The Tao of S: America’s Chinee & The Chinese Century in Literature and Film

The line between loving, hating, and exploiting a culture is a fine one, often resulting in a fusion in which stereotypes overshadow the genuine ethnic self. Sheng-Mei Ma’s The Tao of S: America’s Chinee & the Chinese Century in Literature and Film presents deeper complexities of this problem as it pertains to Asian cultures/literatures and their efforts to complicate US-centric mentalities. Jointly published by the University of South Carolina Press and the National Taiwan University Press as part of their East-West Encounters in Literature and Cultural Studies series, Ma’s book invites readers to interrogate the ways Asian culture has been feared and loved in extreme waves as demonstrated in popular culture media.Ma is a force in Asian diasporic literature and East-West comparative scholarship. He is a professor of English at Michigan State University and the author of key texts such as Sinophone-Anglophone Culture Duet (2017). Driven by viewing this type of work as a “homecoming” as an Asian writer, Ma creates a text that is meaningful before discursive language ever begins. Readers are drawn to Ma’s argument from the cover—a pristine background interrupted by the presence of a dragon made of the American flag draws audiences in. Readers explore what Ma says about how this Chinese presence permeates the whitewashed nature of American media before opening the pages. Ma himself says of his intentions that “the East-West twins, mutually unfathomable, turn to face each other with an equal share of wonderment and woe” (6). The book does not discuss Steinbeck extensively, largely with Ma’s indicating that characters such as East of Eden’s Lee become the “East in [the American] Eden” and fade into the shadows of machismo. The difficulties between fragile white emotion and Asian cultures stem from this tendency to resign Asian characters to background players.The Tao of S is divided into three parts: “California Dreamin’,” “Asian America Awakenin’,” and “The Chinese Century.” Counterculture is the key idea of part I, as Ma examines the complexities of Sinophobia/Sinophilia, early figures in the Oriental High (a characterization that assumes a skewing of the mind due to unaccepted substances), and collaboration between Asian American and African American figures in films that seek to dismantle “worst-case scenarios” created by whitewashed creators. This section’s methodology relies largely on a chronological look at key events in Asian American history, clearly evidenced in how it traces racist exclusions of Asian people from Harte’s 1870 poem “The Heathen Chinee” to Trump’s 2020 “Kung Flu” while hyperfixating on facets of Asian culture.Part II presents the jealousy American millennials sometimes seem to hold toward China’s rising prominence in literature and film. In fact, this jealousy overcorrects into a fetishization of Chinese culture due to what Ma sees as an Othello-like fear of being “cuckolded.” Perhaps most interesting in this section is Ma’s discussion of double-tonguing (creating the sense that two sounds/ideas are being presented at once) in literature/film to create the illusion that the fetishization is accepted and rejected in seemingly the same breath within texts such as Celeste Ng’s Little Fires Everywhere (2017). Part II relies on Ma’s use of techniques chosen to create illusion and cover up the oppressions still rampant in the pseudo-displays of Asian acceptance and love.Part III dives into the contemporary meaning of “The Chinese Century” and bridges the old ways of viewing Asian media portrayals with today’s streaming services and access to constantly shifting presentations of Chinese television. Social realism and wuxia fantasy bleed together in shows and films such as Ancient Detective (2020) or A Touch of Zen (1970–71) and demonstrate a grafting of white American desires with Chinese television. One of these white desires is for misogyny and racialization to combine and create a white/male-centric society, but racial fluidity helps racialized characters evade this oppression.One of Ma’s greatest assets is his continual pointing to Asian strength set against white oppression. Ma demonstrates that Chinese and other Asian characters attempt to reclaim power by refusing to yield to white supremacy in its entirety. A prime example is how Steinbeck’s Chinese cook Lee is written as a domestic figure who cares for the Hamilton household by cooking and cleaning. As an academic work, The Tao of S can serve scholars seeking to find power in Asian representation and at the same time to recognize weakness in a whitewashed culture’s presence in the academy. Ma creates a space that traces where society has been and where it is going in terms of Asian Diaspora scholarship and the American tendency to diminish the Asian presence.Common threads across the text are often strained because of blurry definitions and weak ties to other chapters. Another weakness is the failure to discuss Steinbeck’s role in perpetuating stereotypes in a sort of double-tonguing action, but he is mentioned across only three pages and for the creation of one stereotypical character. Whereas Ma sets up potential for Steinbeck to be a key player in the discussions of Sinophobia/Sinophilia, the text falls short. Chapters such as “Afro-Asian Filmic Duet” show promise for examining Steinbeck’s portrayal of racialized Others—such as the erasure of Black migrants in The Grapes of Wrath film adaptation from the novel—but Steinbeck was largely absent.Overall, this book is valuable for scholars in fields such as digital rhetoric, Asian literature, and comparative race and ethnic studies. Ma presents a strong case for analyzing the ways Asian characters and media are presented differently in American contexts, leading readers to see that “disemboweled” characters can rise again in their own rights. While its complex prose and organization can complicate the text, the book is a strong contribution to the East-West Encounters in Literature and Cultural Studies series. Ma’s strength and passion is present throughout, leaving readers with a desire to ally themselves with causes that uplift Asian representation without fetishization.