Vancouver's Chinatown: Racial Discourse in Canada, 1875-1980 (Volume 10)

by Kay J. Anderson

Anderson charts the construction of Chinatown in the minds and streets of the white community of Vancouver over a hundred year period. She shows that Chinatown -- from the negative stereotyping of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to its current status as an "ethnic neighbourhood" -- has been stamped by changing European ideologies of race and the hegemonic policies those ideas have shaped. The very existence of the district is the result of a regime of cultural domination that continues to exist today. Anderson clearly rejects the concept of "race" as a means of distinguishing between groups of human beings. She points out that because the implicit acceptance of public beliefs about race affects the types of questions asked by researchers, the issue of the ontological status of race is as critical for commentators on society as it is for scientists studying human variation. Anderson applies this fresh approach toward the concept of race to a critical examination of popular, media, and academic treatments of the Chinatown in Vancouver.

Genres: Nonfiction, Geography

336 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 1991

Reviews

[Jing · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was in the library searching for Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior and came across this book. I’m Chinese immigrant who lived in Canada for over 5 years and I don’t really know much about the generations of people who came here before me. I had just moved into Chinatown a few months ago and wanted to know more about the history of the neighbourhood.

Numerous racist quotations from pre-1940s in the book appalled me.

European cultural hegemony is a central theme of the book and it’s used to explain much of the treatment of the Chinese community. That made me think.