Mary Sui Yee Wong’s Reading List:Whose Chinatown?
Whose Chinatown? Examining Chinatown Gazes in Art, Archives and Collections aims to question how narratives are constructed around the idea of Chinatown and the colonial notions that underwrite some of these relations.
Featured artist, Mary Sui Yee Wong, has compiled a reading list to help conceptualize the exhibition. Many of the following books can be found at The Vancouver Public Library.
Thousand Pieces of Gold
By Ruthanne Lum McCunn | Published by Beacon Press, 1981
Lalu Nathoy’s father calls his thirteen-year-old daughter his treasure, his “thousand pieces of gold,” yet when famine strikes northern China in 1871, he is forced to sell her. Polly, as Lalu is later called, is sold to a brothel, sold again to a slave merchant bound for America, auctioned to a saloon keeper, and offered as a prize in a poker game. Complete with photographs and documents, this biographical novel is the extraordinary story of a legendary pioneer’s fight for independence and dignity on the American frontier.
Disappearing Moon Café
By Sky Lee | Published by Douglas & McIntyre, 1990
Disappearing Moon Café traces the lives and passions of women of the Wong family through four generations. Moving back and forth between past and present, between Canada and China, Sky Lee weaves fiction and historical fact into a memorable and moving picture of a people’s struggle in identity.
https://vpl.bibliocommons.com/item/show/531170038
The Jade Peony
By Wayson Choy | Published by Douglas & McIntyre, 1995
Set in Vancouver’s Chinatown in the late 1930s–40s, Wayson Choy’s first novel, The Jade Peony (1995), unfolds through the vivid reflections of the three youngest children in an immigrant family. Each of these characters has distinct childhood experiences, depending on their age and sex. Ghosts and family secrets are interwoven through the challenges of the interwar and World War II period, offering insight into the challenges of Chinese immigrant experiences during this time. The Jade Peony won both the 1995 Trillium Book Award and the 1996 City of Vancouver Book Award.
https://vpl.bibliocommons.com/item/show/495099038
Salt Fish Girl
By Larrisa Lai | Published by Dundurn Press, 2008
Salt Fish Girl is the mesmerizing tale of an ageless female character who shifts shape and form through time and place. Told in the beguiling voice of a narrator who is fish, snake, girl, and woman - all of whom must struggle against adversity for survival - the novel is set alternately in nineteenth-century China and in a futuristic Pacific Northwest.
https://vpl.bibliocommons.com/item/show/950853038
Chinatown: An illustrated history of the Chinese Communities of Victoria, Vancouver, Calgary,
Winnipeg, Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal and Halifax
By Paul Yee | Published by James Lorimer & Company Ltd., Publishers, 2005
Canada’s Chinese community found its roots in the late nineteenth century, when many Chinese left their overcrowded homeland in search of opportunity in Canada. But they faced daunting challenges when they arrived -- including poverty, racism, and prohibitions on family members coming to join them. In this book, extensively illustrated with contemporary and archival images, author Paul Yee tells the stories of eight Canadian Chinatowns -- Vancouver, Victoria, Calgary, Winnipeg, Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, and Halifax -- and explores the unique culture and heritage of each. He outlines the challenges that Chinatowns have overcome in the face of urban redevelopment and profiles the many ways Chinese Canadians dealt with the hostility they encountered from their fellow citizens. Chinese artists, politicians, and other intriguing personalities also make appearances throughout this rich narrative. Chinatown is an eye-opening account of how a group targeted for racist treatment for decades was able to overcome daunting obstacles and make room for themselves in Canadian society.
https://vpl.bibliocommons.com/item/show/1269246038
Saltwater City: An illustrated history of the Chinese in Vancouver
By Paul Yee | Published by Douglas & McIntyre, 2006
Written by Paul Yee, a third-generation Chinese-Canadian in search of his own roots as well as those of the community, Saltwater City brings the perceptions of a previously diffident community to its own history. A text resonant with often painful first-person recollections combines with 200 photographs, most reproduced for the first time, to form a chronological portrait of the community from its earliest beginnings to the present. With the assimilation of its people into the mainstream of Canadian life following World War II, Saltwater City, as early Chinese immigrants called the community, was threatened, but changes in attitude, government policy, and the opening of diplomatic relations with China instead caused a renaissance. Now, Vancouver's Chinese community totals over 150,000 people, enjoys considerable political and financial influence and has matured beyond recognition into one of Canada’s most successful ethnic enclaves.
https://vpl.bibliocommons.com/item/show/1351676038
The Rise of Cantonese Opera
By Wing Chung Ng | Published by University of Illinois Press, 2015
Defined by its distinct performance style, stage practices, and regional- and dialect-based identities, Cantonese opera originated as a traditional art form performed by itinerant companies in temple courtyards and rural market fairs. In the early 1900s, however, Cantonese opera began to capture mass audiences in the commercial theatres of Hong Kong and Guangzhou--and changed forever. Wing Chung Ng charts Cantonese opera’s confrontations with state power, nationalist discourses, and its challenge to the ascendancy of Peking opera as the country’s preeminent “national theatre”; Mining vivid oral histories and heretofore untapped archival sources, Ng relates how Cantonese opera evolved from a fundamentally rural tradition into a form of urbanized entertainment distinguished by a reliance on capitalization and celebrity performers. He also expands his analysis to the transnational level, showing how massive waves of Chinese emigration to Southeast Asia and North America further re-shaped Cantonese opera into a vibrant part of the ethnic Chinese social life and cultural landscape in the many corners of a sprawling diaspora.
https://vpl.bibliocommons.com/item/show/5008685038
IInstallation view, from left to right: Future Heritage(s) of ChinaTOwn, 2018-2020, Linda Zhang, Interactive installation including model gate, board game, game pieces, tables, stools; Dominion Produce Co., c. 1930, Yucho Chow, Photograph Yucho Chow Community Archive: Joseph Dale Eng Family; Ming Wo Store Exterior, c. 1922, Yucho Chow, Reproduction Yucho Chow Community Archive: Wong Chew Lip Family; Chinese Family, 1914, Yucho Chow, Photograph, Yucho Chow Community Archive: Ben & Pearl Wong family; Love Letters to the Harbin Gate, 2018, aiya 哎呀 Collaborative community installation with paper, ink, yarn; Sing Juk Sing : 升竹升, 2010/2020, , Collaboration between Master Wong Toa 黃滔老師 and Mary Sui Yee Wong 黃瑞儀, Video installation, Approx. 8 min., Video, colour, stereo, Filmmaker/Editor: Marlene Millar, Co-Editor: Mary Sui Yee Wong.
