SOURCE: White-Parks, Annette. “A Reversal of American Concepts of ‘Other-ness’ in the Fiction of Sui Sin Far.” MELUS 20, no. 1 (spring 1995): 17-34.

In the following essay, White-Parks argues that Far's fiction succeeds in representing Euro-Americans as the “Other” from the perspective of her Chinese-American characters, in contrast to dominant representations of Asian-Americans as the “Other.”

I came to the concepts explored in this essay through questions formulated while reading Pocahontas's Daughters by Mary Dearborn.¹ Although Dearborn does not directly discuss writers of Chinese descent, her concept of mediation—in which the role of the ethnic woman writer is to “stress samenesses rather than differences,” “explain” a subordinate group to a dominant group, and ultimately “bridge” cultures—raises important issues for my examination of Sui Sin Far.² One critical aspect of mediation, as I interpret, is the stance or attitude a writer assumes toward the culture(s) of and for...