Sui Sin Far: Debunking the Yellow Peril CHRISTELLE KUA-BALBUENA
AMERICA HAS A long history of discriminating
of the Yellow Peril, which embraced anti-Asian
against minority groups, especially those of
sentiment and portrayed Asians as an alien race
Asian descent. By the late nineteenth century,
and an economic threat, perpetual foreigners,
the massive influx of Chinese laborers entering
incapable of assimilating into American culture,
the United States, especially in the West, stirred
and an economic threat. In the midst of all this,
up xenophobic and racist attitudes towards
author and journalist Edith Maude Eaton, known
Chinese, known as the Yellow Peril, and fears
by her Chinese pen name as Sui Sin Far, published
related to American race, class, and gender
her short story in 1912 called “In the Land of
relations. These grumblings eventually surged
the Free.” In her story, Far combats these false
into a wave of anti-Chinese sentiment that
perceptions through the humanizing portrayal
swept across America and culminated in the
of the Chinese merchant, Hom Hing, and his
Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. This was the first
wife, Lae Choo, and in doing so, she challenges
immigration act that specifically excluded an
the prejudiced narrative being told about the
entire ethnic group, effectively barring Chinese
Chinese and criticizes the U.S. government’s
laborers from entering the U.S., with the
unfair treatment and discriminatory system.
exception of merchants, diplomats, teachers,
Being half Chinese herself, Sui Sin Far
students, and tourists (Guest 241). The act was
was no stranger to the racial prejudices white
later extended indefinitely in 1902 and would
Americans had towards the Chinese––other
not be repealed until 1943 (Guest 243).
children would call her and her siblings derogatory
The passing of the Chinese Exclusion Act
names such as “Chinky,” “yellow-face,” “pig-tail,”
endorsed and fed into white Americans’ fear
and “rat-eater” (Far, “Leaves from the Mental
C H R I ST E L L E K UA- B A L B U E N A (’23) wrote this essay for her final in Dr. Robin Miskolze’s Histories: American Realism class. The topic was inspired by what she learned in her Contemporary Issues in Asian Pacific American Communities class. She hopes that those who read her essay recognize that the rise in discrimination
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and violence against Asians and Asian Americans is not a recent phenomenon due to the COVID-19 pandemic,
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but that these stereotypes and racist ideologies have been persistent throughout America’s history.
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