Immigrant Identity and Citizenship of Chinese American

Both Transnational America by Grewal and Kaplan, and Toby Miller's What is Cultural Citizenship? talk about how identity can be shaped not only by geography, but also by culture. While geopolitics is certainly an important factor in determining what a person is, culture more often is the causal factor of who we are. Say for example, as a Hong Kong-er, I can very easily distinguish a Korean from a Japanese, not because of the way they look or the citizenship they hold, but from the way they act - the cultural upbringings and our backgrounds almost always tell more than the place we live in.

While reading these two chapters, I can't help but relate to the movie Joy Luck Club. Perhaps because I am a Hong Kong-er, I have a great degree of emotional attachment to this movie and I felt that this movie speaks to a lot of the issues mentioned in the readings. Joy Luck Club is told from the narrative of Jing Mei, the daughter of a Chinese woman who immigrated to America in the 50s. As her mother died, Jing Mei, through talking with her mother's friend (who are also Chinese immigrants), explored her identity as a Chinese American. Born and raised in the United States, Jing Mei does not know how to speak Chinese, nor has she ever considered herself a Chinese, until she finds out more about her mother from old letters and her mother's old friends. Ultimately, Jing Mei goes on a journey to China and look for her heritage and identity. Throughout the movie, the four characters express a sense of anxiety over their cultural identities, most deny their Chinese heritage with their American surroundings. The mothers of the four daughters also show a sense of fear, as to how America has changed them throughout the year.

More interestingly, Joy Luck Club is narrated solely from a feminist perspective. The four daughters, in parallel to their mothers, provide a framework for us to study governmentality and citizenship beyond ethnic terms. As Grewal and Kaplan conclude in the chapter, it is hard to remain objective to the issue of citizenship. Therefore, I found the ending of Joy Luck Club particularly thought-provoking:

There is no such thing as a pure state of being Chinese, a pure state of being American; all individuals are amalgams of their unique tastes, habits, hopes, and memories. For immigrants and their families, the contrasts within this amalgam can bring particular pain as well as particular richness.