770 The American Century: Literature since 1945This does not mean, however, that in their own work writers like Chin and Wong
have been uncritical in their approach to that community. On the contrary, in both
his short story collection The Chinaman Pacific & Frisco R.R. Co. (1998) and his novel
Donald Duk (1991), Frank Chin (1940–) presents the Chinatowns of America as
oppressive internal colonies and sites of grotesque cultural behavior. Nor does it
mean that they are resistant to the need for change, active response to the challenge
of America. In his first novel, Homebase (1979), for example, Shawn Wong (1949–)
takes as his subject precisely that: the search for an American identity taken up by his
protagonist, a Chinese-American called Rainford Chan, as he travels psychically and
physically across the continent. Chinese-Americans “are on the run through America,”
the reader learns in Wong’s novel; they need a “homebase,” a point of cultural origin
to supply a stable sense of identity in a shifting world. “And today ... I do not want
just a home that time allowed to have. America must give me legends with spirit,”
Rainford Chan declares. “I take myths to name this country’s canyons, dry riverbeds,
mountains, after my father, grandfather, great-grandfather. We are old enough to
haunt this land.” The desire to “haunt” the land by naming it, possessing it through
story, is one that, despite their differences, Wong and Kingston, in fact all Chinese-
American writers share. On this, the search for a foundation narrative pieced together
out of the fragments of several histories, they can find common ground – not only
with each other, it may be, but with all those writing in and of America.
Unlike the Chinese, the Japanese had historically emigrated to America before
World War II as families. They had no equivalent of the Chinese-American bachelor
society. What Japanese-Americans had with the outbreak of war, however, was far
more dramatic and traumatic. The attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 created a mood
of national hysteria, one consequence of which was the creation of internment
camps for people of Japanese ancestry. All mainland Japanese-Americans living in
the western halves of California, Oregon, and Washington were relocated to what
were, in effect, concentration camps by another name. It was a transformational
moment, a radical displacement of humanity that became a dominant trope for
Japanese-American writers – as powerful for them as the trope of the Middle Passage
was, and remains, for African-American writers. Several Japanese-American writers
wrote highly critical retrospective narratives after the war, describing the experience
of internment. These included two notable collections of short stories, Yokohama,
California (1949) by Toshio Mori (1910–1980) and Seventeen Syllables and Other
Stories (1985) by Hisaye Yamamoto (1921–2011), and the autobiographical Nisei
Daughter (1953) by Monica Sone (1919–). The stories of Mori offer a poignant
contrast between the strong communal identity felt by Japanese-Americans during
the Depression and the disruptive, disintegrative effects of relocation. Nisei Daughter,
in turn, pursues reconciliation between Sone and her white readership, between
Japanese and other Americans, and between what Sone herself describes as “the
Japanese and American parts of me.” The book follows a relatively conventional
autobiographical pattern, beginning in childhood with many incidental details
about family life, then moving into an adulthood that includes the experiences of
internment and a visit to Japan. Sone is keen to present an accommodating image ofGGray_c05.indd 770ray_c 05 .indd 770 8 8/1/2011 7:31:44 PM/ 1 / 2011 7 : 31 : 44 PM