Jade snow wong fifth chinese daughter chapter

Jade Snow Wong's autobiography

Originally published in 1945

Fifth Chinese Daughter

January 26, 2012

One of the other reviewers called this book "propaganda", and I can see what led to that opinion. It certainly has the air of an old-fashioned Social Studies text, whose theme might be "The Happy Immigrant Jade Snow Discovers the Wonders of the American Way", combined with "Everything You Need to Know About Chinese Culture in Four Easy Lessons"; Jade Snow Wong puts some lectures in the mouth of her parents that no human being would ever actually speak. But let’s consider why she might have chosen to write it that way. She published it in 1945, after spending the war years working in the administrative offices of a naval shipyard, where her most important job was researching what might improve productivity, and she was particularly proud of a paper she wrote about reducing absenteeism by "labor and management... set[ting] aside their differences... getting together and solving the basic problem of mass morale." It’s no wonder she absorbed a boosterish atmosphere. But the roots of her writing style go back farther. She wanted to "bring better understanding of the Chinese people, so that in the Western world they would be recognized for their achievements", and she intended her book to be read by white American children. Her own education formed her ideas about how one should write for children. In her Chinese evening school, the only thing the students wrote were edifying compositions on such themes as "The Value of Learning" or "The Necessity of Good Habits", and although Jade Snow found them rather mind-numbing, she certainly believed in their values. I don’t know what they wrote in the American school (she assumes her readers know this, and so doesn’t specify) but I bet there were a few such topics there too.

If I’ve made this book sound stupefyingly dull, that’s wrong, it certainly isn’t! (Most of the time, anyway.) Wong had a keen instinct for what her readers would find interesting; she knew that they’d be unfamiliar

Fifth Chinese Daughter

Fifth Chinese Daughteris a 1945 autobiography by Chinese-American artist and author Jade Snow Wong, who wrote the book when she was just 24 years old. It is an account of her childhood and young adulthood being raised by a fiercely traditional Chinese family in San Francisco in the early 20th century, and her struggle to attain an education despite her family’s staunch opposition. Using the third person despite the intimate nature of the subject matter allows Wong to distance herself from her own life, creating a powerful sense of objectivity despite the subjective nature of telling your own life story while also aligning with a traditional Chinese sense of humility and decorum. The book was immensely popular and was sponsored into multiple translations by the United States government in an effort to prove a lack of racial prejudice against Asian cultures in the U.S. after World War II.

Wong begins with her early childhood in San Francisco’s Chinatown; she is the fifth daughter in a family that will eventually grow to nine children. Only Chinese is spoken in the house, and her father is very strict. Her earliest memories center on the monthly arrival of the rice barrel. Not only is rice their primary food staple, the barrel provides her father with switches which he uses for corporal punishment on his children. This punishment is brutal and constant, and rarely accompanied by any sort of explanation; the children, boys and girls alike, are often confused concerning why they are being punished at any given time. Wong notes that she eventually learned to skip meals to delay the arrival of the next barrel.

Wong’s relatives are not all frightening, however. Both her grandfather and her uncle are kinder to her, and each impresses on her the value of knowledge and education. Her Uncle Kwok studies the works of Confucius on his own in hopes of improving his life and position, a concept that Wong takes to heart.

When she is in the third grad

Jade Snow Wong

Chinese-American author and ceramicist

Jade Snow Wong (January 21, 1922 – March 16, 2006) was a Chinese American ceramic artist and author of two memoirs. She was given the English name of Constance, also being known as Connie Wong Ong.

Early life

Wong was born on January 21, 1922, and raised in San Francisco; she was the fifth daughter of an immigrant family from Guangdong, China, which grew to have nine children. She was raised with the traditional beliefs and customs of Chinese culture which her family and her elders imposed upon her.

Wong first attended San Francisco Junior College, and later Mills College, where she majored in economics and sociology in the hopes of becoming a social worker in Chinatown. Wong graduated from Mills College in 1942 with a Phi Beta Kappa key. While at Mills, she discovered a talent for ceramics in a summer course and joined a Ceramics Guild associated with the college. Wong also worked as a secretary during World War II.

Artistic work

Wong's career in pottery took off after she convinced a merchant on Grant Avenue in Chinatown, San Francisco, to allow her to put her workshop in his store window. Artist Win Ng (1936–1991) had studied under Wong when he was a teenager.

Her ceramics were later displayed in art museums across the United States, including a 2002 exhibition at the Chinese Historical Society of America. They were also displayed at the M. H. de Young Memorial Museum in San Francisco, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Art Institute of Chicago (a one-woman show), the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C., and the Cincinnati Art Museum, as well as shows in Omaha, Nebraska, and Portland, Oregon.

In addition to these shows across the United States, Wong's ceramics have also been placed in the permanent collections of New York’