The American playwright Lauren Yee delivers a satirical performance in the showing of “Ching Chong Chinaman.” Her creation displays an Asian American family trying to establish self-identity in the United States with each member of the household dealing with their own conflicting personalities. The title itself is provocative in manner already drawing the audience in on what this story on family could potentially behold.
Of the entire group, the characterization of the father “Ed” resonated with me the most. Acting in a patriarchal manner, Ed is a character who has seemingly left behind his own culture in an effort to gain success in corporate America by acting more white-washed. This term is effective at explaining this father figure because he constantly refers to company activities like golf which is stereotyped as a white man’s sport. Furthermore, in the addition of the foreign character “J”, Ed requests him to be his caddy in a condescending fashion. The symbol of golf in American culture is associated with ideas of wealth and Ed believes that by conjuring an identity that is different from his own, he would be able to attain success in the United States.
After reading this play, Ed’s inner conflict conveyed a larger conflicting pattern that I did not see clearly before. Majoring in Finance at Baruch College, time and time again I have received advice from upperclassmen and professionals that I would have to adapt to the culture in the office in order to be successful. By mirroring the actions and behaviors of those who supervise me, would grant me access to the corporate elite that Ed is on the search for. It’s interesting that the advice given is to change oneself instead of the usual “always be yourself cliche” that has been told to us as children.
Further developing this idea, we even see a separation of Ed and his cultural identity as a whole. Ed is clearly an Asian man to the audience but fully embodies the behavior of a white american. There is constantly a contrast between Ed and J’s character because Ed continuously condescends the foreigner in a racist manner. This is highly ironic because Ed himself is an Asian individual and in his journey to fully assimilate into American culture he seems to forget that.It seems this identity crisis drives the wedge between Ed and his family because the rest of the group likely has identified this disingenuous manner of living.
Ed struggles with connecting his family together and believes by working and making more money will solve this separation. This mistake of identity leaves Ed delivering his emotional monologue at the end of the play displaying his power as he had throughout the play. Following the prompts his agreeable wife Grace to agree with him only for her to immediately shut him down and leave the play for good. With nothing but his golf skills, money, and broken family, Ed is left as a failure to the audience at the end of the play.
Your analysis of Ed in the play is well done and points to how we may strongly believe in one way to succeed in our lives, and yet it can end up utterly failing. The fact is that success in one thing could come at the cost of failure in many other things. Ed may have successfully assimilated, but he has failed to maintain his family. Whatever may be more important to him, is up to interpretation.