The following book review was written for the Mark Twain Forum by Martin
Zehr.
~~~~~

_Sitting In Darkness: Mark Twain's Asia and Comparative Racialization_. By
Hsuan L. Hsu. New York University Press, 2015. Pp. 243. Paperback. 6 x 9".
ISBN 978-1-4798-61510-4. $24.00.


Many books reviewed on the Forum are available at discounted prices from
the TwainWeb Bookstore, and purchases from this site generate commissions
that benefit the Mark Twain Project. Please visit <http://www.twainweb.net>.


Reviewed for the Mark Twain Forum by:
Martin Zehr

Copyright (c) 2015 Mark Twain Forum. This review may not be published or
redistributed in any medium without permission.



The last quarter century has seen a renewed focus on Mark Twain's
anti-imperialist writings and observations of racism in an international
context.  Although this interest can be seen in earlier works, notably
Philip Foner's _Mark Twain: Social Critic_ (1958), the present interest can
be traced to the late Jim Zwick, whose book, _Mark Twain's Weapons of
Satire: Anti-Imperialist Writings on the Philippine-American War_ (1992)
can fairly be said to have sparked the current work over the last two
decades on Twain's observations of the export of his countrymen's racial
attitudes.  In addition, during the last decade, Susan Harris's _God's
Arbiters: American and the Philippines_, 1898-1902 (2011), and the
republication of Twain's "The Treaty With China: Its Provisions Explained"
in 2010, have underscored Twain's career-long interest in race-based
questions involving the actions of the United States on a world stage.  Now
we have Hsuan Hsu's further exploration of these questions, with an
emphasis on Twain's writings with respect to Asian nations and the manner
and degree to which these are reflections of these same issues in his
works, particularly, _Adventures of Huckleberry Finn_, _The Tragedy of
Pudd'nhead Wilson and The Comedy Those Extraordinary Twins_ and _A
Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court_.


"Comparative racialization," a relatively new term in cross-cultural
studies in politics, cultures and literature, refers to the examination of
the differential treatments and perceptions of various racial categories in
relation to each other and to the dominant racial influence in a particular
geographic setting.  Hsu states that, "Comparative racialization considers
how legal and cultural discourses have constructed racial groupings not
only in relation to "whiteness," but also through relational analogies and
contrasts with other racialized groups" (Hsuan Hsu,  personal
communication, March 2015).


Implicit in this book is the assumption that the reader, likely a scholar
in the general areas of Twain studies or Twain studies in the context of
American studies, is conversant with Twain's writings, primary and
otherwise, on the subject of race relations with respect to
African-Americans during the slavery, Reconstruction and Jim Crow eras
Twain witnessed directly.  As part of the mission statement contained in
his introduction, Hsu asserts "I attend not only to the Africanist or
Asiatic presence in literary narratives but also to the ghostly African
American presence haunting Twain's accounts of Chinese immigrants and
Filipino freedom fighters and to the Asian presences that haunt his
treatments of African Americans" (9).  The study of comparative
racialization, i.e., evaluation of the differential impact of policies,
formal and otherwise, on multiple race and ethnic populations, promises
that an analysis of race-based issues in one culture has the potential for
providing insight regarding the workings and effects of racism in another.
This promise is kept in Hsu's book, replete with numerous examples, e.g.,
Twain's use of the "rhetoric of abolitionism" while condemning the
slaughter of innocents in his "Comments on the Moro Massacre." (154)


In order to convey a basic understanding of the comparative status of
Asians with respect to racial issues, Hsu provides historical background
for the Chinese immigrants who came to the American West to work in the
gold fields and on the railroads following the discovery of gold at
Sutter's Mill in 1848.  The brutal predations inflicted on the Chinese by
whites during this period are documented in horrific detail elsewhere,
notably in works like Jean Pfaelzer's _Driven Out: The Forgotten War
Against Chinese Americans_ (Berkeley: U. Cal. Press, 2008; cited by Hsu),
but Hsu outlines the conditions endured by these immigrants in sufficient
detail to convince the reader that this segment of the population, in many
respects, had impediments to their survival and success that even
African-Americans in the post-war period did not encounter. In addition to
the Introduction and the primary text, this book includes a section of
endnotes (37 pages), Works Cited (16 pages) and Index (14 pages) which
provide notice of the depth and breadth of the research entailed in its
writing, serving also as a comprehensive reference base for any
reader/scholar wishing to conduct their own explorations of the subject.


The heart of this book consists of a series of challenges to preconceptions
of Twain's race-based considerations in his major, and minor, writings. Of
particular interest is Hsu's analysis of _Ah Sin_, the collaboration
between Twain and his erstwhile mentor, Bret Harte.  _Ah Sin_ is considered
an unequivocal failure by most Twain scholars aware of its existence, who
would likely share Frederick Anderson's assessment, in his preface to its
1961 publication, that "while _Ah Sin_ is not the poorest work by either
man, it is not far from it" (Anderson, _Ah Sin_, Page v).


Often considered as a lightweight, convoluted farce, with racist overtones
associated with the dialogue of the title character (e.g., "Me
washee-washee...") and "yellowface stereotypes," a closer reading, provided
by Hsu, turns this conception on its head.  Important to his reading is a
familiarity with the legal constraints on Chinese immigrants to the
American West following the discovery of gold at Sutter's Mill,
particularly the prohibition, upheld in the California case of _People v.
Hall_ in 1854, on Chinese testimony against white men in courts, and the
imposition of the Foreign Miners Tax.  These measures effectively rendered
the Chinese fair game for the predations of white men, including mass
murder, and, in combination, formalized a qualitative and quantitative
racialized oppression arguably much greater than that experienced by
members of other minority groups in the West of this era.  In Hsu's
analysis, the title character can be seen as an individual who, forced to
survive under these legal constraints, which effectively preclude him from
divulging the identity of a murderer, nonetheless "proves to be the most
perceptive witness in the play" (44).  By using physical evidence, Ah Sin
manages to circumvent the constraints of the racist criminal justice system
and make possible the play's resolution, while underscoring the injustices
of his circumstances.  Both Harte and Twain could testify to the sufferings
and oppression of the Chinese immigrant, and both documented their
observations, Twain most notably in his newspaper work and in early
writings such as "The Treaty With China (1868)," "Disgraceful Persecution
of a Boy (1870)," and "Goldsmith's Friend Abroad Again (1870)."  It should
be noted that Hsu's discussion of _Ah Sin_ is not for the purpose of
defending its paltry literary merits, but, instead, his aim is "to shift
the interpretive focus from the play's racial stereotypes to its
dramatization of structural racism" (41).  Reading the play from this
perspective may not alter any assessment of its entertainment value, but
will, undoubtedly, reinforce the idea that Twain's more famous condemnation
of racism and imperialism regarding Asian nationalities, "To The Person
Sitting in Darkness" (1901) is part and parcel of a continuing
preoccupation with the comparative racialization which is the subject of
Hsu's book.


Extending comparative racialization analysis to _Adventures of Huckleberry
Finn_, Hsu turns his focus to notions of "vagrancy" and its implications
for "spatial" restrictions within population subgroups, i.e., imposed legal
and cultural limitations on literal and political/economic mobility. He
begins his analysis by noting the proliferation of vagrancy laws in
southern and western states that placed disproportionate legal burdens on
black and Chinese-American populations, criminalizing status, rather than
behavior, in what has to be judged a successful effort to restrict
employment and, through enforcement, perpetuate stereotyped notions of
"tramps" or "loafers." In _Huckleberry Finn_, Hsu contrasts Huck's
"adventurous mobility" with Jim's need to remain inconspicuous, to the
point of being hidden, although both, by the standards of the era, could
have been described as "vagrants." Even Huck, however, along with other
white "vagabonds," "tramps" and "vagrants," including Pap, was subject to
implicit boundaries to free movement, requiring him to stay between the
river's banks or to "light out for the territory" to avoid the "sivilizing"
trappings of town living.  These restrictions, however, are inconsequential
compared to the legal restrictions that made free movement and employment
of Chinese immigrants nearly impossible, such as the Geary Act requirement
that they carry photo identification to prove they were legal residents and
the 1870 Cubic Air Ordinance in San Francisco which gave police an excuse
to raid Chinatown tenements and jail countless residents, simultaneously
rendering them criminals and vagrants.  Hsu uses a late work by Bret Harte,
_Three Vagabonds of Trinidad_ (1900), to underscore the equivalent vagrancy
status of a Chinese boy, Li Tee and Jim, an Indian, in a reprise of the
outsider status of Injun Joe and Jim in _The Adventures of Tom Sawyer_ and
_Adventures of Huckleberry Finn_.


_The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson and The Comedy Those Extraordinary Twins_
(1894), another Twain work which only infrequently attracts critical
attention, is the focus of Hsu's argument regarding notions of corporate
personhood in post-Civil War America, satirizing the inherent contradiction
of  "conjoinment and Western models of justice" (89). As Hsu notes, the
Capello twins reflect Twain's fascination with Chang and Eng in an earlier
piece, "Personal Habits of the Siamese Twins" (1869). In conjunction with
_Puddn'head Wilson_ (1894), with which it was originally "conjoined," the
obvious racial issues in what Twain described as his "Suppressed Farce"
should be read in context with the allegorical representation of the
sinister implications of "coolie" labor and the increasing influence of
corporate entities of the era.  The use of fingerprinting in the plot of
_Puddn'head Wilson_, according to Hsu's thesis, was used, not only as the
means of solving the racially-infused mystery, but as an allusion to its
application as a means of policing racialized groups, including Chinese
immigrants. These Chinese immigrants, according to Hsu, warranted special
attention (persecution) as a result of their association with devalued
("coolie") labor and its use to build the railroads which were the source
of much corrupt corporatization in this era.


Twain's parable of the destructive impact of forced modernization in the
industrial age, _A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court_, shows strong
evidence of an acute awareness of the problems associated with colonial
governance and the presumption of Western superiority that would become
explicit in later writings, e.g., "To the Person Sitting in Darkness" and
"The Fable of the Yellow Terror" (1904-05). As Hsu observes, through
comparison with a piece titled "Wu Chih Tien, the Celestial Empress"
(1889), by Wong Chin Foo, familiar to Twain, _A Connecticut Yankee_ makes
strong statements regarding "conventional opinions about the progressive
nature of history and the temporally backward status of non-Western
civilizations" (127). Twain's personal acquaintance with Yung Wing and the
establishment of the Chinese Educational Mission in Hartford also raises
the question, as Hsu does, whether its purported mission to assist in the
modernization of China has an impact on the plot of _A Connecticut Yankee_,
especially in the transfer of technology and retraining of medieval youth
to serve Hank Morgan's vision of an enlightened world, created by
motivations which unmistakably are those of the imperialism of the latter
nineteenth century.


Twain's preoccupation with comparative racialization, undeniable in his
late writings, is evident in Hsu's analysis of "To the Person Sitting in
Darkness" (1901), "The United States of Lyncherdom" (1901), and _Following
the Equator_ (1897). Common to these writings is Twain's explicit reference
to the comparative racialization of body counts, an effective means of
emphasizing the gruesome consequences of race-based imperialism. Hsu notes
that "The United States of Lyncherdom" was a piece "Twain suppressed in
order to avoid offending southerners" (150), a curious decision, given his
conspicuous condemnation of southern aristocracy in the
Shepherdson-Grangerford feud chapter of _Adventures of Huckleberry Finn_
and his earlier condemnation of the "southern gentlemen" responsible for a
lynching in an editorial for the _Buffalo Express_ titled "Only A Nigger"
(1869). Nonetheless, the man who was regarded by his friend and editor,
William Dean Howells, as the "most de-southernized Southerner" he had ever
known, makes explicit the connection between racial issues in his own
country and the imperialist policies imposed on the citizenry of the
Philippines and China in "To The Person Sitting in Darkness," reinforcing
the conflation of racism and imperialism which is a central theme of Hsu's
book.


_Sitting in Darkness: Mark Twain's Asia and Comparative Racialization_ is a
product of the ever-expanding vistas of Mark Twain studies and underscores
Twain's iconic status as an American _and_ international celebrity, as well
as an acute observer of racially-based behavior and thinking in a worldwide
context.  Hsu has extended Twain's familiar critiques of race issues as
applied to African-American populations to Asia and Asian-Americans, based
on Twain's cumulative writings on the subject, many of these under the
radar of all but the most determined Twain scholars.  The pieces of this
puzzle regarding Twain's attitudes toward race questions as applied to
Chinese immigrants and Asian cultures have generally been accessible to
scholars, but it has taken the focused efforts of a cadre of Twain
enthusiasts during the last two decades, from Jim Zwick to Hsuan Hsu, to
stitch together the pieces of the written legacy necessary to bring these
concerns to greater awareness. Given the persistence of racial tensions in
the twenty-first century and the increasing economic, political and
cultural intercourse between the United States and nations comprising the
quaint notion of the Orient, this work is a timely, incisive exploration of
issues which are unfortunately as contentious today as they were in Twain's
era. Through Hsu's work we are again reminded that Mark Twain was never the
"mere humorist" of his time, or ours.


Hsuan L. Hsu is associate professor of English at the University of
California, Davis.

_____

 Martin Zehr is a psychologist in private practice in Kansas City,
Missouri.  He presented "Mark Twain's Chinese Connection: Empathy, Politics
& Race" for "The Trouble Begins at Eight" series of the Elmira College
Center for Mark Twain Studies in 2014 and republished the complete text of
Twain's 1868 _New York Tribune_ article, "The Treaty With China: Its
Provisions Explained," in 2010.