Between the “Mountain of Tang” and the “Adopted Land”: The Chinese American Periodical Press and the Emergence of Chinese American Identities in the Face of Exclusion

Abstract

Ethnic, racial, and. national identities are now generally accepted as social constructions. These identities, moreover, are not static, but often shift, especially among immigrant populations, depending on how much time they spend in their adopted countries and the changing sociopolitical conditions in their home country. Using a sample of writings produced by Chinese immigrants and American-born Chinese Americans, published primarily in the Chinese American periodical press, this essay will offer some observations of how the identities of Chinese Americans evolved and developed over time, during what is generally called the “age of exclusion,” from 1882 to 1943. These examples will demonstrate that these individual and group identities did not develop in a linear, strictly chronological fashion, but were shifting, overlapping, and, at times, in conflict with one another. The Chinese immigrant population was prevented by law from becoming naturalized citizens and was thus caught between shifting loyalties for the land of their birth and the country to which they had immigrated. Second-generation Chinese Americans, however, though American by birth, were often denied the acceptance they sought by white Americans, who saw them as perpetually foreign.