Chapter 4 - The Mirror of the West

Summary

This article attempts to outline the ways in which Chinese and Chinese American writers envision metropolitan New York by examining selected prose works which primarily engage with immigrant experiences. While recognizing the creative agency and imaginative power of this body of work, within these texts there are nevertheless embedded responses to and interactions with immigration laws and landmark events such as the Sino-Japanese War, the Second World War, the Chinese Civil War, the AIDS epidemics, the 9/11 attacks, the 1997 handover or return of Hong Kong to China, and China’s implementation of the reform and opening-up policy which started in 1978. Hence, the representations of New York in these works from different generations of writers of Chinese descent are heavily influenced by, and connected to, variegated sociohistorical forces, creating distinct and intricate transnational linkages across the Pacific.