Being Seen as Non-American

stereotypes toward certain Eastern races. In the case of Kay, who is physically Chinese but considered herself as a American, she needs to face American people that expect her to become like the image of Chinese the American people have in mind: meek, voiceless, and inarticulate Fei, 2010: 15,174 Kay recoiled. A middle-aged white man leaned on the bar beside her, his blue eyes traveling the length of her. In America, a contemptuous glare generally sufficed. But there was such offhandedness to this overture, such self-assurance oozing toward her, and in another second, she understood what he was, perhaps unintentionally, signaling: Not only I want you, but lucky you. She spat, “Go fuck yourself.” The guy jumped. So did everyone around her –all local women, she realized, waiting drinkless at the bar for the opportunity she’d just spat on……. …..She was studying the local women sitting, waiting, hoping, while the white men held court, taking their time, taking their pick. These women couldn’t understand how what seemed like romance, or at least mutual attraction, was shameless capitalization; or the historical context of Orientalism; or the subtext of those English ads – how, for starters, that “Handsome European male” preferred his Asian women inarticulate, if not voiceless; or how such presumptions coiled around people, until they no longer knew how their very identity had been constricted Fei, 2010 : 73. This part showed a scene when Kay was approached by White Men who wanted her at their escort. Kay, with experiences from her past, asked the men to leave. Kay’s answer made not only the men but also the women around the bar shocked. The men left but Kay understood that the women around her thought she just missed a very good chance. From the men, Kay can sense their thought of how lucky she is to be chosen by the men. From this point, Kay reflected that she just sees a real-world portrait about Orientalism, a subject that she really is attached to. She despised these women for succumbing to how Westerners portrait Asian women to be voiceless and obedient. She hated this kind of portrayal because she is a woman herself and was raised by her mother to become a woman who could speak for herself. In addition, Kay feels that this kind of portrayal has corrupted Chinese own identity. Her characteristic to stand for herself toward any unjust treatement probably was affected by Nora, her big sister. As Fei noted in Nora’s chapter in this book She’d taught Kay to curse at the neighborhood boys who pulled slanted eyes at them and called them Chinks –yes, even in New York, even in this day and age. By the time she was twelve, with Kay skipping alongside, she’d learned to hold her head high against a daily barrage of men professing lust for their Asiannes, which meant, she soon figure out, sexy, docile, and inarticulate –men on the subway and the street, in the drugstore and the library, young and old, cocky and shy, sweet-talking and foul- mouthed, men of every race but their own Fei, 2010: 15. This part clearly showed that since she was young, Kay learned to stand for herself against the stereotypical American’s lust for her “Asiannes”. She refused to become an object similar to what those people were thinking. She refused to become a voiceless Asian who succumbs to White like those that they had stereotyped. This is why in the previous part Kay refused the White men who approached her. She understood the reason of the White men looking for her: to find an exotic, sexy, and voiceless Asian girl, a race stereotypical she got for being Chinese. Fei also made an important point here that prejudices and racism still exist in New York. Perhaps due to her background as a schloar and her understanding about Orientalism, Kay became more sensitive about these issues. Because she is a woman, she really despised how Western people stereotyped Asian, particularly how they stereotype her as a woman. She learned through Orientalism that the Westerners stereotype the Easterners as inferior, exotic, and sensual Barry, 2002: 193. In her world, this novel, Chinese women or particularly Asian Woman, due to White people ignorance considering Japanese, Korean, and Chinese to be “Asian” were portrayed as sweet, sexy, slim, petite, possibly smart, inarticulate, voiceless, and obedient to the husband Fei, 2010 : 72-73. Kay rejected these stereotypes since young age by becoming a Chinese although she still believes she is an American who could speak for and defend herself. Her principal made her appear unlike any Asian who acts exactly like what Western people stereotyped them. She felt that those people corrupted their own Asian identity by becoming what White people wanted them to be instead of speaking and defending themselves. An example of this case can be seen from Kay’s view toward Tomoko, her Japanese roommate in dormitory who always kept her head down and continuously bowed when entering the room and kept saying duibuqi pardon me to Kay’s family when they inspected Kay’s dormitory. When Kay greeted her and wished her luck with her thesis, she only bowed several more times and left. After Tomoko left, Kay’s youngest sister, Sophie, repeated Tomoko’s act bowing and saying duibuqi as a joke that made three of them Nora, Kay, Sophie laugh. This made Irene, their mother, scold them “That’s not nice,” Irene said. “I know, but she drives me nuts,” Kay said. “At first I thought it was the language barrier, but it turns out she’s the worst stereotype of Asian female –meek and voiceless.” Nora and Sophie nodded. “She’s Japanese,” Irene said. “If she was raised that way-“ “The other Japanese girls aren’t like her.” “Well, if that’s her nature-“ “Mom, imagine if that was our nature. Wouldn’t you have raised us to speak up?” Fei, 2010 : 174 This part showed how Kay did not like Tomoko because she was the perfect portrait of Western people’s point of view and stereotype toward Asian women: meek, weak, and voiceless. Even when her mother, Irene, tried to defend the girl by saying that maybe she was raised that way, Kay replied by saying the other Japanese are not like her. Kay added her reply by remembering her mother that Irene educated them to speak up and not become “voiceless and meek” like Tomoko. By having this kind of point of view, Kay made herself peculiar in the society she lived in. While the society stereotyped her to become a silent, voiceless and obedient woman like Tomoko, Kay acted the other way around, willing to speak and defend herself against the stereotype that the White people forced onto her. Her background and her understanding of Orientalism made Kay understand fully that all of those stereotypes are only an “image of Others”, “a false construction of Western people that has no truth about Asians” Fei, 2010 : 213. Kay’s fighting, however, became harder because media helped the stereotypes to spread. In addition, this made the Whites judge Chinese or Asian