The Fortunes

This story is an account of the real-life murder of Vincent Chin. In it, an unnamed narrator explores the impact of history on individuals in a 20th-century context, delving deeply into multiple kinds of Anti-Asian Racism. The author again depicts a Chinese American character returning to China, and the narrator feels dislocated from both Chinese and American culture as a result of his friend’s racially motivated murder.

Unlike in the other three stories, the narrator of this story remains nameless throughout. This formal choice positions the narrator as a kind of “everyman” figure who speaks to the experiences of Chinese American men and women across various communities in the United States. Although the racially motivated murder of Vincent Chin is an extreme example, the author has made clear through myriad moments in the text that racism and even racist violence have been common experiences in the lives of Chinese Americans since the earliest waves of immigration to the United States. The narrator remains nameless to convey the idea that he could be any Chinese American man: His experiences with racism are universal within Asian American communities.

In part through the universality of that claim, the author explores how racism itself has shaped and impacted Chinese American communities, and that exploration becomes the basis for considering The Impact of History on Individual Lives in this section of the book. Vincent Chin was targeted because the success of Japanese automakers during an American economic recession sparked a wave of racism and violence against Asian Americans in the United States. This climate of aggression directly impacted Asian American communities in that it created fear and uncertainty. There is an obvious link between this historical moment and the anti-Chinese sentiment that became widespread amongst white workers during the railroad boom, and the choice to represent both of these events suggests that even a century after those first railway workers arrived, anti-Asian sentiment in the US was still rampant enough to flash over into violence on the flimsiest of pretexts.

Although Vincent Chin’s murder is the most heinous example of Anti-Chinese Racism in the book, it is not this section’s only representation of race-based discrimination in Chinese American communities. The narrator recalls growing up with Vincent. The two attended school together and although Vincent was popular and athletic, they were both at times subject to taunts and jeers from their white peers. Additionally, the narrator notes how the press treated Vincent after his murder: He was portrayed in simplistic terms and often depicted as a “model minority.” The narrator, who understands that Vincent was much more complex than that, reflects on the way that representations of people of color in the United States tend to rely on stereotypes. Even positive stereotypes are damaging in that they reduce a complex, multi-faceted individual to a flattened version of themselves with only a few of their many qualities highlighted.

The narrator recalls that Vincent Chin’s mother Lily returned to China after her son’s murder: “She couldn’t bear to stay in the US. She already had her ticket back to China when the first verdict came down, but it only delayed things. She finally went back forty years after she left” (197). Returns to China are common in this text, and they speak both to its interest in historical accuracy and to its exploration of the subtlety of anti-Chinese sentiment. Workers during the era of the gold rush and the railroad boom often remained in the United States only long enough to make enough money to return home wealthy, and because of this they were less concerned with assimilation than other immigrant groups. This story of return would repeat itself time and time again and became a feature of Chinese immigrants in particular. Lily, in the 20th century, becomes part of this reverse migration, and her story thus speaks to broader trends within the history of Chinese Americans in the United States.

Ultimately, the narrator, in spite of his childhood feelings of being more connected to American than Chinese culture, rejects much of what American culture has to offer. He sees the United States as a land of racism and racist violence, and notes that baseball and other traditional American pastimes become unappealing to him. This rejection of assimilationism connects this story to other moments within the book, such as Ling’s ultimate rejection of American society and fashion, and demonstrates the importance of cultural preservation.