Homebase (Cyclopedia of Literary Characters)
At a glance:
- Author: Shawn Hsu Wong
- First Published: 1979
- Type of Work: Novel
- Type of Plot: Domestic
- Time of Work: The 1950’s and the 1960’s
- Setting: Primarily Berkeley, San Francisco, and surrounding areas of California; and Guam
- Genres: Long fiction, Bildungsroman
- Subjects: 1950’s, 1960’s, Self-discovery, Parents and children, Multiculturalism, San Francisco, Orphans or orphanages, Asian Americans, China or Chinese people, Chinese Americans
- Locales: San Francisco, CA, Berkeley, CA, Guam
Characters Discussed
Rainsford Chan, a fourth-generation Chinese American, named for the town in California where his great- grandfather settled during the Gold Rush. It is through his eyes exclusively that the novel is told. The evocative, elusive narrative consists of interwoven flashbacks recalled by Rainsford as an adult. For most of the novel, he is having a difficult adolescence, marked by the death of his father and, eight years later, that of his mother. These losses are complicated with issues of racial identity: Although he was born in Wyoming and lived in Berkeley,...
[The entire page is 998 words long]
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