I think I’m just doomed to experience mental fatigue every time I engage with electronic literature. I’m not used to having chapters and stanzas broken up like this. Of course, I can always go back and re-read, but I find that it’s much easier to forget every time I click off of something. Complaints aside, this work is visually very beautiful. Despite the story being about immigration and there being some themes of forced assimilation, all of the imagery is distinctly Chinese, even down to the way the shops are drawn. There are even videos showing more visuals if you click on the cameraman in the corner of the pages. I think alongside telling a story of a tragic history, each image feels like there’s a distinct aura of homesickness.

 Of the seven places that serve as headers, my favorite was “Nelson.” It’s got a familiarity that I understand, from the setting to the acquiescence in the face of racism. The segregation of Chinese people in the cemetery was disgusting but unsurprising. The subject appeared multiple times in this section, with one of the stanzas being about a a non-immigrant who called Chinese people ‘lucky’ for having their own space. Meanwhile the speaker has to explain that no, this is only the result of discrimination. The shops feel like they’re representative of how Americans only cared for the Chinese within the bounds of services they could provide: laundry attendants, restaurants owners, laborers, etc.

There was also the mention of someone who was a Chinese “freemason.” I had to do a bit of background research into that. They were the people who cared about the preservation of their culture in Canada and stressed the importance of community. They’d do things like create newspapers to keep other Chinese people informed and provide essential services to newer immigrants, like healthcare and housing. I never knew that. Everything I learned from the American point of view about Chinese immigration was about how they were exploited. Never anything on their community. 

-SS