“Ching Chong Chinaman” by Lauren Yee highlights the personal struggle of trying to find ones identity, while offering a satirical exploration of specifically cultural backgrounds and the manipulation of these identities to achieve selfish intentions. Throughout the play, we are introduced to Desdemona who is the family’s eldest daughter and is determined to make it into Princeton University. We are shown time and time again exactly how Desdemona believes she is to get into Princeton: the usage of cultural backgrounds that she does not necessarily understand the hardships those of that community have gone through.
An example is Desdemona’s relationship with Kim Lee Park, a Korean orphan that Desdemona sponsored. Kim Lee’s sponsorship was for Desdemona’s own personal gain rather than trying to relieve Kim Lee’s suffering and difficulties. That is evident when Desdemona slaps Kim Lee due to the fact that Kim Lee did not give her enough words for her essay. “Now listen, you stupid little girl, I need an essay and I can’t wait till you FEEL like it!” (Yee 22). Kim Lee is only wanted by Desdemona when she has a need for Kim Lee, like when writing the essay, but when doing other things, Kim Lee is deemed irrelevant. “Desdemona…Desdemona…I am so hungry.” “Go eat your yak.” (Yee 66). This interaction between Desdemona and Kim Lee emphasizes how Kim Lee is only of use and basically cared for when helping Desdemona and practically neglected otherwise.
Not only using other people’s identities, Desdemona takes advantage of her own family’s. After taking a heritage test, she finds out that her family had lived in Mexico and is immediately thrilled due the fact that if “she is Latino”, she has more of a story to tell to college admissions. “About being Latino? Are you kidding? This is SO much better. I’ve researched it: Hispanic girls like me face huge obstacles in their lives. Discrimination, lack of access to education and contraception” (Yee, 56). Even though Desdemona has never gone through any of these struggles in her life, it is the idea of “being Hispanic” that is alluring to her because then she will be able to add this onto her application.
This is something that however is prevalent in our society today. People want to claim that they have a cultural identity that they either don’t have or have no understanding of the struggles in order to gain a step ahead. There is a stigma of how colleges love sob stories and with that, one can get into the best possible universities. There is some truth in this and if this continues, then it will begin to deteriorate the meaningfulness of having gone through that suffering. If there is a reward for having a unique background, the very idea of it being unique could eventually lose its meaning.
I definitely agree that people can take advantage of a cultural identity to get ahead in life. I’ve heard people say they marked “Black” under ethnicity/race on their Common Application so that they would have a higher chance of getting into college. Whether they were just making a joke or they actually did it, it was wrong either way.