It wasn’t easy at that time for women, and I must imagine, even more so for a Chinese woman living in the US. So as a modern Chinese-Singaporean reading this book, it sometimes is amusing but more often it feels a bit heavy-handed and didactic.I must admire Wong’s life and her determination to be educated and find a career. And it has a rather educational tone to it, like it’s trying to teach the (presumably) white person reading it. Unlike the 2018-published Family Trust, Fifth Chinese Daughter by Jade Snow Wong was originally published in 1945, and it’s quite telling of its time, with a 73 year difference between publication of these two books.Fifth Chinese Daughter is an autobiography but is written more like a novel. It’s also a list on List Challenges if you like ticking off things online and that sort of thing.And like in Family Trust by Kathy Wang, a book I was also reading at around the same time, it’s a book set in San Francisco. It’s a group that discusses the list in the book by Erica Bauermeister. I came across this book via the 500 Great Books by Women Group on Goodreads. This new edition includes the original illustrations by Kathryn Uhl and features an introduction by Leslie Bow, who critically examines the changing reception and enduring legacy of the book and offers insight into Wong’s life as an artist and an ambassador of Chinese American culture.
It was written at a time when few portraits of Asian American life were available, and no similar works were as popular and broadly appealing. The US State Department even sent its charismatic young author on a four-month speaking tour throughout Asia.Ĭited as an influence by prominent Chinese American writers such as Amy Tan and Maxine Hong Kingston, Fifth Chinese Daughter is a foundational work in Asian American literature.
Originally published in 1950, Fifth Chinese Daughter was one of the most widely read works by an Asian American author in the twentieth century. Jade Snow Wong’s autobiography portrays her coming-of-age in San Francisco's Chinatown, offering a rich depiction of her immigrant family and her strict upbringing, as well as her rebellion against family and societal expectations for a Chinese woman.
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