You've Come a Wong Way 3/4 | Asian American Features

YOU'VE COME A WONG WAY, BABY!
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sian women knew about birth control, but considered it improper. Besides, children were a source of cheap labor. In addition to her roles as housewife and unpaid laborer, the average Asian woman had to care for far more children than the average American woman. Many families had eight or more children.
"The veterans of the Korean and Vietnam wars saw little to contradict the Suzie Wong image."
     Despite bearing the lion's share of the household work and duties, the Asian woman had very little power within the family. Most were raised to obey and revere their husbands. At mealtime in the average Asian family, the wife would first serve her husband, followed by her sons, daughters, and herself. She seldom spoke except to apologize for the poor quality of the meals she prepared.
     All her labors were motivated by the desire to advance her children, to ensure that they married well and got good educations and high-paying jobs. The virtues of perseverance and duty were of the utmost importance, and she did everything in her power to instill them in her children. Asian women of this era left a legacy of hard work and hunger for education that has made their grandchildren some of Americaąs most prosperous and successful people.
     World War II effectively halted Asian immigration. It also brought about a dramatic change in the American perception of Chinese and Japanese peoples. Movies like The Flying Tigers and China Girl portrayed the Chinese allies as heroes and the Japanese enemy as savages. In response to popular sentiment in 1943 President Roosevelt asked Congress to repeal the Chinese Exclusion Act. Until then the Chinese population in the U.S. had stayed under 100,000. The newly instituted Chinese immigration quota was nominal‹only 105 persons‹but accompanying laws allowed existing immigrants to bring over wives and children. In addition, the War Brides Act of 1945 enabled brides of GIs and their children to enter the U.S. as non-quota immigrants. As a result the number of Chinese brides admitted to the U.S. increased from 159 in 1946 to 2,042 in 1953.

The Suzie Wong Era,1945-1972
he American media had largely ignored Asians except when they were being vilified during the World War II anti-Japanese hysteria. In the early '60s there was a flurry of interest in Asian women which can probably be traced to the large numbers of GIs returning from Far Eastern tours of duty. Jacomo Puccini's turn-of-the-century geisha tale Madame Butterfly had long been a mainstay of the opera circuit, but in 1961 Hollywood saw fit to update the fantasy and relocate it to Hong Kong.
     The World of Suzie Wong is about an un-credibly sweet and guiltless bargirl who, in the manner of Puccini's geisha character, falls desperately in love with an American. The title role was played by beautiful Nancy Kwan. She brought to the role a combination of childlike simplicity and very grown-up sex appeal. Clad in a tight silk chongsam slit up to her thigh and speaking pidgin, she personifies the American male fantasy of a beautiful, available and submissive Asian prostitute.
     So smitten is Suzie by the handsome American artist played William Holden that she makes excuses to get him alone in his room and all but begs him to have sex with her, for free. The hero is too noble to fall for her wiles, but is won over in the end by her sincerity and exotic beauty.
     When a drunken sailor slugs Suzie in the face and rapes her, she smears the blood over her chin and shows her wounds off to the other prostitutes downstairs, passing it off as the handiwork of a passionate Holden.
     "I'm sorry you not have nice man to beat you up," she tells one of the other women.

This then was the image that Americans came to have of Asian women, sexually available, childlike, exotically beautiful. GIs returning with heads full of R&R memories were quick to apply their preconceptions to the Asian women they encountered in the States. The veterans of the Korean and Vietnam wars had little reason to contradict the Suzie Wong image. One can imagine the difficulties Asian women encountered in trying to deal with such notions as they entered universities and the working world.
The end of World War II marked the first time that large numbers of Chinese women were allowed to enter the U.S. Many Chinese American men went to Manchuria to fight, and the War Brides Act of 1945 allowed them to bring wives home with them. The Korean and Vietnam wars would also bring about an infusion of refugees who were often well educated. For most such women, who spoke little or no English and had few transferable job skills, conditions were similar to those encountered by immigrants 40 years earlier. They slaved with the hope of a better life for their children.

ife was both easier and more confusing for second generation women. Speaking fluent English and educated in American schools, they could serve as a bridge between their parents and American society. This bi-cultural role often put them in the middle of the conflicts that resulted from the effort to reconcile two often contradictory ways of life.
     First generation Japanese parents, the issei, had relentlessly hammered traditional values into the minds of their children. The most important of these were a sense of duty and obligation, perseverance in the face of adversity, self-restraint, seriousness, respect for elders and obedience. These values led the issei to enter internment camps during the War without resistance or complaint, believing that they were thus proving their loyalty to America. They placed the needs of the group over the needs of the individual.
     Their children, the nisei, found themselves competing in American schools against kids raised in a culture that admired individuality and scorned meek conformity. Japanese girls got low marks in school for class participation, but made up for it by getting high test scores.
     Despite intense discrimination against Asians, second-generation men found it possible to leave the ethnic ghettoes and find better paying jobs. Husbands could often earn enough to support families, allowing wives to become full-time homemakers. Few married second-generation women had jobs outside the home. Many became as active as their white counterparts in community activities like the PTA and the Girl Scouts. Having been anxious to flee West Coast World War II hysteria for small cities in the midwest and the east coast, many Japanese American families did their best to become lost in middle America‹and succeeded.
     By the late 60s many second generation Asian Americans were raising children of their own. They were more indulgent with their own children than their parents had been, letting them go out on unsupervised dates and do what most American kids did. Still they were more demanding than average American parents, relentlessly emphasizing the value of hard work and education. Their race would subject them to hardships, they stressed to them, unless they worked twice as hard, were twice as good. Not only was the third generation driven to succeed, they chafed at the injustices their American parents had been forced to suffer at the hands of a racist American government. Young Asian women, in particular, smoldered with resentment at being seen as the Suzie Wongs of White male fantasies. PAGE 4

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