The Chinese Exclusion Act and Anti-Asian Racism

Four Treasures of the Sky is set against the backdrop of the Chinese Exclusion Act, a law passed in 1882 that banned entrance to the United States for all Chinese people. The passing of this act emboldened racist factions to take matters into their own hands, and many people suffered from the impending violence. The Chinese Exclusion Act acts as a motif that develops the novel’s primary theme of racism. “I read in the paper—the fourth page, a tiny corner mention—about a mob ransacking a Chinatown and lynching its inhabitants. The bodies are poke and jeered at, castrated and decapitated. The journalist justifies it as American’s right to revolution (191). The author positions the theme of racism as an extension of the theme of evil, which has followed the protagonist from the novel’s first pages. Though she...