Identity, Family, and the Immigrant Experience

The main themes of The Year of the Dragon are identity, family, and the immigrant experience. Frank Chin has created a family of Chinese and Chinese American characters who seek their identities in San Francisco. Both for the Chinese parents who have moved from China to the United States and the children who grew up there, the United States seems to pull them away from the home country and its traditions. The family connections that hold them together are often frayed by the changing social demands of US life.

In the children’s generation, the relationships among all three themes are tightly connected. Fred Eng, a young Chinese American man born in China but raised in California since infancy, struggles to be a good son to his parents. This desire often conflicts with his understanding of his authentic identity, working as a Chinatown tour guide who presents a caricatured stereotype of American views of Chinese people. His sister, Mattie, is conflicted in other ways, as she rejects Chinese influences by moving away and marrying a white man but makes money off of a Chinese cookbook.

For the parents, adjusting to US life has depended on deploying their Chinese heritage. Their travel business caters to demand for all things Chinese. While Fred has only one father, he effectively has two mothers, representing the conflicts between the old and new countries. Pa remains connected not only to the land of his birth but also to his first wife, Fred’s biological mother. Hyacinth, his second wife, was born in the United States. With her strong political conscience of anti-Chinese discrimination, she deliberately chooses to emphasize her Chinese identity. When the first wife comes to America, Pa’s efforts to interact with both women, even as his health declines, provide the context for Fred’s identity quest.