“Trying to twist your way out of your skin” — different faces of Chinese Canadian experience in selected poems by Grace Lau

Introduction

Grace Lau is a Hong-Kong-born Chinese Canadian poet. After graduating from the University of British Columbia with a double BA in English Literature and Psychology, Lau moved from Vancouver to Toronto, where she works as an editor and writer in the fields of advertising and technology. She has been publishing her poems in a wide variety of literary magazines since 2017. In her debut collection of poetry, entitled The Language We Were Never Taught to Speak (2021), Lau explores different identities “that a body contains” (Lau, 2021: blurb). Through a series of small vignettes, Lau provides an insight into her experiences as both a Canadian and a Chinese immigrant, a lesbian and a queer child in an immigrant family, a person with a strong connection to traditional Chinese culture and history and an aficionado of contemporary Western popular culture. This mosaic of experiences illustrates the complexity and intricacy of the author’s own identity/ies.

The Language We Were Never Taught to Speak can be described as a showcase of experiences of exclusion and inclusion, some stemming from historical prejudices — like those against the LGBTQ2S community or Chinese immigrants and Indigenous people — and others — from more recent forms of discrimination connected to the rapid development of modern media. In her poems, Lau also addresses the faux inclusivities of both Canadian multiculturalism and Western culture’s neoliberalism, drawing attention to their exploitative and consumerist nature. The aim of this article is to discuss how Lau weaves the ideas of social exclusion and inclusion into her poetry and how she connects them to her experiences as a Chinese Canadian.

The article is divided into four major parts. The first part briefly defines the notions of exclusion and inclusion and discusses them in the context of the history of Canada’s Chinese diaspora, focusing in particular on such aspects as the model minority myth and the perpetual foreigner stereotype. The second section of the article focuses on Lau’s depiction of the connection between social exclusion and inclusion, and otherness — understood in terms of gender, sexuality, race, and nationality — in “When Yuhua Hamasaki Went Home” and “Escape Artist”. The third part of the article explores the paradox of the simultaneous exclusion, consumption, and commodification of the other as portrayed in “3 a.m. Communion” and “When Yuhua Hamasaki Went Home”. Finally, the fourth section is devoted to the analysis of “Pedicure at Pinky’s”, a poem in which Lau discusses the connection between social exclusion and inclusion, and the exploitation of immigrant communities.

Inclusion, exclusion and Chinese Canadian experience

As Dan Allman notes, forms of exclusion and inclusion “span many hundreds of years, if not the full course of human history itself” (2013: 11). Jed Boardman, Helen Killaspy and Gillian Mezey note that the notion of social exclusion overlaps with other concepts, including “depravation and destitution, hardship, poverty and inequality, discrimination, ghettoization, marginalisation, the underclass, disaffiliation, and dispossession” (2022: 21). Therefore, social exclusion carries an implication of restricting access to different spheres of social life, such as employment, housing, education, social and cultural capital, and political and public participation, which, in turn, negatively affects the sense of belonging and self-perception of an excluded individual (Silver, 1994: 541). In turn, social inclusion can be understood as both being able to participate in the social, economic, political, and cultural life of the community as an equal and being involved in “mutually trusting, appreciative and respectful interpersonal relationship at the family, peer and community levels” (Crawford, 2003: 5, qtd. in Babacan and Babacan, 2013: 154). However, as Boardman, Killaspy, and Mezey note, the relationship between social exclusion and social inclusion should be seen as a multidimensional continuum “along which people and groups have different degrees of participation and unequal access to resources, capabilities, and rights” (2022: 28). The multidimensional nature of the said continuum means that individuals can not only be simultaneously included in one dimension and excluded in the others, but also that, their experiences of exclusion and inclusion can differ over time and place (Boardman, Killaspy and Mezey, 2022: 28). Furthermore, Aldo Mascareño and Fabiola Carvajal point to the existence of inclusion in exclusion, a phenomenon that “implies inclusion, but in a position of subordination […] justified in traditional or community terms” (2015: 137). Inclusion in exclusion is often experienced by groups who are discriminated against on the basis of their ethnic origin, class, caste, gender, sexual orientation, language, or religion.

The categories of social exclusion and inclusion prove to be particularly useful for analysing diasporic literature. As Hurriyet Babacan and Alperhan Babacan (2013: 154–155) note, immigrants want to be included in the host society and host culture without abandoning their own history, backgrounds and identity; however, they often experience social exclusion on the basis of culture and race. This state of being suspended between inclusion and exclusion can be described as an integral part of the history of Chinese diaspora in Canada.

“The least popular and […] the most harshly treated” (Tan and Roy, 1985: 3) of all immigrants to Canada, the Chinese migrants were subjected to anti-Asian prejudice and hostility from the moment they arrived. The first Chinese migrants were brought to Canada in 1788 by Captain John Meares to establish a trading post and facilitate fur trade between the two countries. Although Meares’s plan was unsuccessful, the Chinese artisans decided to stay in British Columbia and some of them married Indigenous women (Chan, 2019). The first big wave of Chinese migrants arrived in 1858 when Chinese gold prospectors moved to the Fraser River Valley from San Francisco; the majority of them settled in Baskerville, British Columbia, establishing the first Chinese community in Canada (Tan and Roy, 1985: 6). Another big wave of Chinese immigrants arrived in Canada in the 1880s to work on the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway.

From the very moment they appeared in Canada, Chinese immigrants were the target of anti-Asian prejudice and hostility rooted in the Yellow Peril, “a complex of fears and prejudices associated with the sense of variously understood threat from the expansion and domination of the yellow race, felt and expressed by the white people identifying themselves with the Western civilization” (Łopińska, 2012: 42). The term itself was coined and popularised by Kaiser Wilhelm II in 1895 during the discussion of the Japanese victory in the First Sino-Japanese War (Metraux, 2009: 29). ¹ Soon, “the Yellow Peril” became a derogatory term used to refer to all East Asian immigrants. As a result, Chinese migrants brought to Canada as cheap labour to build roads and railways were soon seen as a threat not only to the labour market, but to the nation as a whole, since fears of strangers taking over the Canadian land began to grow (Lee, 2006: 82). However, the fear of the Yellow Peril could be observed not only in the behaviour of common Canadians, but also in the Canadian legislation — as early as in 1885 the Canadian government started implementing legal solutions aimed at limiting Chinese immigration:

Prime Minster Macdonald, who regarded the Chinese as an ‘inferior race’, appointed a Royal Commission which heard many lurid tales of immorality, filth and overcrowding in Chinatowns but could not agree on the desirability of halting the immigration of Chinese whose labour was desired by many employers. Nevertheless, the federal government, realizing that large numbers of Chinese were no longer required, imposed a $50 head tax on all Chinese entering Canada after 1 January 1886. (Tan and Roy, 1985: 8)

The bill, known as the Chinese Immigration Act of 1885, only temporarily reduced the number of Chinese migrants. As a result, the Act was amended twice — in 1900 and 1903 — raising the head tax to $100 and $500 respectively; however, those amendments were equally ineffective (Chao, 1996: 237).

The exclusion of the Chinese from Canadian society was not merely restricted to immigration but affected also other aspects of life. In many provinces, Chinese business owners were forbidden from employing white women out of fear that they would either introduce them to opium and other illicit substances or sell them into sexual slavery (Tan and Roy, 1985: 12). Furthermore, Canadian politicians used every opportunity to paint Chinese migrants as savages incapable of fully assimilating into Canadian society; for instance, Chinatowns were depicted by Canadian officials as “places where people lived like sewer rats, a grave danger to the white man’s health, and where laundries and restaurants were filthy and unsanitary” (Tan and Roy, 1985: 12). ²

Chinatowns themselves played an important role in the Chinese Canadian stories of exclusion and inclusion. The emergence of Chinatowns in Canada can be seen as a response to racially motivated hostility encountered by Chinese immigrants; as a result, “[t]he early Chinatowns provided a refuge from the harsh conditions of life in larger society, allowing the early Chinese immigrants to seek social, emotional and material support and, at times, protection from racial hostility” (Li and Li, 2011: 8). Hence, Chinatowns function as spatial representations of both inclusion and exclusion experienced by Chinese migrants: on the one hand, they were spaces of political, social, and geographical isolation separating them from the white society; on the other, they served as places providing migrants with a sense of belonging and understanding.

The legal and social campaigns against the Chinese immigrants, fuelled by the fear of the Yellow Peril, led to the implementation of the Chinese Immigration Act. Introduced on 1 July 1923, the Act almost completely halted Chinese immigration to Canada, granting entry to only four classes of Chinese migrants: diplomats, Canadian-born children, merchants, and students (Canadian Museum of Immigration, 2020). Furthermore, the Act obliged all Chinese individuals already living in Canada to register with the government and carry a photo identification with them at all times. In contrast to the previous legislative measures, the Act of 1923 proved to be particularly effective at curbing immigration — it is estimated that between 1924 and 1939 only eight Chinese migrants were accepted into Canada (Anderson, 2007: 25).

Yet, the almost complete cessation of Chinese immigration did not stop the prejudice directed at Chinese Canadians. In 1924, the suspicious death of a young white nursemaid, Janet Smith, caused outrage in Vancouver and led to a bill proposal — known as the Janet Smith Bill of 1924 — prepared by the British Columbia Legislature. The aim of the bill was to ban the employment of white women and East Asian men as domestic servants in the same household (Kerwin, 1999: 83). The proposed bill not only described Chinese Canadians as criminals, but also attempted to legitimise “existing racial discrimination and segregation” (Chao, 1996: 243). However, the Janet Smith Bill was never introduced, as it violated the provisions of the Canadian constitution (Kerwin, 1999: 102).

For years, Chinese communities in Canada had remained isolated from the host society and its culture. The withdrawal of Chinese immigrants from public spaces was the result of xenophobic attitudes exhibited by many white Canadians as well as the discriminatory actions undertaken by the Canadian government. However, the tendency to separate themselves displayed by many Chinese immigrants was seen as proof of their outright refusal to assimilate (Chan, 2019). The isolationism of Chinese immigrants and Chinese Canadians only fuelled anti-Chinese prejudice and, in consequence, “prevented many Chinese from considering Canada as their permanent home” (Chan, 2019).

Although the political situation of the Chinese Canadians improved in the second half of the twentieth century when the discriminatory Chinese Immigration Act of 1923 was repealed in 1947, the cultural and racial character of their exclusion continued under the veil of inclusion. ³ Described as a “model minority” — a label coined in 1966 by sociologist William Peterson (Cui, 2019: 71) — East Asian immigrants in North America are often depicted in the media as prime examples of successful adaption to new conditions. However, as argued by Claire Jean Kim, the model minority myth focuses on exaggerating the economic and academic success of the East Asian diaspora while being rooted in anti-Asian prejudice:

Journalists, politicians and scholars alike have constructed Asian [immigrants] as a model minority whose cultural values of diligence, family solidarity, respect for education, and self-sufficiency have propelled it to notable success. […] Despite appearances, this myth represents a continuation of earlier constructions in a different guise. It is true that earlier constructions steadfastly held Asians to be culturally unassimilable into White society, whatever their other virtues as laborers. Yet the model minority myth does not claim that Asian [immigrants] are culturally assimilated into White society: instead, it posits their material success and attributes this to their ongoing cultural distinctiveness. It also suggests that Asian [immigrants] are too busy getting ahead and making money to worry about politics, thus echoing the old trope of [their] apoliticalness. Once again, relative valorization is inextricably linked to civic ostracism. (Kim, 1999: 118)

Furthermore, as Dan Cui (2019: 71) claims, the popularization of the model minority myth leads to the erasure of all the discrimination, isolation, and disenfranchisement that East Asian immigrants have suffered since arriving in Canada. The myth also completely ignores the existence of inequalities and differences within a group, presenting East Asian immigrants as a monolith and reinforcing “colour-blind ideologies according to which racial barriers would not play a significant role in the lives of people of colour” (Yi and Museus, 2016: 2).

While the model minority myth can be seen as a form of faux inclusion, the perpetual foreigner stereotype — the assumption that East Asian immigrants are unassimilable and unable to fit in with the idea of a perfect, meaning white, Canadian (Huynh et al., 2011: 135) — can be described as an example of social exclusion based on race. This stereotype uses the same arguments as Canadian politicians at the turn of the twentieth century: it highlights the physical otherness of Chinese Canadians and interprets those markers of difference as their refusal, unwillingness, or inability to assimilate and adapt to the norms of the Western world. Those two concepts — the model minority myth and the perpetual foreigner stereotype — are of particular interest to Lau and are discussed in detail in the context of her poetry.

The impossibility of escaping your skin — experiences of racial otherness

The collection opens with “When Yuhua Hamasaki Went Home”, a poem in which Lau expresses her thoughts about the inclusion of the first Chinese drag queen in a popular American reality show: RuPaul’s Drag Race. The first two stanzas of the poem depict differences between the performativity of gender in Western and Chinese cultures by drawing parallels between drag queens and performers in Chinese opera:

While Lau acknowledges the possible shock value of drag, she also highlights that performing as opposite sex for entertainment has a long history in Chinese culture and has been practiced by both men and women as even her own grandmother “swung a sword as man, / wept as woman, / sang as both” (Lau, 2021: 1). This complex and internally contradictory attitude of the Chinese diaspora towards drag performances is alluded to by Lau in the line “our ancestors clutch their jade pendants” (Lau, 2021: 1). The line itself is a wordplay on the idiom “to clutch one’s pearls” with Lau replacing pearls with jade, a typically green mineral that can also occur in white. The idiom Lau playfully modifies is usually used disapprovingly to describe hypocritical behaviour in which shock is exaggerated to showcase one’s sense of morality. Therefore, through the inclusion of this wordplay, Lau suggests that the shock with which the Chinese diaspora reacted to Yuhua’s appearance on mainstream television was not a reflection of their true opinions, but rather a performance aiming at displaying the community’s adherence to Western norms concerning gender performance. This adherence can be seen as an attempt at ensuring the acceptance of the host society — through showcasing that they share the same ideas as the white Westerners, the members of the diasporic community highlight that they are not a threat to the Western way of life.

Interestingly, Stephen Hong Sohn claims that such a display of approval of the Western ways of performing gender is connected to the model minority myth and the need to reproduce it; as he notes in Inscrutable Belongings: Queer Asian North American Fiction:

the heterosexuality of the Asian or Asian North American parent exists only as a function of raising the model minority child from birth to overachieving adulthood. In this sense, the model minority plot implicitly precludes the possibility of the queer subject, while promoting the centrality of the monogamous, heterosexual marriage and nuclear family formation. (2018: 29)

The successful reproduction of the model minority myth is the simplest way of becoming successful and, by extension, of cementing and reinforcing the positive image of the diasporic community. Furthermore, through modifying their cultural practices in accordance with Western norms and putting greater emphasis on those behaviours and characteristics deemed “normal” in the Western world — such as compulsory heteronormativity — the Chinese diaspora hopes to become socially invisible. This desire not to attract the attention of the host society to themselves stems from the fear of becoming a target of prejudice once more, showcasing how deeply ingrained this experience is in the Chinese Canadian community.

The comparison between two culturally different attitudes towards drag performances made by Lau serves as both an illustration of her close connection with Chinese culture and most importantly, as a starting point for the discussion on the orientalizing lens through which East Asians are perceived by Westerners. The two types of performers in Chinese opera described by Lau — a male dan (a male actor playing female roles) and a female sheng (a female actor playing male roles) — have been studied and analysed by Western scholars. However, as Siu Leung Li observes,

[…] Western writers and scholars […] often make references to male cross-dressing in Chinese opera. […] Some of these Western references […] do include inaccuracies that contribute to the myth-making and stereotyping of cultures of the Other as well as misrepresenting the ‘alien object’ […]. In his historical narration of drag [Roger] Baker’s idea of the ‘Oriental’ theatrical female impersonation – the Japanese onnagata and the Chinese dan – is an imaginary invention of an idealistic oppositional Other to the West […]: ‘their work bears no resemblance to female impersonation as we have experienced it in the West’. […] [T]he Chinese dan […] has on this occasion been literally rendered a pure Other (‘no resemblance’) in a Western discourse that takes no account of the Other’s history. (2003: 39–40)

As Li points out, these depictions of Chinese opera focus on its otherness in the context of sexuality and eroticism, highlighting its transgressive nature and incompatibility with Western perceptions of gender norms. The same orientalising lens is also used to stereotype Chinese girls as quiet, submissive, obedient, and hardworking:

Lau’s use of an anaphora — “Chinese girls are” — highlights how deeply the stereotypical image of Chinese women — or East Asian women in general — is ingrained in Western culture. Furthermore, the chant-like character of the anaphora invokes the sense of oppressiveness experienced by many Chinese women, trapped in a vicious circle of stereotypes that mark them as the other.

The constant reproduction of such a racialized and gendered representation results in the further subjectification of East Asian women and, in turn, serves as a tool to uphold the superior position of white men (Uchida, 1998: 169–170). Similarly, Minjeong Kim and Angie Chung (2005: 74) note that the circulation of such images in Western media reinforces the moral and masculine superiority of white men and contributes to the existence of cultural tropes — such as that of the hyperfeminine and sexually servile “lotus blossom baby” — that further subjugate East Asian women. Leslie Bow elaborates on this notion, not only emphasizing that such objectification of East Asian women is “an expression of white, western, phallic power” (2014: 122), but also linking it to racial fetishization.

The struggle that Chinese girls and women have to endure in order to survive is emphasized in the last three lines of the stanza. Through the employment of line breaks, Lau draws the reader’s attention to the simile illustrating the paradoxical situation of Chinese women — while the idea of survival is commonly associated with escaping a situation posing danger to one’s physical existence, here fighting for one’s survival results in internalizing racialized ideas. Therefore, in the second part of the stanza Lau highlights that many Chinese women feel forced to fit in within the confines of those harmful stereotypes in order to ensure the survival of the whole community — the peaceful existence in the host society becomes possible only through playing into prejudiced misconceptions the West has about East Asian cultures. As noted by Nicola Forbes, Lauren Yang, and Sahnah Lim, in many immigrant families the servile East Asian women trope is reinforced “through […] gendered norms in the home and expectations of women to be self-sacrificing and not complain” (2023); hence, young women are expected to ascribe to these stereotypes for the sake of their families and communities, even if it entails losing personal and professional opportunities (Forbes, Yang, and Lim, 2023). In her poem, Lau emphasizes how both the diasporic community and the host society contribute to the sense of inclusion in exclusion experienced by many Chinese women — they are aware that they can be accepted by the host society only when they agree to subordinate themselves to the Western ideals of East Asian femininity and are taught that such a sacrifice is necessary.

The poem ends on a hopeful note, underlining once more the importance of the appearance of “the first Chinese drag queen / in ten seasons of Drag Race” (Lau, 2021: 3) for those Chinese women who cannot — or do not want to — become another incarnation of a stereotype:

Interestingly, instead of introducing new adjectives to describe those women, Lau repeats the ones she used in the earlier stanza, namely “good” and “submissive”. This repetition simultaneously underlines the power stereotypes and racialized representation have over women of colour and highlights the otherness of those who, like Lau herself, refuse to adhere to them. Their otherness is made even more explicit through the use of negative verb forms as they are defined not through what they are but what they are not. In the next two lines, Lau also reveals that the label of the other is assigned to those Chinese women who hunger for something more — recognition, respect, acknowledgement, representation, the sense of being included — and are not afraid or ashamed to speak about it, even if that results in their exclusion from both the host society and the diasporic community.

Nevertheless, the ending, albeit optimistic, still implies that, for the majority of East Asian migrants, freeing oneself from the confines of a stereotype is only possible “by proxy” — through the success stories of other people and snippets of representation in popular media. This notion is reflected in the last line of the poem — “this last feast is for us” –—where Lau acknowledges that Yuhua’s appearance in the program is a way of satisfying hunger for recognition, acceptance, and representation, at least momentarily; yet, the ironic use of “feast” — a noun used to refer to both a large, celebratory meal and a plentiful supply of something pleasurable — only reinforces the feeling that Chinese migrants are expected to be satisfied with mere crumbs of representation.

For decades, the representation of East Asian migrants in the Western media has been deeply rooted in prevailing stereotypes. The earliest North American films reflected “the harsh anti-Asian sentiments of the time” (Mok, 1998: 188), depicting Chinese characters — as few as there were — as the embodiments of the Yellow Peril. While this portrayal changed during the Second World War, it was not, in fact, that big of an improvement as the Chinese were depicted as “docile peasants” (Mok, 1998: 188) to juxtapose to the image of a cruel Japanese soldier; this portrayal changed once again in 1949 in the aftermath of Mao Zedong’s rise to power. Since then, the representation of Chinese migrants in Western media shifted between different stereotypes: from the foreign, exotic, (sexually) dangerous and alien characters of Fu Manchu or the “Dragon Lady”, through the trope of the “Chinese who dies” — usually for the betterment of their white masters — as well as those of a weak and unassertive East Asian male and an exotic, selfless and servile “lotus blossom”, to a whitewashed member of the model minority (Mok, 1998: 188–193). As Theresa Mok notes, the representation of Chinese — or East Asian — migrants in Western media is characterized by three ideas: it is dualistic in nature with stereotypes and perceptions shifting from good to bad depending on the current attitudes towards China and Chinese migrants; it is without nuance since migrants are portrayed as “being of one extreme or another in either a positive (wise sages, exemplary students) or a negative light (sadistic executioners, devilish heathens)” (Mok, 1998: 194); and it is firm in its message of assimilation, highlighting that in order for the East Asian migrant to be truly accepted by a North American society, being it Canadian or American, they need to be passive, dependent and Americanized. Such depictions in media, as Mok highlights (1998: 199–200), negatively impact East Asian Americans mentally and emotionally.

Hence, it is not surprising that the question of representation is particularly important for queer Chinese immigrants who are often excluded and ostracized on the basis of both their race and sexual orientation. In the opening lines of the poem — “When a Chinese drag queen / finally / sashays into the Drag Race werkroom” (Lau, 2021: 1) — Lau’s decision to put “finally” in a separate line highlights that for many queer Chinese immigrants the wait for proper representation and inclusion in the mainstream media has been a very long, exasperating, and frustrating one. Lau returns to this idea at the very end of the poem when, in the last couplet, she refers to Yuhua as “drag- / on queen”. The wordplay on “drag queen” describes Yuhua as both “drag-on queen” — a much more positive and diverse representation which took a very long time to finally appear in mainstream media — and “dragon queen”, a person worthy of esteem and admiration.

Therefore, what seems to matter to Lau the most is the fact that Yuhua serves as an example of a positive representation of queer Chinese immigrants, especially since Yuhua is proud of their cultural heritage. According to David Eng (2010: 4), Western queer activists create a monolithic queer identity placing whiteness at the centre of queer experience which, as a result, apart from promoting visibility and outness, leads to the erasure of people of colour. Furthermore, Sonali Patel notes that “the oversaturation of white [gays and] lesbians in LGBTQ+ media consequently promotes the exclusion of queer [men and] women of colour in the LGBTQ+ community and broader society” (2021: 29). Hence, it is not surprising that Lau celebrates Yuhua’s appearance on mainstream television as it finally makes queer Chinese immigrants visible not only in LGBTQ+ spaces but also in the host society as a whole, making it the first step on the road to a better, more diverse, de-orientalized, and, most importantly, more culturally inclusive media representation. ⁴

Lau returns to the question of orientalization in “Escape Artist”, a poem which addresses the desire to be included and accepted by the host community and highlights how it is intertwined with the fear of being ultimately rejected. To describe those experiences, Lau refers to the idea of “fobbiness”:

The term “fob” can be defined as a negative identity “constructed around the racial stereotypes and assumptions perpetuated in mainstream society and applied with derision to coethnics associated with the acculturative extremes” (Pyke and Dang 2003: 149). Shalini Shankar notes that fob is “widely used in Asian diasporas, especially in the context of post-1965 Asian migration, to differentiate new arrivals from those who have learned requisite cultural and linguistic codes” (2008: 270); as a result, it soon became a derogatory term used by second-generation migrants to describe members of their own community who were deemed “too ethnic” (Pyke and Dang 2003: 149). This internal differentiation is visible in Lau’s poem as she distinguishes between “fresh off the boat” new arrivals and “fresh off the plane” second generation migrants who return to Canada after being abroad and would not appreciate being included in the first category. The repetition of those two phrases so close to each other highlights that while they may sound almost identical — and, in consequence, mean the same thing — to Westerners, to Chinese Canadians they are completely different as they distinguish between those who see themselves as a part of the host culture and those who are undeserving of inclusion in it. This sense of separation between two groups of Chinese Canadians — those who were born there and those who have just arrived — is reinforced by the visual break at the end of the discussed fragment.

The disdain for fobbiness and the fear of being seen as a fob is strongly connected to the perpetual foreigner stereotype. In order to escape the stereotype of an unassimilated foreigner, many young people of East Asian descent internalize the racist values it carries and try to distance themselves “from the stigma associated with their racial group” by displaying their "assimilated status via language use (e.g., speaking without an accent), clothing, attitudes, and behaviour” (Pyke and Dang, 2003: 151). This need to escape the stigma is reflected in “Escape Artist” as Lau describes numerous ways of proving her assimilated status, through skills and hobbies (“piano lessons, swimming lessons, / skating lessons, badminton lessons”), knowledge of popular culture (“watching transformers & reboot every morning”) or losing the accent (Lau, 2021: 57–58).

This need to separate Americans or Canadians of East Asian descent from East Asian migrants who have just arrived to North America can be traced back to the publication of Aiiieeeee! An Anthology of Asian American Writers in 1974. The editors of the anthology — Frank Chin, Jeffrey Paul Chan, Lawson Fusao Inada, and Shawn Wong — use the introductory part of the anthology to list issues faced by Asian American writers and plaguing Asian American communities. While the problems enumerated by the editors needed to be addressed, the introduction to the anthology became infamous for its narrow and rigid definition of Asian American and gatekeeping. ⁵ It not only limits Asian American literature to the works produced by Chinese, Japanese, and Filipino Americans, but also divides Asian American writers into assimilationists who pander to racist stereotypes and true representatives of Asian American “sensibility” that can only be experienced by those “American born and raised, who got their China and Japan from the radio, off the silver screen, from television, out of comic books, from the pushers of white American culture that pictured the yellow man as something that when wounded, sad, or angry, or swearing, or wondering whined, shouted, or screamed ‘aiiieeeee!’” (Chin et al., 1991: xi–xii). The editors of the anthology highlight that the said sensibility is “distinctly not Chinese or Japanese and distinctly not white American” (Chin et al., 1991: xi); rather, it is a sensibility understood instinctively as a consequence of growing up in North America and, therefore, it functions as an embodiment of a very unique set of experiences. However, what threatens to silence East Asian American sensibility is the presence of Americanized writers:

Sensibility and the ability to choose differentiate the Asian American writers […] from the Americanized Chinese writers Lin Yutang and C. Y. Lee. They were intimate with and secure in their Chinese cultural identity in an experiential sense, in a way […] American-born[s] can never be. Again, unlike [American born writers], they are American by choice. They consciously set out to become American, in the white sense of the word, and succeeded in becoming “Chinese American” in the stereotypical sense of the good, loyal, obedient, passive, law-abiding, cultured sense of the word. It is no surprise that their writing is from whiteness, not from Chinese America. (Chin et al., 1991: xiv–xv)

Therefore, according to Chin and his colleagues, many East Asian American authors play into either the model minority myth — which Chin calls “racist love” — or the perpetual foreigner stereotype, further reinforcing the existence of those two images in the collective consciousness of American and Canadian societies. Furthermore, as observed by Hua Hsu, the editors of Aiiieeeee! “bristled at how Asians were often described as having an ‘inner resource’, some primordial connection to the centuries-old civilizations of a mystical Orient long idealized in the West” and thought that “Asian-Americans were always described as having a ‘dual heritage’ or ‘dual personality’, and thus as being part alien, even after having been here for generations” (2019). Hence, it is not surprising that in his argument with Frank Ching over his inclusion in Ralph Blumenthal’s article about theatre in New York’s Chinatown, Chin stated that “Americanized Chinese who’ve come over in their teens and later to settle here and American born Chinamen have nothing in common, culturally, intellectually, emotionally” (Hsu, 2019). The need to free oneself from the confines of the perpetual foreigner stereotype, to be seen as a part of the white society while not reinforcing stereotypical perceptions of the East Asian minority is therefore strongly correlated with disdain for “fobbiness”.

However, the desire to escape “fobbiness” comes at the cost of personal relationships. As Lau’s parents were unable to adapt to the new cultural environment as quickly as her — with her mother still mourning their abandoned homeland and her father spending his mornings reading Hong Kong newspapers — Lau started to resent them. She explains that as she ate traditional dishes prepared by her mother, she “tasted love / and did not want it” and admits that when she corrected her father’s English “it wasn’t to help him” (Lau, 2021: 57–58). Karen Pyke and Tran Dang note that such behaviour is a part of proving one’s assimilated status — through “denigrating ‘other’ coethnics as ‘too ethnic’ or too stereotypical, some Asian [immigrants] can carve out a positive self-identity” (2003: 151–152). Michael Schwalbe and his colleagues call this process “defensive othering” and claim that it “involves accepting the legitimacy of a devalued identity imposed by the dominant group, but then saying, in effect, ‘There are indeed Others to whom this applies, but it does not apply to me’” (2000: 425).

The internalized prejudice characterizing the desire to both rid oneself of fobbiness and distance oneself from those who represent it is addressed by Lau in the last three stanzas of the poem:

It is in those last three stanzas that the motivation behind Lau’s choice of the title — “Escape Artist” — becomes clearer with the escape act serving as a metaphor for ridding oneself of one’s fobbiness. Lau depicts fobbiness as an oppressive state of confinement that can be escaped only by removing metaphorical restraints, namely those aspects of one’s identity that are the markers of otherness. However, just like in the case of the real escape acts, escaping fobbinness is merely a performance or a stage illusion that relies on props to maintain itself. Lau notes that, unlike the escape artists working in the entertainment industry, she is unable — and never will be able — to fully free herself from the confines of her migrant identity.

The impossibility of fully escaping fobbiness is reinforced by Lau in the penultimate stanza of the poem. In the first line, Lau once again refers to escapology, playing with the possible meanings of the phrase “to twist one’s way out of something”. Usually used to describe a manner of escaping from a confined space that involves painfully contorting one’s body, the idiom can be seen as holding a double meaning. In the context of the relationship with the host society, it implies the pointlessness of the whole act — it does not matter if Chinese migrants see themselves as assimilated with the host culture as their skin colour will always be a visible marker of their difference. However, in the context of their connection with the diaspora, the meaning of the phrase becomes even more poignant: as the most obvious marker of their difference — the colour of their skin — cannot be erased, it, in turn, becomes a symbol of belonging to the diasporic community, an inclusion that is not desired by those Chinese Canadians who want to be seen as a part of the host society and not perpetual foreigners. Both of these interpretations, though, indicate a sense of discomfort caused by being trapped in one’s body.

Yet, this discomfort is not the only side effect of escaping fobbiness. The haunting emptiness — “the memory of empty” — that Lau feels can be seen as stemming from both the sense that, after achieving what she wanted, she no longer has a purpose, and the belief that she now remains alone and disconnected from her past and everything it entails. However, the most distressing side-effect of escaping fobbiness — and, in fact, the strongest proof that it is impossible to fully do so — is the sense of “treachery flower[ing] in [one’s] blood”. Lau notes that ridding oneself of fobbiness can be seen as the ultimate act of betrayal — by escaping the stigma of being a Chinese immigrant, Lau betrays her blood ties, her relatives and the whole community. However, the word “blood” implies also a more intimate, internal act of betrayal of one’s true nature through erasing a part of one’s identity. This denial of one’s true self is strengthened by the use of the word “treachery” which can mean both “a violation of faith and confidence” and “deceptiveness”. Escaping fobbiness is, therefore, a betrayal of oneself — a subconscious acknowledgment of internalizing racialized prejudices reproduced in the host society resulting in the creation of a deceptive self-image that excludes a part of one’s true identity.

The last stanza summarizes the message presented in the previous two. The line breaks slow the rhythm down, reflecting the realization that dawns on Lau as she talks about escaping fobbiness — the awareness that the erasure of those aspects of herself that mark her as the other comes with unexpected consequences. All the feelings and emotions that she experiences after finally freeing herself from the confines of fobbiness taint her happiness and excitement. Furthermore, the last stanza suggests that the escape act that Lau envisioned is also a form of escapism — in order to distance herself from negative feelings connected to her exclusion, Lau created in her mind an idealized version of her life after escaping fobbiness and finally being included in the host society. However, when this clashes with the harsh reality — the impossibility of fully freeing herself from the label of “fob” — this vision leaves Lau confused, incomplete, emotionally distressed, and uncomfortable with herself.

All the negative emotions that Lau describes in her poem bear striking similarity to experiences of young East Asian migrants who, in the attempt to escape the perpetual foreigner stereotype, find themselves adhering to the model minority myth, even at the risk of being labelled “whitewashed”. Rosalind Chou and Joe Feagin (2015: 21) note that during the process of acculturation to the core culture, many East Asian immigrant youth experience substantial emotional and cultural stress caused by “being caught between two cultures, feeling alienated from both cultures, and having interpersonal conflicts with the whites” (2015: 21). Furthermore, the existence of the model minority myth and the need for conformity it instils in East Asian immigrants have been linked with higher rates of depression, suicide and suicidal thoughts, and substance abuse in comparison with other racial and ethnic groups (Chou and Feagin, 2015: 21–22). It has also been noted that the internalization of the model minority myth prevents East Asian migrants from seeking help for emotional problems in an attempt to maintain the stereotypical perception of their diaspora as strong, level-headed and resilient; therefore, even the supposedly positive stereotypes promoted by the model minority myth are harmful (Kim and Lee, 2014; Tendulkar et al., 2012; Gupta, Szymanski and Leong, 2011).

Satisfying hunger? The consumption of the Chinese Canadian other

The dichotomy between inclusion and exclusion as a part of the Chinese Canadian experience is also visible in Lau’s poems commenting on being a migrant in the highly consumerist Western society. In “3 a.m. Communion”, a poem about eating together after a whole night of partying and drinking, Lau comments on Canadian multiculturalism. Introduced on 8 October 1971, the policy of multiculturalism was “designed to recognize, support, and — some might argue — manage cultural and racial pluralism at federal, provincial, and municipal levels” (Troper, 1999: 997); its aim was therefore to ensure the cultural freedom of Canadian citizens while providing a foundation for pluralistic Canadian identity (Kenyeres, 2014: 29). While the implementation of multiculturalism led to the recognition of minority rights, granted greater autonomy to Indigenous people, and increased openness and tolerance towards Canadians with different ethnic and social backgrounds, proving that unity can be achieved through diversity (Branach-Kallas, 2010: 29), it can also be seen as a policy of control which, on the one hand, allows diasporas to celebrate and maintain their original identities and, on the other, encourages them to remain within their own group (Kamboureli, 2000: 102–108). Furthermore, as Canadian society is seen predominantly as white, the racial difference of minorities makes them appear as both outsiders and insiders, reducing them to an abstract mass that is both similar and diverse (Branach-Kallas, 2010: 32). This sense of being both excluded and included is reflected in the last part of the poem:

Lau not only discusses the aspects of multiculturalism that were labelled by its critics as the most problematic — the privileged position of white Christian Canadians in a society where whiteness is seen as an “indicator of civilization, freedom and modernity” (Bannerji, 2000: 107) — but she also reflects on the connection between cultural food colonialism and consumption of the other. According to Lau, multiculturalism-in-practice does not, in fact, focus on providing true equality to all, but rather on curating an exotic experience for the host culture — it creates a space dedicated to consuming other cultures rather than to understanding them. In fact, Lau’s statement — “What’s ‘Canadian’ food anyway” — is very similar to the question Lily Cho poses in her book Eating Chinese: Culture on the Menu in Small Town Canada (2010); both Lau and Cho (2010: 53) highlight that Canadian culinary culture can be defined only through contrasting it with ethnic ones. Furthermore, Lau’s reflections on the character of Canadian “multicultural” cuisine align with Cho’s comments on the role of Chinese restaurants in defining it. According to Cho, such comparison not only “situates the idea of Canada within the terrain of whiteness, something that stands in stark opposition to the plural and multicultural visions of Canadian nationalism” (2010: 55), but also serves to reinforce a racist rationalization of the exclusion of Chinese immigrants, using their culinary practices as the justification.

In the context of the poem, Canadian multiculturalism is depicted as an instance of cultural food colonialism. The term, introduced by Lisa Heldke in her article “‘Let’s eat Chinese!’: Reflections on cultural food colonialism”, is used to refer to the “penchant for cooking and eating ethnic foods—most frequently the foods of economically dominated or ‘third world’ cultures—strongly motivated by an attitude that [bears] a resemblance to the various ideologies of Western colonialism” (Heldke, 2001: 77–78). Therefore, the fascination of Western eaters with ethnic cuisines stems from their supposed authenticity, novelty, and, most importantly, exoticism. Furthermore, the consumption of ethnic food can lead to the belief that one understands another culture just because one thinks one knows how the natives eat. As Heldke reflects on her own experiences:

After all, weren’t my eating and cooking also efforts to play, and to learn about other cultures in ways I genuinely intended to be respectful? Surely such noble intentions deserve some credit! […] I could not ignore the fact that underneath, or alongside, or over and above all these other reasons for my adventuring, I was motivated by a deep desire to have contact with and somehow to own an experience of an Exotic Other to make myself more interesting. Food adventuring […] made me a participant in cultural colonialism […]. (Heldke, 2001: 78)

However, the desire described by Heldke rarely translates to a more positive perception of the Other. In their study of ethnic restaurants in Quebec, Laurier Turgeon and Madeleine Pastinelli (2002: 258) observe that such establishments are divided into two spaces: one occupied by immigrant owners and workers and the other by native-born Québécois. The existence of such segregation within the confines of a restaurant “offers proof that Quebec clients accept ethnicity as it reveals itself by way of meals, but not necessarily through the actual physical presence of the people themselves” (Turgeon and Pastinelli, 2002: 258).

According to Turgeon and Pastinelli, ethnic restaurants function as ethnosites, “microspaces allowing for intercultural contact, deterritorialized places where diners can see and touch, even consume the culture of the other on home ground” (2002: 251); as a result, they serve as a reminder of the power relation between Western host societies and immigrants (Padoongpatt, 2013: 204). Therefore, it is not surprising that the consumption of the other is beneficial predominantly for the host culture. Samantha Kwan (2013) notes that through patronizing ethnic restaurants, Western consumers construct a new self, one that is cosmopolitan, empathetic, and ready to engage in intercultural dialogue. Similarly, Mark Padoongpatt (2013: 204) emphasizes that such food practices are often used by white people as a part of their identity formation process. However, the momentary character of consuming ethnic food makes it impossible to maintain this new sense of self; in fact,

the ethnic other is eaten, consumed, and forgotten. This momentary transaction also decontextualizes the other. […] The cross-cultural consumption of ethnic food for the sake of identity work separates cultural symbols from the culture that generates them. It detaches ethnic food from the marginalized others it represents [and], [c]onsequently, it dangerously absolves elites from real dialogue with the ethnic other. (Kwan, 2013)

Therefore, the consumption of ethnic food is seen by Westerners as a way of acquiring cultural capital and “gaining cultural distinction through the consumption of a wide variety of food” (Roberts, 2002: 219). Furthermore, as Haiming Liu (2015: 135) emphasizes, while the introduction of chain restaurants specializing in serving Chinese food exposed Western customers to Chinese cuisine, it also proved that Chinese food needs to be robbed of its ethnic associations in order to be successful. As a result, culinary culture becomes a public domain, “a piece of culture [that] does not necessarily belong to those who originated it”, and once food is commodified, it is no longer “an inherited culture” (Liu, 2015: 135).

This process of separating the cuisine from people and their plight is addressed by Lau in the earlier part of the poem:

Lau not only highlights that food served in ethnic restaurants is strongly intertwined with the experiences of immigrants, but also notes that its mindless consumption deprives it of its more complex cultural meanings. Furthermore, ethnic food is presented in the poem as not merely a form of physical sustenance, but also a spiritual one — a reminder of the sacrifices made by the first immigrants, a way of showing care for other members of the community, a factor binding the community together or, as Ivy Lam and Heather Keller (2015: 668) note, a tool for preserving traditions and transferring culture across generations. However, all these aspects become forgotten in the multicultural society that reduces foreign cultures to, as Lau puts it, objects “for eating”. Lau’s musings on ethnic cuisine transform into a reflection on the exploitative character of the relationship between the host society and immigrants where the former accepts only certain aspects of the latter’s culture — those which are seen as benefiting it the most — while outright rejecting, excluding, and forgetting others.

The depiction of Canadian multiculturalism as a contradictory mixture of consuming the other and excluding them is also present in other poems. In “When Yuhua Hamasaki Went Home”, the poem discussed in the first part of this article, Lau claims that the consumption of East Asian cultures without making an effort to understand them breeds ignorance:

By referring to the fact that a Chinese-American drag queen uses a Japanese sounding stage name, Lau highlights the extent of cultural exchange that occurred between China and Japan throughout the centuries, the results of which are still visible even in the most basic aspects of everyday life, including writing systems. However, she also acknowledges that the history of Sino-Japanese relations remains complex and painful, marred by exploitation, violence, and the war atrocities of the Nanjing Massacre — the mass murder of Chinese civilians by the Imperial Japanese army of which many Westerners remain ignorant — being the most horrendous. Yet, as Lau observes, those nuances and complexities seem to be lost on the members of the host culture who lump together all East Asian migrants, regardless of their national or ethnic identity, reducing them to a faceless mass that is simultaneously internally indistinguishable and yet completely different from white Canadians. Furthermore, the consumption of the East Asian Other without proper understanding hinders the process of intercultural exchange as the Western consumer seems to almost completely exclude the people, instead focusing on the idealized exotic experience. The men who greet Lau with konichiwa do not see her as an individual but rather as a body that can be used to fulfil their exotic fantasies.

In fact, fetishization and exoticization contribute significantly to the sense of exclusion felt by East Asian women (Zheng, 2016: 407–408). According to Robin Zheng, the depersonalization experienced by East Asian women as a result of fetishization can be described as a mixture of sexual objectification and “fungibility”, a type of objectification “in which a person is treated like an object interchangeable with other objects” (2016: 407). Meanwhile, another consequence of fetishization — otherization — entails being separated and held to a different standard due to one’s race; in the case of East Asian women, “their racial difference is either a failure to conform to White standards or only appreciable by alternative or abnormal standards” (Zheng, 2016: 408). Furthermore, as fetishization is based on racial stereotypes, it reinforces the representation of East Asian women as a monolith characterized by a combination of “sex appeal, […] family-centred values and a strong work ethic” (Zheng, 2016: 405).

The repetition used by Lau in this stanza — “maybe it’s no stranger” — draws the readers’ attention to Western ignorance and connects this stanza to the earlier one discussing the stereotypical image of Chinese women. The structural similarity of these two stanzas suggests that the ideas presented in them are interconnected — the ignorance of the Westerners breeds and reinforces stereotypical, stigmatizing, exoticizing, and fetishizing depictions of Chinese immigrants, while the existence and reproduction of such depictions only deepen the shallow understanding of East Asian cultures and contribute to maintaining the social exclusion of its representatives.

Stepmotherland of negotiated spaces — exploitation as a part of Chinese diasporic experience

In her poems Lau also connects the consumption of the other to the exploitation of diasporic communities by the host society. This connection serves as a commentary on the paradoxical position of immigrants who are simultaneously included in the host community and excluded from it depending on their usefulness. This experience of Chinese migrants in Canada is further elaborated on in “Pedicure at Pinky’s” in which Lau reflects on the contributions of immigrants to the Canadian labour market. The poem opens with a reference to a scene in John 12 describing Mary of Bethany anointing Jesus’s feet with her hair and immediately shifts to a nail parlour run by immigrants:

In the opening stanzas of the poem, Lau points to historical instances of the exploitation of immigrant labour, notably during the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway. During this period around 17,000 Chinese labourers came to Canada to complete the western sections of the railway (Tan and Roy, 1985: 7); over 600 of them perished due to harsh working conditions, malnutrition, and illness (Chan, 2009). Furthermore, Chinese workers were not only paid less than their white counterparts — and made to pay for provisions — but were also relegated to the most dangerous tasks, including using highly explosive nitroglycerin (British Columbia, 2017). Although the government of British Columbia apologized for the mistreatment of Chinese Canadians on 15 May 2014 (British Columbia, 2016), Lau highlights that such apologies are meaningless as they neither erase the decades of exploitation nor ensure that it will never happen again.

In fact, as Lau highlights in the second stanza of the poem, hard physical work is a part of immigrant experience than can be transferred from generation to generation. Two synecdoches appearing in this stanza — “immigrant hands” and “immigrant feet” — represent the second generation of immigrants who, despite being born and living in Canada, are still doing similar jobs — low-paid difficult jobs that no-one else wants to do — to those of their ancestors. Therefore, the immigrant labour experience is depicted by Lau as a cycle that is almost impossible to break. The line break between the penultimate and ultimate line — “immigrant feet whose mothers crossed oceans — / it’s nothing” — emphasizes not only how often immigrants are overlooked or rendered invisible, but also how their problems are often disregarded and their trauma seen as easily fixable.

The inclusion of Chinese migrants for the sake of exploitation is elaborated on in the second part of the poem:

Lau highlights the absurdity of statements depicting the inclusion of immigrants into the Canadian labour market as disastrous for the host society, noting that they have been a part of it for over a century. Such assumptions, according to Lau, are rooted in prejudices and the fear of the other rather than in economic principles. The absurdity of such statements is highlighted by the metaphor of race Lau uses. The behaviour she describes — being unable to accept that one’s insufficient abilities and skills are the reason for one’s failure — would be deemed an unsportsmanlike conduct, worthy of condemnation and mockery. The ridiculousness of claims made by the members of the host society is further reinforced by the anaphora “as if”; those repetitions, combined with the visual pause and line breaks, emphasize that the jobs mentioned in the poem are either not attractive for white Canadians or created by the immigrants who open their own businesses and work long hours in difficult conditions in order to survive in a country that is already hostile towards them.

Although there are numerous factors which may determine the impact of immigration on the labour market, numerous studies show that the influx of economic migrants may lead to the creation of new workplaces (Borjas, 1995), the implementation of new innovative solutions (Dustmann et al., 2012) and the reduction of unemployment rates (Dustmann et al., 2005). Furthermore, immigrants often find employment in occupations that native residents do not want due to their low prestige, poor working conditions, or low wages (Somerville and Sumption, 2008: 22). Therefore, as Lau notes, developed economies often exploit immigrant workers: they are included in the labour market due to their perceived usefulness — or rather their willingness to do the jobs the native residents refuse to do — while simultaneously being relegated to the margins of the host society, often excluded from the benefits it provides.

This exclusion is addressed by Lau in the last part of the poem:

In this part, Lau once again refers to two body parts, hands and feet, used earlier in the poem as synecdoches for the generations of immigrants forced into hard physical labour. Here, however, their hard work is contrasted with Lau’s way of living: her feet ache and her nails are chipped not as a consequence of hard work, but rather from leisurable activities for which she has time. Lau is aware of her privileged position as a migrant who managed to successfully assimilate with the host culture as she has both time to engage in pleasurable activities and money to spend on beauty treatments. This sense of privilege is further highlighted by the subservient position of the immigrant family running the parlour and Lau herself being seated on a throne-like chair.

The last stanza refers directly to the Biblical scene invoked by Lau at the very beginning of the poem as both Mary of Bethany and the anonymous immigrants are providing their customers with things they personally cannot afford. The only difference between the two is the intention behind their actions — while Mary uses expensive perfume to show her gratitude, the immigrant family continues the vicious cycle of migrant exploitation for the sake of survival. This difference is illustrated by the metaphor used by Lau in this stanza — “they knead pleasure into my spirit, comfort into my bones” — which emphasizes that, while the services provided by the immigrant family give her a sense of not only physical, but also spiritual and emotional satisfaction, they themselves are exempt from feeling similar relief.

Finally, the self-mockery and irony employed by Lau in the depiction of her visit to the beauty parlour can be interpreted as a commentary on the different migrant experience, namely the inequality within the East Asian diaspora in Canada. As mentioned in the first section of this article, the prevalence of the model minority myth results in obscuring the daily struggles of East Asian migrants, including those connected to socioeconomic diversity within the East Asian Canadian community. The ironic image of Lau sitting on a throne-like chair as she is served by other East Asian migrants of unknown origin seems to underline the harmfulness of the myth — while she can be labelled as a model minority (at least at first glance), her successful integration into white Canadian society overshadows and masks the struggles of other members of her community. Furthermore, the success and achievements of people like Lau may additionally fuel anti-migrant-worker sentiments since “[w]hites have initiated hate crimes against Asian [migrants] because of a belief that [they] were achieving too much and taking resources, such as jobs, away from [the host society]” (Bodenhausen and Cheryan, 2011: 175).

Conclusions

The Language We Were Never Taught to Speak is permeated with experiences of inclusion, exclusion, and otherness. By referring to her personal history as well as that of East Asian diasporas in Canada, Grace Lau places those experiences within a broader context of consumerism and faux tolerance of modern Western states. In such societies, as Lau notes in her poems, the otherness of immigrants is used as a justification for transforming them and their cultures into exotic commodities ready for consumption. Although the commodification of the other can be said to provide a certain level of inclusivity, it is, as Lau highlights in “3 a.m. Communion” and “When Yuhua Hamasaki Went Home”, predatory and exploitative in nature. As the host society gladly incorporates those elements of immigrant cultures which it deems enriching, it also detaches them from their meaning, often rooted in the history of exploitation and abuse. In her poems, Lau openly addresses the dangers of such inclusivity, highlighting that it not only serves as a way of placating the colonial guilt experienced by the Westerners, but also allows further exploitation of diasporic communities. In this context, as Lau notes in “3 a.m. Communion” and “Pedicure at Pinky’s”, policies advocating inclusivity — such as multiculturalism — become another facet of exercising control over the other, a remnant of power still held by the descendants of white colonial settlers. As a result, they set the stage for the further exploitation of already-marginalized immigrant groups and, what Lau finds even more dangerous, the slow erasure of their painful histories and experiences of discrimination. Furthermore, the promise of inclusivity also affects the inner structures of East Asian diasporic communities, breeding intergenerational tension and resentment between those who cannot or are unwilling to adapt to the host culture and those who want to distance themselves from their own origins. As Lau notes in “Escape Artist”, the desire to be included and the promise to be seen as equal lead to internalized prejudice which, in turn, enables further conflicts and divisions within the diasporic space. However, what Lau seems to find most tragic and frustrating is the realization that, despite all the sacrifices they make, East Asian immigrants will remain excluded from the host society due to their visible otherness — they will always be seen as perpetual foreigners. Therefore, “Escape Artist” encapsulates the ultimate outcome of constant tension between the desire to be included and the fear of being excluded: feelings of resignation, frustration, confusion, and complete betrayal of oneself.

In her poems Lau depicts a wide variety of diasporic experiences Chinese migrants and Chinese Canadians have to face on everyday basis. The analysed texts address the frustration experienced by Chinese Canadians at the lack of proper and diverse representation in the media, the growing tensions between the older generations sticking to their traditions and the younger ones wanting to be accepted by the host culture, the tiredness of being seen as a perpetual foreigner and of constantly having one’s identity questioned by others, and the pressure to repeatedly prove one’s Canadianness, often through pandering to the model minority myth or other prejudiced notions, in order to be accepted and avoid discrimination. Lau also emphasizes perpetual orientalization, objectification, fetishization, exoticisation, othering, stereotypization, and commodification of both Chinese Canadian bodies and migrant cultures and the faux inclusivity of Canadian multiculturalism which allows such processes to take place. Finally, she also showcases the instances of economic exploitation of migrant workers, both historic and contemporary, the ignorance with which the host culture approaches Chinese culture, and the marginalization of queer Chinese Canadians by both the Chinese diaspora and the white host society.

What Lau highlights in her poems is the historical character of said experiences and their constant repetition, proving that, despite all the legislative, social, and cultural changes occurring in the Canadian society, the experiences of Chinese Canadians remain eerily similar. This became particularly visible during the COVID-19 pandemic: a survey conducted by the Chinese Canadian National Council Toronto Chapter and Project 1907 found that racist incidents directed at East Asian Canadians increased by 47 per cent between 2020 and 2021 (Luk, 2023). The re-emergence of anti-Asian racism during the COVID-19 pandemic can be seen as a modern reincarnation of the Yellow Peril which portrayed Chinese migrants and Chinatowns as unhygienic and potential sources of life-threatening diseases (Yi et al., 2023: 124); it also seems particularly ironic as the surge of anti-Asian prejudice coincides with the centenary of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1923.

Therefore, the diasporic experiences described by Lau can be seen as examples of exclusion in inclusion — while the members of the diasporic community are seemingly included into the host society, they are placed in a subordinate position, forced to fulfil the expectations of white Canadians, even at the cost of their emotional and psychological comfort. Lau’s poems, most importantly, show the heterogeneity of the Chinese Canadian community. Lau understands and underlines that her experiences as a young, English-speaking, and educated migrant from a former British colony are different from those of not only other queer Chinese Canadians, but also those of her Christian parents, newly arrived migrants, Canadian-born individuals, or the migrant workers whose beauty parlour she visits in “Pedicure at Pinky’s”. In her works she does not shy away from addressing the impact perpetual foreigner stereotype has on the community, pushing some of its members to ostracize those whom they deem “too ethnic”, or highlighting how the model minority myth masks and obscures socioeconomic inequalities and disparities plaguing the diaspora.

These multiple faces of Chinese Canadian experiences can also be found in other poems of the collection that, due to time restraints, have not been discussed in depth in the previous sections of this paper. In “I Don’t Hear Cantonese in Chinatown Anymore” Lau showcases how, as a result of differences in their socioeconomic status, Chinese Canadians can stand on the opposite sides of the gentrification process affecting Chinatowns with some facilitating and benefiting from it and others being forced to leave their homes due to the rising costs of living. “Birth/Right”, in turn, juxtaposes the insistence of assimilated generations on adhering to the model minority myth and the anger and bitterness of the youngest generation who realizes that no matter how hard they try to mimic and imitate the host culture, they will never be accepted and treated as equals.

What seems to tie all these different experiences together is their cyclical and historic character. While in multicultural Canada the notion of the Yellow Peril seems to be a relic of the past, it continues to fuel the regular re-emergence of anti-Asian prejudice through presenting East Asian immigrants as a threat to the Canadian way of living. Whether it is the danger of the Japanese fifth column during the World War II, the anxiety caused by the possibility of East Asian countries gaining technological advantage during the 1980s and 1990s, the threat of economic dominance posed by China, or the fear of COVID-19, the East Asian minority in Canada has a long history of being blamed for societal or even economic problems experienced by white Canadians. It is this precarious sense of belonging, this constant need to prove that they are Canadian citizens, that unites Chinese Canadians regardless of their socioeconomic status, age, sexuality, or denomination.