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"What Stories the Wind Would Tell": Representation and Appropriation in Maxine Hong

Kingston's China Men


Author(s): Patricia Linton
Source: MELUS, Vol. 19, No. 4, Ethnic Women Writers VI (Winter, 1994), pp. 37-48
Published by: The Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States
(MELUS)
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/468201
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"What Stories the Wind Would Tell":
Representation and Appropriation in Maxine
Hong Kingston's China Men
Patricia Linton
UniversityofAlaska,Anchorage
At the end of The WomanWarrior,Maxine Hong Kingston tells the
story of Ts'ai Yen, a poetess born in 175 A.D., who was captured by
barbarians and lived among them for twelve years. Ts'ai Yen made
the yearning notes of the barbarian flutes the basis of her own songs.
The words of these songs seemed to be Chinese, but the barbarians
understood their anger and sadness and thought they could catch
barbarian phrases. One song that she eventually brought back to her
own people was "Eighteen Stanzas for a Barbarian Reed Pipe," a
song that the Chinese now sing to their own instruments. The novel
ends with the comment "It translated well" (209).
But whose song is it? Ts'ai Yen made the barbarian music her own.
The barbarians thought they heard, in an alien language, snatches of
their own experience. The Chinese have adapted to their own instru-
ments music composed for a barbarian pipe. The song is the product
of alienation and exile; it is to some extent the song of the Other. Yet
each culture takes it (mistakes it, appropriates it) for its own.
The story with which Kingston ends The WomanWarrioris a model
for the process of appropriation, which becomes both theme and
method in China Men. At the core of the book (which, like The Woman
Warrior,is a mix of autobiography, fiction, history, and myth) is the
fact of alienation and an effort at reclamation that takes place on two
levels, the individual and the social. The female narrator of China
Men wants to reclaim her father, whose habitual silence is punctuated
with violent curses, directed against women:
What I want from you is for you to tell me that those curses are only com-
mon Chinese sayings. That you did not mean to make me sicken at being
female. "Those were only sayings," I want you to say to me. "I didn't
mean you or your mother. I didn't mean your sisters or grandmothers or
women in general ..." I'll tell you what I suppose from your silences and
few words, and you can tell me that I'm mistaken. You'll just have to
speak up with the real stories if I've got you wrong. (14-15)
MELUS, Volume 19, Number 4 (Winter 1994)
38 PATRICIALINTON

On the other hand, the narratoralso wants to claim America for


her Chinese-American countrymen, descendants of the men who
cleared rainforests for sugar cane and blasted mountains to lay
track-"the binding and building ancestorsof this place" (146).
These two social objectives are in fact related. As Carol E.
Neubauer points out, both TheWomanWarriorand ChinaMeninvolve
self-creationbecause so much of the actual family history is undocu-
mented or fraughtwith contradiction,but ChinaMenalso involves "a
process of self-justification" (26). Kingston's narratorrecounts the
lives of men shaped by a culture which has traditionally underval-
ued women, yet configures those lives to demonstratethat "Chinese
women are vital to culturalstability"(Neubauer26). If in TheWoman
WarriorKingston takes "vengeance againstthe family by expressing
her rage," in China Men she is "the woman warrior who takes
vengeancefor the family by reportingthe vicious racismher male rel-
atives combatted in America and the uncredited contributionsthey
made to building this country" (Rabine 476-77). She not only
"rereadsthe past,"but by the very act of telling attemptsto "reshape
the future"(Ordonez 19). Kingstondemands for Chinese-Americans
recognitionas founding fathers:
When I say I am a native Americanwith all the rights of an American,
I am saying, "No, we're not outsiders;we Chinesebelong here. This is
our country,this is our history,we are a part of America.If it weren't
for us, Americawould be a differentplace."(Yalom16)

Kingston may be writing on behalf of her family and the Chinese-


Americancommunity,but she is also writing to the broaderculture,to
Americansin general:"Iwrite for everybody living today and people
in the future; that's my audience, for generations" (Yalom16).1She
wants to substitutestories of "GoldMountainheroes"2for stereotypi-
cal Americanimages of the Chinese-the evil Fu Manchu,the wily but
buffoonish CharlieChan (AlfredWang 19), the lone Chinese cook in
Bonanza,the laundrymanin BretHarte, the more generalized stereo-
type of the inscrutableOriental(VeronicaWang31). Kingstonintends
the book to replace the "selective tradition"of the dominant culture
(Williams383)with a heroictraditionof her own making,one in which
Chinese-Americansareno longer marginalized.By the time she reach-
es the last majorchapterof ChinaMen, "TheBrotherin Vietnam,"the
family seems so "normal,"its centerso clearlyin Americaratherthan
Asia, that the brotherreceivesa top-securityclearance(Cheng68).
To accomplish her purpose, Kingston uses exactly the methods
that her ancestors used: "In my father-book, ChinaMen, I used the
REPRESENTATION IN CHINAMEN
AND APPROPRIATION 39

very techniques that the men developed over a hundred years. They
made themselves citizens of this country by telling American ver-
sions of their lives" (Kingston"Imagined"563).The would-be immi-
grants borrowed or forged facsimiles of the papers of China men
who had travelled to America before them; they memorized and re-
told the stories immigration officials would accept. Kingston asserts
that the world of ChinaMen is "anon-fictionworld because I actually
heard people tell its stories with fervor.I feel as if I have direct con-
tact with that non-fiction world's energy source"(Thompson4). But
she acknowledges that she "translat[es]from inside the people she
[writes]about"(Kim92). She borrowsmyths and adapts Chinese folk
legends to create American stories. As Linda Ching Sledge notes:
"These are not definitive, 'pure' myths in the textual sense but are
consciously contrived literary imitations that may be ironic ana-
logues of western tales or variations of folk tales" (7). In short,
Kingston'snarrativeappropriatesthe lives of real people, the facts of
history, the tales of another culture, and makes them tell the Ameri-
can story she needs to hear.
The term "appropriation"has a negative cast: it suggests acquisi-
tiveness, manipulation. Not all readers have been willing to license
Kingston's strategies, whatever their social objectives.Because both
TheWomanWarriorand ChinaMenwere published as non-fiction,the
question of genre has been raised repeatedly (see, for example,
Sledge 3-4 and Wu 85-86).If these stories are not fiction,they may of-
fer glimpses of the personal lives of real people. Some of Kingston's
relatives have been disturbed by her revealing "family secrets"
(Yalom14). ElaineH. Kim notes that because of her status as a canon-
ized author, Kingston's writing has become "a crucible for Asian
American issues" (79). Some male Asian American writers, notably
FrankChin, have challenged the feminist content of her work, refer-
ring to her as a "yellow agent of stereotype"who "falsifies Chinese
history" and "vilifies Chinese manhood" (1989 lecture qtd. in Kim
76). Chin argues that it is importantfor issues of gender to be subor-
dinated to racialand ethnic concerns:
Noting that "white people never did have the eyes to see through
fake,"Chin has called for "harshand knowledgeable"Asian American
critics to "police the differencebetween the real and the fake" in the
name of preserving Asian American cultural integrity. He accuses
Amy Tanand MaxineHong Kingstonof exaggeratingChinese patriar-
chal attitudes and practices by deliberately misrepresentingChinese
history and legends, the "racist"effect of which is to reinforcethe no-
tion that Chinese society is more misogynistic than and thereforeinfe-
rior to Westerncivilization. (Kim77)
40 PATRICIALINTON

After the publicationof Kingston'sfirstbook, ZhangYa-jie,a visit-


ing professorfrom the People's Republicof China,expressedreserva-
tions about the ways old stories had been altered:"somewhattwist-
ed, Chinese perhaps in origin but not really Chinese any more";she
was distressed by some of Kingston's depictions of the Chinese,
which "offended my sense of national pride as well as my idea of
personal discretion"(103).Similarly,Qing-yun Wu, in her discussion
of ChinaMen,comments that she found Kingston's"boldrewritingof
some Chinese tales to be disturbing"(87);the pleasureof recognition
coincided with uneasiness about loss or distortion of their Chinese
significance. Clearly,a variety of readers who for one reason or an-
other feel implicated in Kingston'swork find that it fails to represent
them or their culturalhistory accurately.
Thus, Kingston'swork also stands at the center of a broad theoret-
ical concern-the interrelatedissues of representationand appropria-
tion. Building upon Michel Foucault'sanalysis of discourses as "ob-
jects of appropriation" (148), Robert Weimann has shown that the
concept of appropriationprovides a useful frameworkfor discussing
the "shifting conglomerate of social energies and conflicting inter-
ests" which drives the activities of both writers and readers (92). In
order to "represent,"writers appropriatethe world they write about,
make it their property,and exercisepower over it in ways that reflect
their own social and political interests.Readers,in turn, appropriate
the text and the cultural world in the text. Moreover,appropriation
actually involves even more than self-projectionand assimilation;in
making certain things their own, writers and readers make other
things (and persons) alien (Weimann 94-95). In Kingston's case,
claiming authenticityas "real"Americansfor the Gold Mountainhe-
roes-for herself and other Chinese-Americans(and by implication
for members of other immigrantgroups who have remainedmargin-
al)-has the corollary effect of rendering her Chinese heritage alien
and placing her authenticityas a "real"Chinese person in question.
Weimannargues that theories of representationand appropriation
must be tied to particularperiods of literaryhistory,because the ex-
tent to which representationis possible, or assumed to be possible by
writers and readers,is differentat differentpoints in history.In other
words, the relationship between the appropriatingwriter or reader
and his or her property is not fixed, but allows for differentlevels of
identificationas well as differentdegrees of "distance,alienation,and
reification" (Weimann 94). For the early epic poets, for example,
"ownership"of the text and the world in the text was less markedbe-
cause both the subject and the literary product were communal,
shared property.But as the "givenness of cultural materials,literary
REPRESENTATIONAND APPROPRIATIONIN CHINAMEN 41

conventions and traditions," and modes of literary production


changed, representationbecame more problematical(96).
In fact, in modern narrative,the struggle for representationseems
to be predicated upon a loss of engagement between the self and the
social milieu. In order to have confidence in one's ability to represent
a culture or a community,a writer or readermust be an insider.But as
some of the responses to Kingston's writing demonstrate, to repre-
sent any other person3is to risk the social and ethical dilemmas in-
herent in appropriation.If Kingston's work can seem alien to an in-
formed Chinese reader,foreign to many Americanreaders,and false
to a male Chinese-Americanwriter,then where is its home ground?
Weimannshows that modern narrativeshave increasinglyturned
the "crisisof representation"into a theme-a radicallynegative ver-
sion of the theme of appropriation(100). In the work of writers like
Flaubertand James,charactersbecome aware of and disturbedby the
impossibility of representingwithout appropriating.By the time of
high modernism, the economy of a writer like Hemingway could be
associatedwith an uneasy awarenessof the problemof representation
and resistance to the tendency of texts to appropriate.Accordingly,
Weimann examines A Farewellto Arms in terms of its assertion that
"only the names of places" had "dignity"-presumably, "a simple,
unbroken sense of continuity between signifier and signified" (104).
In other words, in high modem narrative,the failureof texts to repre-
sent without betrayalbecomes explicitly,and ironically,the subjectof
representation.
In Kingston's postmodern writing, however, there seems to be lit-
tle of the regret Weimannfinds in earlier fiction associated with the
precariousness of representation.ChinaMen does not challenge the
inevitability of appropriation;on the contrary,the only way to avoid
appropriatingthe lives and the language of others is to remainsilent.
But in ChinaMen silence is always distressing;neithercharacters,nor
communities, nor even landscapes are allowed to rest until speech
has been teased out of them. The narrationproceeds by accretionun-
til it has succeeded in telling the story that its narratorwants to hear.
Even when speech exacts a terribleprice, it is valorized. In China
Men, the very short mythic interpolationentitled "OnMortality"re-
counts the story of TuTzu-chun,who was tested by a Taoistimmortal:
"All that you'll see and feel will be illusions. No matter what hap-
pens, don't speak;don't scream.Rememberthe saying 'Hide your bro-
ken arms in your sleeves."'
"How easy,"said Tu.... "Whyshould I screamif I know they'reil-
lusions?"(ChinaMen 120)
42 PATRICIALINTON

He suffers a series of agonizing tortures, some performed on him


and some on others, without a word. Still in the world of illusion, he is
killed, judged, and condemned to be born again as a deaf-mute
woman. In this incarnation, Tu is threatened by an impatient husband:
"You'rejust being stubborn,"he said, and lifted their child by the
feet. "Talk,or I'll dash its head against the rocks."The poor mother
held her hand to her mouth. Lu swung the child,brokeits head against
the wall.
Tu shouted out, "Oh!Oh!"-and he was back with the Taoist....
Now that Tu had brokenhis silence ... no immortalityfor the human
race. "Youovercame joy and sorrow, anger, fear, and evil desire, but
not love," said the Taoist,and went on his way. (121)

The ending of the story is particularly powerful-it is after Tu has


been reborn as a woman that he faces the most painful test. The
mother, who is physically incapable of speech, must speak if she is to
save her child. Love causes her to cry out even though it is all an illu-
sion, even though Tu has already resisted every other compelling
emotion, even though the cry is too late. And even though it costs the
human race its only chance at immortality, we know that the moth-
er's cry is the only response possible.4
In many of the chapters of ChinaMen, it is the women who speak or
prompt speech and the men who remain silent. Similarly, women and
men are frequently placed at opposite poles in the other major theme:
exile and return. But the thematic threads which bind the various seg-
ments of the book together have in common the issue of appropria-
tion. Typically men appropriate by marking the land, by building and
planting; women appropriate by means of language, by naming and
telling stories. The two themes come together most clearly in the
chapter entitled "The Great Grandfather of the Sandalwood Moun-
tains," which focuses on the great grandfather who does both.
Like each of the other major chapters, this one begins with the fe-
male first-person narrator recounting what seems to be autobiogra-
phy, then ranging into the past. It is difficult at first to connect the
short fragments which open the chapter with the bulk of the great
grandfather's story; at first glance they have nothing in common ex-
cept a setting in Hawaii. But the question of silence and speech
emerges from the sketches which open the chapter in ways that es-
tablish a context for the central narrative. In the first section, the nar-
rator tells about sending money for a bicycle to a "black" cousin in
China, the grandson of a Hawaiian woman who had returned to Chi-
na with her sojourner husband. To return with a "Sandalwood
Mountain wife" was unusual: "The king and queen of the Sandal-
REPRESENTATION IN CHINAMEN
AND APPROPRIATION 43

wood Mountainshad ruled that a ChinaMan who marrieda Hawai-


ian would be called Hawaiian, and many another Pake godfather
stayed" (118). Even after three generations, the "black"cousin and
uncle are still marked as outsiders. The money sent to the cousin
prompts an angry letter from the uncle, who wants a bicycle of his
own. The narratordoesn't send any more money, but comments: "I
am glad to see that the black grandmotherended up with a son and a
grandson who are articulate.When she came to China she 'jabbered
like a monkey,' but no one answered her. Who knows what she was
saying anyway? She fell mute" (86).
Fromthe Chinese point of view, the Hawaiianwoman-transport-
ed to an alien country where no one understood her language-jab-
bered like a monkey. Eventually she fell silent. But the narrator(in
spite of the uncle's blusteringattemptto intimidateher,in spite of the
gap in circumstances and sensibilities between the Chinese on the
other side of the world and the Chinese-Americans)notes approving-
ly that the Hawaiian woman's son and grandson are articulate-the
evidence of their articulateness,their ability to make demands. The
vignette reverses the historicalpatterns of immigrationin most Chi-
nese-American families; overall, relatively few Chinese workers in
America took wives back to China,and workers in Hawaii who mar-
ried Hawaiian women generally remained there (Tsai 28-32). The
point is that any immigrant,exiled in a foreign land, is effectively si-
lenced. The newcomer may "jabber"but no one hears, and the risk is
that he or she will give up and fall silent. A willingness to make de-
mands, even unreasonableones, is betterthan abjectsilence.
Later in the chapter is an account of the narrator'sexperience on
an island named Chinaman'sHat, located off the coast of O'ahu. The
narratorhas been standing at the edge of the sugarcanefields, listen-
ing for the "voices of the greatgrandfathers,"tracesof the 18,000Chi-
nese laborerswho were brought to Hawaii between 1850 and 1885to
clear fields and plant cane (Tsai28-29).But thereis only silence: "The
cane is merely green in the sunlight; the tassels waving in the wind
make no blurry fuzzy outlines that I can construe as a message from
them.... The winds blowing in the long leaves do not whisper words
I hear" (88).
The name of the island is offensive: "Ihad a shock when I heard it
... Chinaman's Hat. I had only encountered that slurred-together
word in taunts when walking past racists"(88). The name estranges
her-in this narrative, unlike Hemingway's, not even the place
names can be relied upon to have "dignity."But afterspending a day
on the island, she hears the "voice"of the land itself, and she is en-
couraged to listen again for the voices of her forefathers.
44 PATRICIALINTON

A howling like wolves, like singing, came rising out of the island....
It was, I know it, the island, the voice of the island singing, the sirens
Odysseus heard.... The land sings. Weheard something.It'sa tributeto
the pioneers to have a living island named aftertheirwork hat.
I have heard the land sing. I have seen the bright blue streaks of
spirits whisking throughthe air.I again searchfor my Americanances-
tors by listening in the cane. (90)

The speaking of the land itself (along with the narrative voice that
recounts the tale) has redeemed the offensive name of the island-it
is no longer a racist slur but a tribute. Retelling provides a way to
change received meaning, to force the slippage of the signifier.
Bakhtin asserts: "It is naive to suppose that one can assimilate as
one's own an external speech that runs counter to one's inner speech,
that is, runs counter to one's whole inner verbal manner of being
aware of oneself and the world" (408). Nevertheless, what one can do
is to appropriate external speech, the discourse of the Other, and alter
its significance.
Bak Goong, the great grandfather, is gifted with language; he has a
good ear for alien dialects and even for barbarian speech. "If anyone
talked long enough in a foreign language and he heard enough, he
understood" (113). Therefore, the rule that the Chinese laborers can-
not speak while working on the plantations is especially onerous to
him: "How was he to marvel adequately, voiceless? He needed to
cast his voice out to catch ideas.... He suddenly had all kinds of
things to say" (100). He attempts in a variety of ways to subvert the
oppressive control exerted by the white overseers: he tries ignoring
the ban and is fined; he tries singing his comments and is whipped.
Finally he learns to use his coughing to expel what is inside him:
When the demons howled to work faster,faster,he coughed in reply.
The deep, long, loud coughs, barking and wheezing, were almost as
satisfying as shouting. He let out scolds disguised as coughs.... All
Chinese words conveniently a syllable each, he said "Get-that-
horse-dust-away-from-me-you-dead-white-demon.
Don't-stare-at-me-with-those-glass-eyes. I-can't-take-
this-life." He felt betterafterhaving his say.He did not even mind the
despair,which dispelled upon his speakingit. (104)
Bak Goong learns to curse in coughs; he becomes a talk addict
(110). He supports the other men with his talk story, adapting a folk
tale about an ancient Chinese trickster in order to make fun of the
missionary ladies who speak "well-intoned" but "disincarnated"
Cantonese, peeking in their little black phrase books to see what to
REPRESENTATIONAND APPROPRIATIONIN CHINAMEN 45

say next. Eventually, when all the men become weakened and
fevered, he diagnoses their illness: "Itis a congestion from not talk-
ing. What we have to do is talk and talk"(115).
The account of Bak Goong culminates in a complex and powerful
metaphor that demonstrates how people appropriate the land, mak-
ing it so completely their own that the land itself tells their story. He
"talked an apt story to the silenced men, who had heard it already in
the long ago place where there had been mothers and children" (116).
The story concerns a king with a secret-his son has cat's ears. Years
go by, and when the king cannot contain his secret any more, he
shouts it into a hole in the ground, buries it. But when the grass
grows over the spot and the wind blows through it, the wind carries
the words in a song and everybody hears it. The day after Bak Goong
has reminded them of this tale, the China men plow a circle in the
ground:
"Theythrew down their tools and flopped on the ground with their
faces over the edge of the hole and theirlegs like wheel spokes.... They
had dug an ear into the world, and were telling the earththeir secrets.
"I want home," Bak Goong yelled, pressed against the soil, and
smelling the earth."Iwant my home,"the men yelled together."Iwant
home. Home. Home. Home. Home."
Talkedout, they buried their words, planted them.... Soon the new
green shoots would rise, and when in two years the cane grew gold
tassels, what stories the wind would tell. (117-18)

Just as the wind blowing through the field where the king had plant-
ed his secret spread the news throughout the land, the wind blowing
through the sugarcane will carry the words of the China men. Once the
men have planted their secrets and their longings in the Hawaiian soil,
they have made it theirs; eventually it will tell their own stories. They
have become American forefathers. "That wasn't a custom," com-
ments Bak Goong. "We made it up. We can make up customs because
we're the founding ancestors of this place" (118). The assertiveness of
the men is effective: the demons seem to be intimidated by their be-
havior. It emancipates Bak Goong and perhaps the other men as well
from some of the most insulting work rules: "Fromthe day of the shout
party, Bak Goong talked and sang at his work, and did not get sent to
the punishment fields. In cutting season, the demons no longer accom-
panied the knife-wielding China Men into deep cane" (118).
Much of what the men have to say when they shout into the hole
in the ground has to do with women-not only the women they left
behind but also the women they have encountered in the new land:
46 PATRICIALINTON

"Imiss you." "Whatare you doing rightnow?"...


"I'vebeen working hard for you, and I hate it.... "
They said any kind of thing. "Blonde demoness." "Polynesian
demoness."
"I'mcoming home by and by.""I'mnot coming home."
"I'mstaying here in the SandalwoodMountains."
"Iwant to be home," BakGoong said.
"I'mbringing her home," said BakSook Goong. (117)

The metaphor of the men planting their words in the earth is a


multi-faceted gesture of relationship; it represents both the impulse
to return and the fact of exile. It acknowledges both fidelity and infi-
delity, rootedness in the sense of being grounded in old cultural and
personal bonds and rootedness in the sense of sinking roots in the
new land. The image of the hole dug in the earth, the planting, has
sexual implications as well, evoking familiar metaphors of the "preg-
nant earth," echoing in fact an earlier reference to Bak Goong's pat-
ting the pregnant earth after seeding the cane (103).
Bak Goong's story is particularly interesting because both its
themes and its images resonate with issues raised in other sections of
the book-often in enigmatic ways. The anxieties associated with si-
lence and exile are foregrounded throughout. In the context of Bak
Goong's story, cursing is evidence of heroic defiance; the dramatic in-
tensity of Bak Goong's coughing out curses raises again the question
of what it means when the narrator's father curses women. The rep-
resentation of bonding with the land through symbolic sexual inter-
course with the earth itself is reiterated in the story of Ah Goong, the
Grandfather of the Sierra Nevada Mountains.
Finally the issue of appropriation is suggested again in the brief ac-
count of "The Hundred-Year-Old Man" near the very end of the book.
The old man, living out his days in the Palolo Chinese Home in
Hawai'i, had arrived from China in 1885, at the age of twenty-two, to
work in the sugarcane fields. He had sent half of his pay to his family
in China; with the rest he lived a modest life, a trip to town on pay day
his principal entertainment. In all those years he had left the Island of
Hawaii only twice, once to go to Maui and once to Kaua'i. "'In one
hundred and six years, what has given you the most joy?' the reporters
asked. He thought it over. He said, 'What I like best is to work in a cane
field when the young green plants are just growing up"' (306).
In some respects, this anecdote seems to be about a life that has
been appropriated, a meager existence so completely co-opted that
all the old man can remember enjoying is the labor that enslaved him.
But it is also an echo of Bak Goong's shout party, a reminder that
REPRESENTATION IN CHINAMEN
AND APPROPRIATION 47

those who have truly appropriated the land are those who have
planted their stories in it. By representingthe China men who were
"thebinding and building ancestorsof this place,"Kingstonchanges
the meaning of their stories. She appropriatesthe land in their name.
"Soon the new green shoots would rise, and when in two years the
cane grew gold tassels, what stories the wind would tell."

Notes
1. This is a point Kingston makes frequently in interviews (see also Chin 63 and
Thompson 10).
2. "Gold Mountain Heroes" was Kingston's preferred title. China Men was her
editor's selection. "Gold Mountain Heroes" appears in Chinese on the cover
and on the first page of each chapter (Sledge 22).
3. Kingston explicitly rejects the notion of being a representative Chinese-Ameri-
can or of speaking in the name of all Chinese-Americans. She makes this point
in almost every interview. For example:
I understand what happens. I met some readers who get so offended when
a white friend of theirs says, "Oh, I just read ChinaMen, and now I under-
stand you!" Nobody wants that. And then a lot of Chinese Americans get
mad, because they say my experience is nothing like theirs.... There aren't
enough books out there. If there were lots of books, then you could see the
variety of people in the books, reflecting the variety of people in life. But
since there aren't a whole lot of books ... (Chin 68; see also Yalom 12).
Because, as Kingston implies, there are not many books that address the expe-
riences of Chinese-Americans, both Chinese-Americans and other Americans
often read her as speaking for the whole community.
4. Kingston has said, "All the mythology in China Men is from what the Chinese
call the small tradition, not the great literary traditions, but those of lower class
people. When I write, I think of them in the language of the peasants of one
particular village, and that language has not been written down. I write about
illiterate people whose language has not even been Romanized. So it's a matter
of starting with a language that has no writing and yet writing about people
who talk-story in that language" (Yalom 12-13).

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