Jan McCutcheon
English 48B
Journal for Sui Sin Far







Author Quote: “But the Little One shrunk from her and tried to hide himself in the folds of the white woman’s skirt” (Norton 886).

Internet Quote: “In addition to Far's significance to the history of Asian American literature, these critics saw in Far's stories a complex and insightful treatment of Asian identity and the Asian immigrant experience. Commentators applauded Far's success in giving a voice to Asian immigrants through her many fictional narratives” (www.enotes.com/short-story-criticism/far-sui-sin)

Summary: The short story “In the Land of the Free” tells the story Chinese Immigrants. The woman, Lae Choo had been living with husband, Hom Hing, while he was working in San Francisco. When he found out his wife was pregnant, he sent her to China to give birth in their homeland and return with the child to join him later. When she arrives by boat with their two-year old son, the customs officers informs them the baby cannot enter the country without immigration papers. The baby is taken away from them until they can acquire the necessary papers. Lae Choo is soon fading away from depression due to being separated from her precious child. After a ten-month wait, she gives her jewelry to a lawyer to get the papers. Once they finally have the papers, she goes to the mission to retrieve her son, only to find that he does not remember her.

Response: It is easy to identify with the heartbreak of the parents suffer during the ten months waiting to get their child back. It might be easier for the father to endure, he has his work and he has only just met the baby for a few minutes, but the suffering of the mother is nearly more than she can endure and as she fades away from life we wonder if she will ever see her son alive. When she goes to retrieve him, she is told they have changed his name and although the story does not confirm this, they were most likely speaking English to him the entire time, as well. The missionary woman heartlessly tells Lae Choo “He had been rather difficult to manage at first and had cried much for his mother; ‘but children soon forget, and after a month he seemed quite at home and played around as bright and happy as a bird’” (Norton 886). While the mother was probably relieved to hear he was doing well, it must have torn her heart out to think he had forgotten her. The baby apparently adjusted to Americanization quite well, maybe too well, but we are left to wonder if Lae Choo will ever recover.