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The Illegible Pan: Racial Formation, Hybridity, And Chinatown In Sui Sin Far’S “‘Its Wavering Image’”, Caroline Porter

Asian American Literature: Discourses & Pedagogies

Drawing upon Judith Butler’s theory of performativity, this article offers an interpretation of “‘Its Wavering Image’” that explains the biracial main character, Pan’s, process of racialization. The argument is two fold: first, the paper contends that in this story, Sui Sin Far theorizes that race is performative rather than biological. Race does not come from characters’ bodies, but is rather an incorporated performance of codes. Pan’s race, then, depends not on her parentage or her biology, but on the “codes” she internalizes and embodies, codes that are fleshed out throughout the article through historical contextualization of San Francisco and Chinatown. …