China Men: Lecture II

I. Review

A. For Kingston "American" is not a fixed term.   Instead, its meaning is open to re-definition and change as the country undergoes a perpetual process of remaking.

B. Nonetheless, "American" cannot mean anything.   What it means to be an American depends on:

1. The laws created to govern and order society; the political and civil rights guaranteed by those laws.

2. How the various groups making up "We, the people" interact and relate to one another.

II. Language and otherness

A. Otherness (276, 12, 273) and How to Tell the Difference

B. English (45)

C. Self-alienation

1. "Sojourners" (44-45)

2. "Americans" (53)

D. Double-consciousness

III. Silencing

A. Untold history (145)

B. "The rule of silence" (100, 110, 115, 117-118, 90)

IV. Appropriation of language

A. "The power of naming" (242)

1. Edison/ Eh-Da-Son (71)

2. Lo Bun Sun: Robinson Crusoe

3. "chinamen" (111, 88): China Men

B. Positive double consciousness

C. Title page

V. The Brother

A. Similarities to his father

1. Teacher of reading and writing (37, 289)

2. Military draft (269)

B. "Not be driven out" (283)

C. "Super-American" (299)

D. "He had not 'returned'" (301, 294)

VI. "On Listening"

“After the Egyptian and Indian, the Greek and Roman, the Teuton and the Mongolian, the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world, -- a world which yields him no self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world.   It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity.   One ever feels his two-ness, -- an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder” (W.E.B. DuBois , 1897).