Although food can be considered one of the cultural markers that reflects one’s ethnic or cultural orientation, its connection with Chinese American literature has not received the critical attention it deserves. However, with the introduction of Jade Snow Wong's representation of food in her search for identity in Fifth Chinese Daughter, it is hoped that new insights will be found like how food binds her family ties, and how it stimulates her quest for identity. This chapter explores the authenticity of Chinese American identity through the exploration of the interrelation of food and identity. It investigates how American-born generation of Asian descent understand their identity and hybrid heritage through culinary practices that they adopt
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When published in 1945 as essays in different magazines, it attracted much attention to Asian American literary scholarship. However, these essays which formed the twenty-eight chapters published as a memoir in 1950. In the same year, after it was chosen to be the Book of the Month Club, it was translated to more than one language. Many critics like, Sau-Ling Cynthia Wong, Karen Su, Elaine H. Kim, Leslie Bow, and others who considered the novel a “valuable document of Asian American social history”, praised the novel for demonstrating a “middle ground that reconciles two modes of living”. They assert that “Fifth Chinese Daughter, nevertheless, helped prepare the path toward a new, self-assertive Asian American consciousness by hinting at discrepancies and incongruities within the dominant discourses of the late 1940s and early 1950s” (Piep, …show more content…
Raised as the fifth daughter in her Chinese family and as a Chinese American in the American society, Jade Snow displays little confusion about her identity as a second-generation Chinese American female, with Chinese parents who are still reminiscent of their days in China. Her twofold struggle is mainly between her patriarchal binds to her ancestral Chinese heritage and her current life within American mainstream
When published in 1945 as essays in different magazines, it attracted much attention to Asian American literary scholarship. However, these essays which formed the twenty-eight chapters published as a memoir in 1950. In the same year, after it was chosen to be the Book of the Month Club, it was translated to more than one language. Many critics like, Sau-Ling Cynthia Wong, Karen Su, Elaine H. Kim, Leslie Bow, and others who considered the novel a “valuable document of Asian American social history”, praised the novel for demonstrating a “middle ground that reconciles two modes of living”. They assert that “Fifth Chinese Daughter, nevertheless, helped prepare the path toward a new, self-assertive Asian American consciousness by hinting at discrepancies and incongruities within the dominant discourses of the late 1940s and early 1950s” (Piep, …show more content…
Raised as the fifth daughter in her Chinese family and as a Chinese American in the American society, Jade Snow displays little confusion about her identity as a second-generation Chinese American female, with Chinese parents who are still reminiscent of their days in China. Her twofold struggle is mainly between her patriarchal binds to her ancestral Chinese heritage and her current life within American mainstream