My article examines depictions of Chinese women in Victor Chang’s stories (“A Summer’s Tale,” “Light in the Shop” and “Mr. Chin’s Property”), Kerry Young’s novel, Pao (2011), and Herbert de Lisser’s cultural and literary interwar magazine... more
My article examines depictions of Chinese women in Victor Chang’s stories (“A Summer’s Tale,” “Light in the Shop” and “Mr. Chin’s Property”), Kerry Young’s novel, Pao (2011), and Herbert de Lisser’s cultural and literary interwar magazine Planters’ Punch (1922-45) to argue that racial and socio-economic battles in colonial and post-independence Jamaica were waged on Chinese women. In official accounts of Jamaican history and culture, Chinese women are largely invisible and their significance has been set into relief by the works of Chinese-Caribbean writers like Kerry Young and Victor Chang. An important exception was the presence of Chinese women in Planters’ Punch, where de Lisser fashioned Chinese women as part of the myth of Jamaica as a lush tourist spot, thereby promoting the interests of the country’s multiethnic business class. Chang and Young contest this myth through inclusive fictional narratives that address racial and sexual violence wreaked upon Chinese women.
