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Clement Sung-Jay Sun

Professor Moon-Ho Jung and Nilufer Patterson, T.A.
History of the Americas 205 AE
October 24, 2003
Lee Essay
Mary Paik Lees, Quiet Odyssey, successfully reflects all major themes present in Asian
American History. These themes include labor migration, racism, and gender. Furthermore, Lees tale
raises questions on the effectiveness of autobiographies as written histories. While her memory may
imperfect there are certain things which cannot be confused, like how most of Lees life was spent on
the move, in a family of migrant laborers.
It is incorrect to say that labor migration was a part of Mary Paik Lees life, rather it was her
life. The Paik family arrived in California with little money and was unable to communicate in
English. Asians and their American-born offspring often had little opportunity to advance themselves
in United States society even in the early twentieth century. The vast majority of Asianspovertystricken, unable to purchase land, and being uneducatedoften had no choice but labor in the fields
and mines and forests and dockyards. In the mainland of the United States, Mary and her family had
to follow the harvest seasons of various crops and market prices to decide what to plant. In California
alone, the Paiks lived in Colusa, Claremont, Roberts Island, Idria, and Willows. And even then, the
family was not always united as one household. Marys father often left the family to work in the farflung fields and Mary herself left her family to attend school in Hollister. This migrant life surely was
not imagined and was the way that thousands of Asian immigrants lived, before and after the Paiks.
Nevertheless, these people, who were good and industrious, were denied a stable existence and
forced to live the lives of nomads.

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The plight of the Asian immigrants can be traced to many things, but the greatest of all these
factors was racism. From the moment that Mary and her family arrived in America, they were
accosted by whites and cheated by laws both explicit and unsaid. Unlike many Asians in America,
Mary and her family were not broached to the rampant violence. But they saw a hatred that dwelt in
the hearts of so many of those that Mary would one day call her countrymen. Mary was verbally
abused in school when the other Caucasoid school girls symbolically decapitated her, when adult
white women called her names and when one demanded that Mary not speak to her in public.
Racism was supreme across the land and there were laws and unsaid rules which held Asian
immigrants back, Mary and her family included. These people were denied citizenship (and therefore
the right to vote), land ownership, long-term tenant farming, and were unfairly taxed. Moreover, they
were threatened with acts of violence and beaten or killed because of the color of their skin and eyes
and hair. Mary and her family faced milder forms of the above but they faced it nonetheless. And if it
did not represent the whole spectrum of the hate that Asians experienced, it did reveal it in one form
or another. Since Mrs. Lee was a woman, her story is unique in that it comes from point of view that
is enjoying normalcy only within the last few decadesfrom the female perspective.
Unlike men, Asian immigrant women were dealt a double blow by racism and gender. Not
only did they have to deal with the odium directed against the general race but they had deal with
sexism from the entire male population be it black, white, yellow, or green. This sexism was also
then compounded by racism so that there three shades of discrimination. Not only did Asian women
have to work in America, but they also needed to birth and raise children. In the Marys mothers
case, Song Kuang Do had 10 children total with eight born in America. Mary herself had three sons,
the youngest, Tony, born when Mary was extremely sick. Marys mother also had children when she
was not overly healthy as well. Mother and daughter raised the children and worked in the fields or

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the kitchens or the grocery store. Life, in general, was hard on all Asian immigrant women and it is
amazing that so many strived through it all and remained. Marys autobiography graphically brings
this hidden side of the Asian American experience back to life through the lives of herself and her
mother and it, in turn, reflects the struggle of all Asian American women whose voices have long
been silenced. Being an autobiography, some question Mrs. Lees authority on matters such as
history.
One might argue that given the pitfalls of an autobiography, they should come second to
historical texts as written by Harvard educated Historians. True it is that the human mind is not
infallible, that the warping effects of time may alter those memories which one might confuse for
another. True it is that Mary Paik Lee was no historian and lived the life of an ordinary woman. And
it is true that Sucheng Chan, esteemed Professor of History and Asian American Studies, edited the
text for historical consistency. But the underlying significance of an autobiography is not just world
events and minor pitfalls such as whose children played with whom or did not, or the correctness of
little-known mens lives, or how a rice field was irrigated. It is ideas and feelings and emotion: this is
the strength of an autobiography. Even if Mrs. Lees text was not corrected, it would still deliver the
same impact on its readers. Marys autobiography brings to the reader life as one woman saw it with
all the inconsistencies that all humans have when it comes to world knowledge. Unlike a textbook, a
story of a life can convey an experience long past lived and never again. In this, autobiographies
cannot and must not be discarded as beneath a textbook but rather as its equal, if not superior.
Ultimately, things and perceptions change, but some things never do. Today, racism and
sexism is still existent if not as visible. Even now, thousands of immigrants come to Americas shores
and face the things that Mary and her family faced almost a century ago. It cannot be denied that
Mrs. Lees quiet odyssey reflected and continues to reflect these themes of labor migration, racism,

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and gender. It is her life story and others like hers that have built and are currently building what is
known of Asian American History.