470 Making It New: 1900–1945find it difficult to reconcile them with her attempts, and her need, to assimilate into
American society. As Wong describes it, she never really resolved this dilemma. Part
of her was drawn to traditional Chinese life: to its emphasis on the family, the
imperatives of heritage, to inherited customs and rituals. And part of her was eager,
even desperate, for acceptance into white society and ready to adopt white habits of
thought and belief. The ambivalence of her position, her sense of herself, was
caught, not only in her book, but also how Wong came to write it. She was
encouraged to write her story by a white publisher who wanted the voice of this
second-generation immigrant, and by extension the voice of Chinese-Americans, to
be heard. But the part played by the publisher was interventionist, to say the least:
Wong was advised what to include, her manuscript was extensively edited to make
it supposedly more palatable to white audiences, and two-thirds of it were cut. In
terms of its literary production, as well as its content, Fifth Chinese Daughter is a
formative document, confirming what was to be a presiding theme of Chinese-
American, as of so much immigrant, literature – the condition, and sometimes the
curse, of living more than one history.
Japanese people began emigrating to the United States in significant numbers in
the 1880s, Koreans at the end of the nineteenth century, and Filipinos from about- Although the majority of immigrants from these Asian-American groups
tended to be single men, quite a few were married and brought their wives with
them: with the result that a second generation born in the United States – called nisei
among the Japanese – appeared earlier than it did among the Chinese. Here, the
formative writers in the earlier part of the twentieth century, respective to the
different cultural groups, were Etsu Sugimoto (1873–1950), Younghill Kang
(1903–1972), and Carlos Bulosan (1917–1956). Etsu Sugimoto wrote what was
possibly the first of a substantial amount of nisei writing that appeared in the 1920s
and 1930s, an autobiographical novel titled A Daughter of the Samurai (1925). True
to the rich mixture of cultural influences at work in these texts, the book juxtaposes
the American life of its author with portraits of Japan that are both actual and
fictional. Sugimoto has been called an ambassador of goodwill, writing to promote
understanding and appreciation of Japanese-Americans; and she combines a mostly
favorable portrait of Japanese life with a gracious, complimentary account of
America. Delicately blending the real and the imagined, and the ancient Eastern
world and the newer Western one, she does allow herself criticism, however veiled,
of the feudal traditions of Japan, particularly in relation to the treatment of women.
But the general tenor of the narrative is positive, as she tries to build a bridge between
cultures and between the generations among her own special community.
Younghill Kang was born in Korea, educated first in the Confucian tradition and
then in Christian mission schools, and emigrated to the United States in 1921.
Unlike Sugimoto, who tended to see herself as a guest in the United States, Kang
desperately desired acceptance and to make America his home. Describing himself
as self-educated, Kang read English and American classic literature voraciously, and
attended classes at Harvard and Boston universities while working to support
himself. With the help of his American wife, he began writing in English in 1928;
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