Journal Entry "In the Land of the Free"

Stephen Greene

English 48B

January 26, 2011

Journal #8, Sui Sin Far

"The mission woman talked as she walked.  She told Lae Choo that little Kim, as he had been named by the school, was the pet of the place, and that his little tricks and was amused and delighted every one.  He had been rather difficult to manage at first and had cried much for his mother; 'but children soon forget, and after a month he seemed quite at home and played around as bright and happy as a bird'".(886)

"Her themes are of utmost importance: racial insensitivity, the human costs of bureaucratic and discriminatory laws, the humanity of the Chinese. The creation of rounded characters is a secondary concern. Lae Choo is little more than maternity personified, maternity victimized by racial prejudice. But the very portrayal of a Chinese woman in the maternal role--loving, anxious, frantic, self-sacrificing--was itself a novelty and a contribution, for the popular conception of the Chinese woman, whose numbers were few in nineteenth-century America, was that of a sing-song girl, prostitute, or inmate of an opium den. In Lae Choo, Eaton gives the reading public a naive, trusting woman whose entire life is devoted to the small child that the law of "this land of the free" manages to keep away from her for nearly one year".(Edith Maud Eaton, http://www9.georgetown.edu/faculty/bassr/heath/syllabuild/iguide/eaton.html)

Lae Choo has just given up all of her jewelry, gold, and valuables, save one ring given to her by her husband to signify their child.  She traded them for a fleeting chance at getting her son back from the missionary that United States Customs had placed him in.  She has waited in sadness to finally have her son back, and she is granted her only wish by an all-important paper sent from Washington.  She is led through the group of other children by a woman at the Mission who explains what her son has been like for the last ten months.  When Lae Choo finally reunites with her son, he has forgotten her and, "'Go 'way, go 'way!' he bade his mother".(886)

The missionary's words, when speaking about little Kim, are astonishingly animalistic in their description of the young child.  The way she speaks could be understandable if to one of her friends. talking about the children at the mission, but to his own mother who has waited ten long months to see him?  Her words seem ignorantly evil and have a saddening slant to them in regards to their treatment of Lae Choo's young son.  She literally describes the little boy as a bird, the cage taking the form of the mission, the government, and this entire "Land of the Free".
She begins by saying that the boy was as a pet there, saddened to be taken from its mother at first, but soon trained and domesticated. Somewhat thankful of the fact that he was taken young enough for this to be the case, the woman then relays that he was soon happy to be there.  She speaks as if he were a bird in a cage who, once its mother and past are forgotten, is quite content to sing, and perform "little tricks" for its new owners.
Like a wild bird or animal trapped and raised in captivity, when released, the boy showed no sign of recognition of his mother.  He was domesticated in the animal sense and assimilated as related to people, a cleverly substituted word to hide the true effects of its nature.  As terrifying as the state of her son is, the woman's lack of sensitivity through seemingly innocent ignorance in her interactions with Lae Choo, is at least equally appalling.