Eat a Bowl of Tea (Cyclopedia of Literary Characters)
At a glance:
- Author: Louis H. Chu
- First Published: 1961
- Type of Work: Novel
- Type of Plot: Domestic realism
- Time of Work: 1941-1949
- Setting: The Chinatown districts of New York and San Francisco
- Genres: Long fiction, Psychological fiction, Social realism, Domestic realism, Satire
- Subjects: New York, North America or North Americans, Northeast, U.S., United States or Americans, Parents and children, Love or romance, New York City, 1940’s, American Dream, Asia or Asians, Immigration or emigration, Fathers, Barbershops or barbers, Multiculturalism, San Francisco, Asian Americans, China or Chinese people, Chinese Americans, Confucianism
- Locales: Chinatown, San Francisco, CA, Chinatown, New York
Characters Discussed
Wang Ben Loy, the individual at the center of this comic novel. He is a young waiter in a restaurant in New York’s Chinatown, and he resembles the sympathetic and underdog youth of classic comedy. Born in a Chinese village and reared there until the age of seventeen, Ben Loy has been brought up with the traditional Confucian values and is thus a filial son. Although as the novel opens he is in his twenties, holds a job, has done his hitch in the army during World War II, and is a married man, he still regards his father with some awe. His one character...
[The entire page is 932 words long]
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