The Chinese Exclusion Act put millions of people of Asian origins in an unjust situation in society. This event made a big impact on culture and became a major theme in Chinese literature of that time. Reflections of contemporary life by Asian American authors at the end of the nineteenth century provide insights into the problem of discrimination, showing the situation the way the immigrants saw it.
The end of the nineteenth century was the time of formation and growth of a deeply rooted Chinese community in the United States. The situation created by the Chinese Exclusion Act and the attitude towards immigrants found reflecting in Asian American literature of that period. Immigrant authors wrote about how they felt about their new lives in America. Fiction, poems, and memoirs written in both English and Mandarin provided a first-person look into the position of Chinese people in the United States (Spring, 2016).
The creation of such literature helped the Chinese American community to preserve their identity, which was especially difficult during the time (Railton, 2019). These works send a message of how lack of understanding leads to fear, prejudice, and injustice, and are valuable because they show the perspective from which contemporary authors saw the problem. Another important contribution of this literature is that it depicts the life of Chinese people. It interacts with us providing a chance to learn about Chinese culture, leading to more acceptance and improving communication in personal and professional lives.
Thus, the development of Asian American literature during the second part of the nineteenth century helped the Chinese community save their identity, and gave people from other ethnicities a chance to learn about the Chinese culture. This tendency contributed to a better understanding of the situation created by the Chinese Exclusion Act. Learning about those works now makes one become more aware of the problem of prejudice and promotes acceptance.
References
Railton, B. (2019). The Chinese Exclusion Act and Early Asian American Literature. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Literature. Web.
Spring, J. (2016). Deculturalization and the struggle for equality: A brief history of the education of dominated cultures in the United States (8th ed.). New York, NY: Routledge.