes on to relate:

After the publication of Kingston’s first book, Zhang Yajie, a visiting professor from the People’s Republic of China, expressed reservations about the ways old stories had been altered . . .Chinese in origin but not really Chinese anymore; she was distressed by some of Kingston’s depictions of the Chinese, which  offended her sense of national pride as well as her idea of personal discretion. (2)

            Regardless of whether critics love or hate Amy Tan and Maxine Hong Kingston, their writings clearly educate the American dominant culture on the difficulties of being female, having dual cultural identities and dealing with the dominant culture in the United States.  I have to wonder what additional difficulties as well as advantages will be encountered by the Chinese American children, mostly girls, who are being adopted into American families during the twenty-first century.  China began allowing foreign adoption in 1993, and there were over 20,000 adoptions completed by the year 2000.  Approximately 95% of the children adopted are girls.  The sad reality is that Chinese infant girls are viewed as a burden to their families and are often abandoned to live in orphanages, or worse.  Apparently, for American adoptive families, this is actually a plus.  Children are generally not abandoned because of the mother being a drug or alcohol addict, which could possibly increase the likelihood of behavior problems in an adoptive child.

            On April 1, 2006 I interviewed our family members, Ken and Lisa, about their collective Chinese adoption experience with their daughter, Caroline.  Caroline was ten months old when they went to China, with a group of prospective adoptive parents for the explicit reason of picking up their new family members.  Caroline was abandoned and left in a field just outside of a town.  The first picture they saw of her had “boy” written on her pants, possibly in hopes of getting her adopted faster.  The journey to China to meet Caroline had been a long and complicated one.  It took approximately 14 months from the point of application until Ken and Lisa held Caroline in their arms.  They had to fill out reams of paper work, including financial statements, background criminal checks, doctor’s physical exams for potential parents, photos of parents and photos of their “family life.” They were visited numerous times by a social worker who was employed by the Chinese adoption agency.  Ken and Lisa have three sons biologically, and they all were interviewed as a family as well as each member alone.  The youngest son, Cameron, was asked what he would do if his new sister took some of his toys and he replied, “well I would have to spank her!” much to the horror of his mother.  However, apparently the social worker approved them anyway.

            Approval is only the beginning of the adoption journey.  They traveled to China with entire nuclear family groups.  They go in groups because it reduces travel costs such as only having one translator and other guide costs.  Lisa said that having the support and sharing in the excitement with the other parents was invaluable.  They even have their own web site that can be visited at http://www.thestoryofyou.net.  The families were allowed time to be tourists and learn about China for the sake of their adoptive children.  The excitement of finally holding Caroline for the first time was a defining bonding moment for the entire family, in an unfamiliar land. 

            Today, the family is a happy one, and Caroline is a beautiful toddler who is an absolute delight to behold.  Her new family is committed to helping her retain her dual cultural identity.  Through studying the lives and works of Amy Tan and Maxine Hong Kingston it is obvious the hurdles the Chinese American female must navigate with their birth parents intact.  Only the future will tell the difficulties and advantages Caroline will encounter as she enters adolescence and on into adulthood.  One thing is for sure, the love of her family will be a strong and nurturing place for her to call her own, regardless of her integrated cultural identity.  Since Caroline will not remember being born in China, will she have the immigrant characteristics of a first or second generation immigrant?   What questions will arise within her as she reaches adulthood concerning who she actually is since she is not only adopted, but originally from the other side of the world?  Only time will tell, and I look forward to watching this young lady make her own way in life.

 Works Cited

Kingston, Maxine Hong.  Tripmaster Monkey:  His Fake Book.  New York:  Vintage Books.  1990.

Linton, Patricia.  “What Stories the Wind Would Tell:  Representation and Appropriation In Maxine Hong Kingston’s China Men.”  Melus 4 (1994) 1-7.

Tan, Amy.  The Joy Luck Club.  New York:  Ivy Books.  1991.

Sharpless, Ken and Lisa.  Interviewed in Brenham, Texas.  April 1. 2006.

Zing, Li.  “Diasporic Self, Cultural Other:  Negotiating Ethnicity through Transformation in the Fiction of Tan and Kingston.” Literature and Language.  XXVIII (2003). 1-14.

[JLS]