Dragonwings

Moon Shadow’s coming-of-age journey, also commonly known as a bildungsroman, illuminates the Chinese American experience. As a seven-year-old boy, Moon Shadow Lee must follow his father to America and face the reality that discriminatory immigration policies and anti-immigration laws will keep his family separated for many years to come. His family is a poor, working-class family, and his father struggles to simultaneously make a living in America and provide for his wife back in China. Moon Shadow is fearful of moving to a foreign land, but he is determined to follow his father and to be a dutiful son.

His journey in Forming a Bicultural Identity is a gradual transformation fraught with many conflicts. For Moon Shadow, life in America is defined by the racial discrimination against Chinese people. As a young child, he must endure the intimidating experience of traveling to the United States as a Chinese immigrant. Remembering his time on the ship, Moon Shadow states, “I was young and I was homesick and I was frightened – especially of all the sailors, for […] I thought that they were tiger demons” (10). Through Moon Shadow’s memories, Yep describes the degrading process of inspection upon the immigrants’ entrance to San Francisco. Moon Shadow prepares for interrogation by the American authorities and is forced to change his name to fit American standards, which unlike Chinese culture, places the individual’s name before the family name. As Moon Shadow says, “I was to use my name in the wrong order, putting my family name after my personal name as the demons did” (11). The Chinese immigrants are put into detention “inside a long, two-story warehouse” where they “slept and ate off the floors” waiting to be questioned (11-12). The text highlights the hostility shown to Chinese immigrants in the early 20th century, depicting an environment of cultural conflict.

Moon Shadow’s initial experience of San Francisco is also alienating and disillusioning. White American society seems strange to him, and he constantly compares and contrasts Chinese culture with American culture. The houses look like “wooden monsters” to him, and he is afraid of white people, believing that everybody carries “a stone or a knife or a gun” (52). Chinatown, however, provides him with a familiar environment and a sense of belonging, for in his young eyes, it has “all the right colors and shapes” and reminds him of home (18). However, the “invisible boundary line” (51) between Chinatown and the rest of the city poses an additional restriction on Moon Shadow’s identity development, for he finds himself caught between two conflicting cultures. Racial discrimination and exclusion impede the intercultural connections he so desperately needs to build in order to succeed in his new country. For example, Moon Shadow attends a poorly funded school in Chinatown and is not allowed to join an American school. In the Chinese school, he learns about classic Chinese books, and must rely on the help of his father and Uncle Bright Star to learn to read English and become familiar with the language.

These early cross-cultural difficulties are somewhat mitigated when Moon Shadow’s departure from Chinatown immerses him more directly in mainstream American culture and helps him to gain a new sense of his identity in a different context. When Moon Shadow meets the Whitlaws, he realizes that not all white people are hostile and biased. His bond with Miss Whitlaw and Robin signals a positive intercultural exchange. Miss Whitlaw treats him as an equal, and Robin builds a strong friendship with him. Both women help him to improve his English as the families spend time with each other. Yet Moon Shadow does not abandon his Chinese culture in the process of developing an intercultural understanding. Instead, both sides share and connect. Just as Robin gives him English books and shares her stories, he shares his own stories from Chinese mythology. Simultaneously, the Whitlaws enhance their own understanding of Chinese culture as their tenants learn more about American culture, and each person’s background is accorded equal respect in this positive and mutual exchange.

As Moon Shadow’s fears recede, he gains confidence and independence. His new understanding of the world helps him to overcome his feelings of alienation. Finally, while looking at the city view, the once-strange landscape of San Francisco becomes a familiar and inviting place for him, and he describes it as “ a river of light, and each light represented a person or maybe several people […] and I did not think of them as scrabbling for money or being stupid or malicious (210). Thus, Moon Shadow acknowledges the similarities and differences between both cultures and communities, and by the end of the story, he develops a new consciousness as a Chinese American teenager. With the complexities of Moon Shadow’s development, Yep describes the formation of a Chinese American perspective. Moon Shadow acknowledges the struggle of being a Chinese American and anticipates reconnecting with his family in this new world.