Film, Literature and Chinese American Identity

Seminar paper from the year 2004 in the subject American Studies - Culture and Applied Geography, grade: 2, University of Tubingen, language: English, abstract: simplistic interpretation of a very limited number of works. The claims I will make in the following are all based on my personal observations of the works in question. Since this is supposed to be a rather brief term paper, I will not be able to prevent myself from essentializing the people I talk about. When I speak of Americans or whites, I do not, at any rate, mean everyone living in America whose skin is white but everyone who has bought into the media’s portrayal of Chinese Americans and the stereotypes existing in America, in other words, everyone believing in a white supremacist ideology. Likewise, when I speak of Chinese Americans, I do not mean all Chinese Americans reunited but a certain part of the Chinese American population who will react in the way I describe. All this does not take into consideration the more and more complex composition of Chinese America. Some of what I will claim applies to other minorities, as well, especially to other groups of Asian heritage that have united with Chinese Americans under the umbrella term Asian Americans. This term, coined by the late Japanese American scholar Yuji Ichioka, homogenizes various groups of different Asian descent and does not take into account their respective historical, cultural, political or other background. They have united in order to fight for certain clearly defined political issues that concern all of them, such as anti-Asian violence, racism, etc. White supremacists are probably unaware of this political coalition anyways, due to their racist view that all Asians are alike.