"I was reading all of Louisa May Alcott. In her book, there is a white girl, and I suppose it's sort of daring, but she marries a Chinese guy. He has a long pigtail. He's fat, short, weird. He was mainly a character of fun and so stereotyped, although I suppose it was accurate-by that time they hadn't cut off their pigtails yet. Up to that time, I had identified with all those little women, then I saw this guy and I thought, "My God, that's who I'm supposed to be this little 'chinaman' guy." It ejected me out of literature. A few years later, I read Jade Snow Wong and she brought me back in. There were such wonderful illustrations of little kids that looked like me, and most importantly, written by a Chinese American woman. So, she gave me this great welcome and send-off, so I continued writing."
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Novelists from the United StatesAbolitionistsFeminists from the United StatesWomen activists from the United StatesWomen's rights activists
Original Language: English
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1989 interview in Conversations with Maxine Hong Kingston (1998)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Louisa_May_Alcott
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Louisa May Alcott
Louisa May Alcott (29 November 1832 – 6 March 1888) was an American novelist best remembered for her novel Little Women (1868).
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