As Americans tried to put the Civil War behind them and marched toward the dawn of the twentieth century, what it meant to be an American continued to evolve. The realist movement that started in Europe eventually made its way to the United States. As the name implied, the realist movement sought to apply the sense of everyday reality and practicality to the writing of literature. How would the application of such simple approach play out on the psyche of this fledgling new nation called America?

The primary objective of the realist movement was to look at life itself as the subject and not just as the means to an end; to look at life as it is actually lived. In fictional writings, characters and narratives can be constructed to achieve desired ends. But when life is looked at as it is actually lived, it become apparent that reality works a little differently. Sui Sin Far helps us appreciate how the reality of the socioeconomic order fleshes out for Asian Americans.

Sui Sin Far’s work brings attention to the dearth of minorities, especially those that look like her, in the way that the American Dream was generally framed. The realists were part of an era that was synonymous with intellectual progress as well as the prosperity that resulted from industrialization. Yet the proceeds of that prosperity were far from being equitably distributed among Americans. Far was of mixed heritage –born of a Caucasian father and a Chinese mother. She chose to write from the point of view of an Asian American just so she could give a voice to that minority group who were largely residents of the Pacific Coast.

Her work also highlighted something very specific: The identity crisis faced by many mixed-race Americans. She referred to this phenomenon as the “mystery or her nature” (p. 1329). This mystery often of constitutes a problem for Americans who are between two worlds, being forced to deny one side of their heritage, or being forced to amplify one side over the other in order to get a better shot at the American Dream. The harsh reality that confronts individual of that category does not get blunter than the following statement made to the character Pan in one of her works:

“Don’t you see that you have to decide what you will be –Chinese or white? You cannot be both” (p. 1332).

Well, how can a person born of white and Chinese parent not be both? Again, for individuals of mixed race, this is not a mere rhetorical exercise, it is an existential issue. This is the what realism looks like in practical terms. In her work, “Its Wavering Image,” Far also illustrates other aspects of “the racial and cultural barriers both Chinese immigrants and Eurasians faced in their struggle to gain acceptance in the United States” and to get a bite at this the cake called American Dream (p. 1330).

So, as realists such as Far delved into the real lives of people, the clearer it became that Americans might have been in the same bed but were obviously having different dreams. One literary outlet that amplified that disparity was photography. Photo making became one effective way that realists portrayed life in America from a unique and explicit point of view. Pictured above is a portrait of a Chinese mother and her young child. Both are  in celebratory traditional Chinese outfit to illustrates the vibrancy of Asian Americans celebrating their heritage, in their communities, in San Francisco, California. But most often when the story of America is told, there are too few voices in them that speak to their stories and contributions to American experience.