Pardee Lowe Father and Glorious Descendent :: Essays Papers

Pardee Lowe Father and Glorious DescendentPardee Lowe penned his autobiography, Father and Glorious Descendent, in 1943. In the book, Lowe tells his story of growing up in the home of setoff generation Chinese immigrants. Throughout the book he relates the trials and tribulations endured by himself and his family in California, ranging from major events interchangeable the Great San Francisco earthquake at the beginning of the ampere-second to everyday occurrences like dealing with widespread racism in the color majority. In the end, the author relates his achievement in tending Stanford College and later attending one of our nations most(prenominal) prestigious business schools. In doing so, he presents an Asiatic-American success story that serves as a tribute to the spirit and ending of a people. During the time when the field of Asian-American studies began to emerge, many scholars looked back upon Asian works from the last(prenominal) to try and build a library of books to convey the experiences of early Asian immigrants. Father and Glorious Descendent was dismissed by many in the field as a document of self contempt and a humiliating book to the Chinese and thus it was dismissed in most academic circles. Lowe begins his book with the statement I strongly suspect that my obtains life is a fraud, but he does not toy with this as a derogatory statement. Instead it is a subtle acclaim to his fathers magnate to amalgamate into a foreign culture and become successful. This mirrors the fact that the rest of the book is a tribute to the ability of a people to adapt to a foreign land without losing themselves or their culture. It is for this reason that I believe Father and Glorious Descendent deserves to be studied by todays scholars and students.First, Pardee Lowes book is a compliment to the Chinese because it continually paints the first generation of immigrants in a very favorable light. This story is filled with numerous success sto ries of immigrants build large businesses and becoming reasonably successful. There are families that own laundries and others, like Lowes, that own large dry goods stores. The author never refers to these businessmen in a derogatory way and often he speaks of his childhood confusion at the wealth of some of these people. At no point does he attribute this wealth to a shedding of traditional Chinese ship canal or to a complete adoption of American attitudes either.