Indian “Boarding School” and Chinese “Bachelor Society”: Forced Isolation, Cultural Identity Erasure, and Literary Resilience in American Ethnic Literatures

Abstract

Between 1871 and 1969, Native Americans (American Indians) endured the U.S. Federal Indian Boarding School system, while Chinese Americans faced enduring impacts from the Chinese Exclusion Act (1882–1943). Drawing on historical sources, this paper examines literary works by and about Native Americans and Chinese Americans, focusing on their sufferings under forced isolation policies. Through works like Ceremony and Gardens in the Dunes by Leslie Marmon Silko and Eat a Bowl of Tea by Louis Chu, this study illustrates how systematic oppression, characterized by erasure of cultural identity, manifested through institutions such as “boarding school” and “bachelor society”. It explores how forced policies (like assimilation and isolation) and institutional oppression, through cultural erasure and the severing of family ties, dismantled family structures, weakened cultural transmission, and led to identity crises, inter-generational alienation, and psychological trauma in marginalized communities. These ethnic narratives not only document histories of oppression but also highlight the ethnic groups’ resilience and their efforts to reconstruct multicultural identity through cultural heritage and community ties under multifaceted pressures.

1. Introduction

The period between the late 19th and early 20th centuries in the United States witnessed two significant, racially discriminatory policies: the Federal Indian Boarding School system (1871–1969) and the Chinese Exclusion Act1 (1882–1943). The former was designed to assimilate Native American children into Euro-American culture by removing them from their families and cultures (Churchill 2004). The goal was to “civilize” Indigenous children by eradicating their language, traditions, and identities, often through forced attendance at remote boarding schools like the Carlisle Indian Industrial School (Snyder 2019). The latter was the first significant law restricting immigration based on race, specifically targeting Chinese laborers. Passed during a time of economic tension and rising anti-Chinese sentiment, it barred Chinese immigration and limited the rights of those already in the U.S. Chinese Americans faced discrimination, exclusion from citizenship, and were often subjected to violence and segregation. Although the Chinese Exclusion Act was repealed in 1943, anti-Asian sentiment continued for decades (Chinese Immigration and the Chinese Exclusion Acts 2024). These policies, while targeting distinct groups—Native Americans and Chinese immigrants—reflect broader racial and ethnic control practices and were part of a broader framework of racialized government actions designed to control, assimilate, and exclude non-White populations. Both policies contributed to the marginalization of Native Americans and Chinese Americans and left deep, lasting impacts on the individuals and communities affected, as well as on American society at large. These two systems of racial control, although occurring in different historical and social contexts, functioning as mechanisms of exclusion and control, share a common goal: to undermine, suppress, alter, and even erase the cultural identities of these marginalized groups.

The existing literature has explored the historical background and cultural trauma of the boarding school system and the bachelor society in Chinatown but lacks an analogy analysis that places both within the same analytical framework. Combining historical facts with literary works, this paper will explore the forced isolation and cultural identity erasure experienced by Native Americans and Chinese Americans, with a particular focus on the Federal Indian Boarding School system and the Chinese “Bachelor Society”2 (Yung et al. 2006, p. 157), attempting to reveal the logic of “divide and rule”3 in U.S. ruling policies by focusing on the mechanisms of cultural erasure, the power dynamics of segregated spaces, and literary resistance pathways for identity reconstruction. At the same time, it highlights the literary resilience of oppressed groups and their ways of reconstructing cultural identity and integrating into society. This study approaches the topic from the perspective of cultural identity fluidity within postcolonial and diaspora theories, drawing on Homi Bhabha’s concepts of cultural hybridity and the “Third Space” (Bhabha 1994b, p. 38), as well as Stuart Hall’s theoretical views of cultural identity as a dynamic process. Both theorists emphasize that cultural identity is in a state of becoming rather than being inherent or fixed in the past. Homi K. Bhabha, in The Location of Culture (1994), argues that cultural identity is not fixed or static but is formed through negotiation in what he calls the “Third Space”. This space is a hybrid zone where different cultures interact, merge, and evolve. It is in this space, described as “being in the beyond” (Bhabha 1994b, p. 10), that new cultural forms and identities emerge, often blending and transcending traditional boundaries. For Bhabha, cultural identity is always in the process of becoming, rather than being a stable, predetermined essence. Stuart Hall in his essay “Cultural Identity and Diaspora” (1990), claims that cultural identities “undergo constant transformation” throughout time and space, as they are “subject to the continuous ‘play’ of history, culture, and power” (Hall 1990, p. 225). That is to say, cultural identity is “not an essence but a ‘positioning’” (Hall 1990, p. 226). In short, cultural identity fluidity refers to the dynamic and fluid characteristic of cultural identity, where it is constantly evolving and subject to change due to external and internal influences. This theoretical perspective is especially relevant in the contexts of migration, diaspora, and postcolonial studies, where individuals and groups navigate between multiple cultural norms, values, and traditions. Simultaneously, this analogical perspective could provide new avenues for dialogue in postcolonial studies, diaspora politics, and identity remolding.

The selected literary works are Ceremony (1986) and Gardens in the Dunes by Native American poet and novelist Leslie Marmon Silko, the key figure in the First Wave of Native American Renaissance, alongside Eat a Bowl of Tea (1961) by Louis Chu, a pioneer of Asian American literature. Silko’s novels reflect the trauma and literary resilience of Native American characters, as well as the process of acquiring what Native American (Ojibwe) writer and scholar Gerald Vizenor terms the “postindian” (Vizenor 1994, pp. 98–100) cultural identity in the face of forced assimilation. In Ceremony, the protagonist Tayo’s struggle with the trauma of boarding schools and war mirrors the broader experiences of Native Americans in a systematically oppressed society. Similarly, Gardens in the Dunes (1999) portrays the destruction of Indigenous communities and the complicated process of reclaiming hybrid identity amidst forces of racial oppression. In Eat a Bowl of Tea, Chu depicts the isolation of Chinese immigrants in the U.S. and the impact of exclusionary laws on their sense of belonging, while highlighting the new cultural identity characterized by an “Asian American sensibility” (Chin et al. 1974, pp. viii–ix), as expressed through family bonds and cultural traditions. These two terms, “postindian” and “Asian American sensibility”, possessing inherent unity and consistency, aim to challenge the negative stereotypes imposed on Native American and Chinese American communities, reclaim their histories, and assert a distinct and authentic cultural identity. The purpose of this study is to examine how these literary works reflect the suffering (forced isolation and cultural erasure) of these ethnic groups and communities while illustrating how literary narratives serve as a means of redefining identity in the face of systemic oppression and simultaneously discover how the exclusion and assimilation in American history deeply interconnected and interacted with broader themes of racial domination, cultural erasure, and the complex dynamics of hybrid identity formation.

2. Federal Indian Boarding School System and Cultural Erasure

The Federal Indian Boarding School system was established in the United States during the late 19th century as part of a broader effort to assimilate Native Americans into mainstream Euro-American society. This initiative emerged in response to the government’s belief that Native Americans were obstacles to westward expansion and economic progress and that their cultural practices, languages, and ways of life needed to be eradicated. The goal was to “civilize” Native American children by severing their ties to their Indigenous communities and forcibly re-educating them to adopt the values, language, and religious beliefs of White Americans. The system was largely set into motion by Richard Henry Pratt, a U.S. Army officer who founded the first boarding school at Carlisle, Pennsylvania, in 1879. Pratt’s motto “Kill the Indian, save the man” (Pratt 1973) became the guiding philosophy behind the boarding schools. He and others believed that Native American children could be “saved” from their so-called “savage” lifestyles by being separated from their families and communities and placed in institutions where they would be taught to speak English, practice Christianity, and adopt Western customs (Dunbar-Ortiz 2014, p. 151). These boarding schools were often located far from Native communities to prevent any contact with family members or traditional ways of life. The operation of these schools continued into the mid-20th century, with the government maintaining a policy of forced attendance until the 1960s. Children were often physically and emotionally abused (Smith 2007), forbidden to speak their native languages, and given new names (Magagnini 1997). They were subjected to harsh discipline and sometimes had to endure overcrowded conditions, malnutrition, and neglect. Those practices of cultural erasure and the trauma faced by students in the Federal Indian boarding schools have brought the long-lasting negative impacts, such as identity crises, family separation, and inter-generational alienation.

Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko reflects the theme of cultural erasure, specifically through the depiction of the Indian boarding school system and its devastating effects on Native American identity. Native girls in the distant and strange boarding schools, dressed “exactly like the white girls”, are told their former practices are “deplorable ways of the Indian people” (Silko 1986, p. 68). Similar to cows in the novel, Native children are frightened because “the land is unfamiliar”, and they feel “lost” (Silko 1986, p. 74). Silko describes the condition of (the protagonist) Tayo’s mother, who had been forced into boarding, “what happened to the girl did not happen to her alone, it happened to all of them” (Silko 1986, p. 69), portraying the methods of cultural suppression as part of a broader institutionalized racist project to impose Christian values. In Education for Extinction, David Wallace Adams considers the period from 1875 to 1928 as “a new phase” of the “war against Indians”, which was an “ideological and psychological” war “waged against children”, and education like this was the chief means of conquest (Adams 1995, p. 27). As Merrill Gates, president of the Lake Mohonk Conference, declared in 1891, what they actually needed was a “standing army of Christian school-teachers” to conquer the “individual man, woman, and child” in order to reduce the threat of the indigenous people who were called “barbarians” (Barrows 1891) and realize the Christian civilization. Tayo and his cousin Rocky were educated in Albuquerque Indian boarding School at Laguna Pueblo, around forty-five miles from their home. Therefore, they can be considered as the typical representatives of the Indigenous children. As Sara Davidson Cowling states, “approximately 12,000 Indigenous children are systematically stripped of cultural signifiers”, which contributes to “enormous cultural loss and inter-generational trauma” (Cowling 2018, p. 3).

In Gardens in the Dunes, set against the backdrop of the enforcement of Indian boarding schools, Silko expands on themes of cultural erasure and the legacy of the system, along with the Indian boarding school system’s impact on Native American communities. Indigo, from a Native American tribe near extinction inhabiting the Colorado Valley for generations, among the last of the “Sand Lizard People”, sent to the Sherman Institute in Riverside of California (Silko 1999, p. 60)—a Native American boarding school—encounters the systematic destruction of her culture, where she is subjected to methods of cultural erasure typical of the time, including the prohibition of speaking Indigenous languages and practicing her spiritual beliefs. The forced Christianization and the imposition of Euro-American values deprive her of her connection to her traditional roots of seed-saving, cultivation, and agriculture. The school system severs the transmission of traditional knowledge, spiritual practices, and community ties. Silko’s depiction of this process illustrates how the Indigenous children’s sense of identity is fractured as they are coerced into abandoning their ancestral customs. During the months of her stay at the Sherman Institute, Indigo witnesses “three girls from Alaska stop eating, lie listlessly in their beds, then die, coughing blood” (Silko 1999, p. 61). So she realized “she had to get away or she would die as they had” (Silko 1999, p. 61). The emotional and psychological scars left are evident in Indigo’s journey though she eventually escapes all—the superintendent, “the white teachers with the sour faces, the dormitory matrons with their cruel smiles and quick pinches”, and the other children who had teased her and pulled her hair (Silko 1999, p. 61). She is caught in a liminal space between her Indigenous heritage and the foreign world she is forced to navigate. This dislocation leads to a deep psychological alienation that persists even into adulthood, a trauma reflected in her fragmented sense of self. Illustrated by Tayo’s trauma and identity crisis and Indigo’s forced Christianization and cultural dislocation, both novels reveal how these schools aimed to sever ties to the indigenous cultures, causing inter-generational trauma and a struggle for identity and healing.

3. Chinese “Bachelor Society” and Forced Isolation

The Chinese Exclusion Act, passed in 1882, was the first significant federal law to restrict immigration based on race and ethnicity in the United States (Ow 2009) (Chinese Exclusion Act 2024). This legislation specifically targeted Chinese laborers, barring them from entering the country for ten years, later extended indefinitely (Lee 2002). As the first-generation Chinese American novelist and short story writer Fae Myenne Ng’s father said in her Orphan Bachelors (2023), “America didn’t have to kill any Chinese, the Exclusion Act ensured none would be born” (Ng 2023, p. 119). The Exclusion Act was part of a broader wave of anti-immigrant sentiment, fueled by racial prejudice, economic competition, and the desire to maintain White American dominance (Chang 2004, pp. 117–19). At the time, Chinese immigrants were largely concentrated on the West Coast, where they worked in industries such as mining, railroad construction, and agriculture (Norton 1924, pp. 283–96). The law was fueled by fears that Chinese laborers were taking jobs from White workers and were perceived as culturally inferior (Crean 2024) and “unassimilable” (Ngai 2014). The Chinese Exclusion Act had profound social, economic, and psychological consequences for Chinese Americans. It severely limited immigration, preventing family reunification, such as the phenomenon of “paper families”4 (Lau 2006, pp. 115–16, 132) and detainment on Angel Island5 (Lee 2003) which led to the creation of the “Bachelor Society” in Chinatowns across the U.S. With the immigration exclusion of women and children, males constitute an overwhelming majority in the gender ratio of the population. As a result, they often lived isolated lives, working in menial labor and living in bachelor-style housing. This demographic imbalance disrupted family structures and created social and cultural challenges, including a lack of familial and community support networks.

In addition to fostering isolation, the Chinese Exclusion Act institutionalized discrimination, rendering Chinese immigrants and their descendants “unfit for U.S. citizenship and as outsiders in American society” (Lee 2015, pp. 13–14). The condition of “definitely not white” (Wu 2013, p. 2) relegated them to second-class citizenship and solidified racial segregation, especially in cities like San Francisco, where Chinatowns became both places of refuge and sites of racial exclusion. These discriminatory policies also perpetuated stereotypes about Chinese people as “alien” and the impossible real Americans never belong in the United States. Instead, they are “perpetual foreigners at worst, or probationary Americans at best” (Lowe 1996, pp. 5–6), which affects generations of Chinese Americans well into the 20th century. Despite the legal repeal of the Exclusion Act in 1943, the damage to Chinese communities had lasting effects on their economic opportunities, cultural identity, and social cohesion.

Louis Chu’s Eat a Bowl of Tea (1961), as a representative work of American Chinatown “bachelor novels” and, as Elaine H. Kim comments, the cornerstone of Chinese-American literary tradition, portrays with astonishing truth the “intricate family, kinship, and social relationships”, as well as the “unique diversity” (Shan 2006, pp. 252–53), in New York’s Chinatown, while examining the lives of Chinese American men caught in the Bachelor Society, a result of the Chinese Exclusion Act and the gender imbalance in Chinatowns. Through the protagonist Ben Loy, Wah Gay (his father), Mei Oi (his wife), and Ah Song (the foil to Ben Loy, a youthful-looking and handsome bachelor in his mid-40s with whom Mei Oi has affairs), Chu explores themes of alienation, cultural dislocation, and the struggle for identity rebuilding. It was common for the old generation to be longtime away from one’s wife like the description of Wah Gay’s condition, “Twenty-five springs to be exact, since I (Wah Gay) left the village” (Chu 1995, p. 24). “Wah Gay lay alone and pensive on his folding bed, […]He was all alone now. Each time he had received a letter from his wife he began to relive the past” (Chu 1995, p. 24). The situation worsens due to the rigid legal provisions in the Expatriation Act of 1907 that any American woman who marries an alien would lose her citizenship (Tsiang 1942, p. 114). Such gold-seeking bachelors are also typical characters in other Chinese American literary works, such as Maxine Hong Kingston’s all kinds of clan relatives in China Men (1980) and the husband of No-Name Woman in The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts (1976), alongside with the grandparents of Lisa See in On Gold Mountain: The One-Hundred-Year Odyssey of My Chinese-American Family (1995). The lack of familial structures exacerbated the sense of alienation, creating a community that, while physically present, was psychologically and emotionally adrift and disconnected from both American and their native society and culture. These old isolated bachelors, unable to own normal family structures, almost can only satisfy their sexual desires through daydreaming fantasies, experiencing profound psychological and emotional tortures. In the “castrated” group, people seem to pay special interest in the topic of “the sexy story” and “everybody likes sex” (Chu 1995, p. 121). Even the newspapers they read, the news they listen to, and the focus of chat in public places such as barbershops are also concentrated on the newly married wife eloping, the husband “advertising for the whereabouts of his wife”, and the bachelor’s fantasy to “marry a female student” (Chu 1995, p. 110). Mei Oi was the rare Chinese bride in Chinatown with whom Ben Loy goes back to China to get married after serving in the Army during World War II because Congress passed the War Brides Act6 in 1946.

As a pioneering scholar of Asian American Studies, Elaine H. Kim emphasizes the connection between this particular phenomenon and the social and historical contexts in Asian American Literature: An Introduction to Their Writings and Their Contexts. Eat a Bowl of Tea “might seem to be merely a quasi-pornographically Chinese American novel” if the social forces that shaped those men’s lives are neglected. Actually, Ben Loy’s sexual impotence symbolizes the social impotence of generations of Chinatown bachelors constricted by genocidal Americans laws and policies” (Kim 2006, p. 119). Kelly Millett points out that sexuality “although of itself appears a biological and physical activity, it is set so deeply within the larger context of human affairs that it serves as a charged microcosm of the variety of attitudes and values to which culture subscribes” (Millett 2000, p. 23). So sexual politics basically means “one group of persons is controlled by another” (Millett 2000, p. 23) by sexually related methods. Therefore, in the oppressive surroundings, Chinese Americans—especially the young generation, like Ben Loy—struggle to balance their fractured dual identities—caught between the demands of maintaining Chinese cultural traditions that constantly marginalize them in America, and the desire for integration into mainstream society. Chu’s and the Chinese American writers’ novel reveal the theme of complexity of rebuilding identity in a community fractured by isolation, emotional longing, and systemic discrimination partially as the consequences of the Exclusion Act.

4. Continuum of Social Control System

Both the Federal Indian Boarding School and the Chinese “Bachelor Society” (a result of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and other Acts prohibiting the entrance of any foreign-born Asian woman, prohibiting Chinese Americans from intermarriage, testifying in court and the purchase of land (Chang 2004, pp. 44, 161, 174)), through systemic policies and institutional oppression, form two distinct yet fundamentally similar systems of social control. As dual products of colonialism and racism, they demonstrate profound parallels in their impact on cultural identity, family structures, and psychological well-being, and sought to dismantle the social fabric of these groups, forcing them into identities defined by marginalization and causing long-lasting trauma.

Regarding the institutionalized practice of cultural erasure, Indian boarding schools enforced cultural cleansing through militarized management. In parallel, the Chinese Exclusion Act and its subsequent amendments created gender imbalances by prohibiting the immigration of Chinese women. This systemic gender segregation effectively severed inter-generational cultural transmission, forcing minority communities into a crisis of cultural survival. In terms of the systematic destruction of family structures, boarding schools forcibly separated children from their families, creating “institutional orphans”. The resulting rupture of family bonds led to the breakdown of traditional kinship systems, producing a “Lost Generation”. In Chinatowns, gender segregation led to the emergence of a “bachelor society”, compelling men to rely on the “paper son” system to maintain family lineage. Both models disrupted normal family reproduction—boarding schools achieved this through physical separation, while Chinatowns experienced it through legal exclusion—together forcing them into identities defined by marginalization. As for the mechanisms of inter-generational trauma transmission, cultural suppression generated complex post-traumatic repercussions. The descendants of Indian boarding school survivors exhibit symptoms of historical trauma, evidenced by significantly higher rates of alcoholism and suicide (Evans-Campbell 2008). Similarly, the prolonged emotional repression experienced by Chinese bachelors led to a “split self” phenomenon. Zhou Min, a Chinese-born American sociologist focusing on immigrant life and ethnic assimilation, especially the Asian American community, found that even third-generation Chinese Americans continue to struggle with profound identity conflicts (Zhou 1992). This trauma extends beyond individual experiences—it is the residual imprint of institutional violence in collective memory. In summary, both systems share the epistemological foundation of colonialism: Indigenous peoples were objectified as “savages” in need of civilization, while Chinese immigrants were constructed as “impossible subjects” incapable of assimilation. The industrial training in boarding schools and the service economy in Chinatowns both served the racialized labor division. As Johan Galtung pointed out, such structural violence (Galtung 1969) normalized oppression, turning victims into unwitting accomplices in their own suffering.

All in all, these two systems form a continuum of U.S. social control: the former sought to eliminate cultural differences through forced assimilation, while the latter maintained racial boundaries through passive exclusion. Their legacies persist today, evident in the substance abuse crisis on Indigenous reservations and the “model minority” dilemma in Chinese American communities. Deconstructing these historical traumas requires confronting the structural nature of institutional violence. Literary resistance and resilience offer both a cultural dimension and a practical pathway for healing.

5. Literary Resistance, Resilience, and Reconstruction of Cultural Identity

Native American and Chinese American writers demonstrate the way of literary narration serving as a powerful tool for resistance and survivability, offering a means to rebuild cultural continuity and recast cultural identities in the face of historical elimination.

5.1. Literary Narrative as Resistance to Historical Erasure

Native American and Chinese American writers have long used literature as a means to document histories of oppression and resist cultural erasure. By reflecting on the traumatic experiences of forced assimilation and systemic discrimination, these writers offer a powerful counter-narrative to the dominant historical discourse. Through storytelling, they reclaim their voices, resist cultural annihilation, and, within the historical and political context of their time, strengthen communal and ethnic cohesion while enhancing cultural visibility. In short, ethnic writers empower marginalized communities through the justice of literature—just as Chinese American writer and cultural activist Frank Chin, who identifies as a cultural heir to Louis Chu, famously declared: “Writing is fighting”. Through the self-defined narratives, they attempt to fight for the more truthful representation of American ethnic experiences. In Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony, Native American storytelling becomes a means of resistance against the violent history of colonialism and the U.S. government’s efforts to erase Indigenous cultures. In her novels, Tayo, a young Laguna Pueblo man, and Indigo, the Sand Lizard girl, respectively, after experiencing the trauma of World War II and the destruction of his community by governmental forces, struggle to reconnect with their inheritance and cultural identity. Silko emphasizes the significance of Native traditions, language, and ceremonies, illustrating how these practices serve as powerful tools for cultural survival, psychological healing, and decolonial identity reimagining. Tayo’s journey to self-discovery involves the rediscovery of his people’s stories, showing that by embracing their cultural tradition heritage, it is possible to resist the psychological effects of cultural erasure and reconnect with the land and community. Similarly, in Louis Chu’s Eat a Bowl of Tea, Kingston’s China Men (1980), Lisa See’s On Gold Mountain (1995), Fae Myenne Ng’s Orphan Bachelors: A Memoir (2023), and King-Kok Cheung’s article “‘Report a Crime’: Fae Myenne Ng’s Orphan Bachelors” (Cheung 2024, p. 256), Chinese American writers document the lives of “Chinamen” who endured forced isolation as a result of the Chinese Exclusion Act and the deep cultural dislocation in “Bachelor Society”. These Chinese-American writings capture the profound alienation and tough struggles these men experience. Through these works, they critique the racial prejudice that underpinned the exclusionary laws while also celebrating the communal strength of the Chinese group, which has fought for survival in adversity by maintaining cultural practices.

The American ethnic writers like both Silko and Chu illustrate how creating ethnic literature functions as a mode of resistance—a way to resist cultural erasure and ensure the survival of traditional knowledge. By giving voice to the experiences of their communities, Native American and Chinese American writers have not only documented histories of oppression but also to some extent strengthened their cultural continuity. Dr. Julie Davis states that “Boarding schools embodied both victimization and agency for Native people and they served as sites of both cultural loss and cultural persistence” (Davis 2001, p. 22). In summary, ethnic literature strengthens communal identity and aids in understanding the past while reshaping a new, diverse, and hybrid cultural identity. It does so through the survival experiences of ethnic minorities in the hybrid surroundings, what Homi Bhabha calls the “Third Space” and the “in-betweenness”, as well as through the retellings of folklore and mythology.

5.2. Cultural Survival and Multi-Identity Remodeling by Literary Narrative

The themes of cultural survival and identity reconstruction under the duress of forced isolation and cultural erasure are prominent in the works of Native American and Chinese American authors like Leslie Marmon Silko and Louis Chu. These writers explore the trauma of assimilation policies, forced migration, and cultural displacement, while also emphasizing the vital role of literary narratives in restoring cultural continuity and reshaping new hybrid, multicultural identities.

The healing journeys of Tayo and Indigo, Silko’s protagonists in Ceremony and Gardens in the Dunes, emphasize the survival of Indigenous traditions through reclaiming their Native heritage and ceremonial practices, which objectively promotes the reinvention of their “postindian” identities. As Gerald Vizenor claims in Manifest Manners: Postindian Warriors of Survivance (1994), postindian challenges static, colonial representations of Native American identity. Vizenor argues that the “Indian” is a fabricated construct imposed by colonial discourse, reducing Indigenous peoples to stereotypes and historical relics. The “postindian”, in contrast, resists these imposed identities through acts of survivance—a blend of survival and resistance—embracing fluid, self-determined, and evolving cultural identities (Vizenor 1994, pp. 98–100). Highlighting cultural survival intimately tied to the land is an important form to express this theme. When Indigo returns home, she collects both seeds (the old ways) and flower bulbs (a new interest) for replanting, so the survival of cultural identities in the face of globalization and erasure is deeply connected to solidarity and innovative practices. Both protagonists, the Native American veteran Tayo and Indigo, deeply wounded in body and soul, were estranged from their homelands yet ultimately returned to their reservations. It is through their reconnection with the land, traditional tribal stories, songs, ancient languages, and sacred ceremonies that they heal and reclaim their new identities. Silko confesses that the core of her writing is “the attempt to identify what it is to be a half- breed or mixed-blooded person, what it is to grow up neither white nor fully traditional Indian” (Seyersted 1980, p. 15), and for that reason she “hesitates to say that she is representative of Indian poets or Indian people”, so she admits she is “only one human being, one Laguna woman” (Seyersted 1980, p. 15), emphasizing the complexity and multiplicity of her literary characters and her own multiple identity as an ethnic writer. Those “institutions (Boarding schools), intended to assimilate Native people […] and eradicate Native cultures, became integral components of American Indian identities” (Davis 2001, p. 22). Through literature and storytelling, postindian figures deconstruct colonial narratives, reclaim Indigenous agency, and assert a dynamic presence beyond the confines of victimhood or disappearance.

Similarly, facing overwhelming challenges of isolation and systemic racism, Louis Chu in Eat a Bowl of Tea attempts to reconstruct the culturally hybridized identity of Chinese Americans in the “bachelors society” of Chinatown. As Frank Chin describes, this identity is characterized by a distinct “Asian American sensibility” achieved through the preservation of Chinese cultural rituals and customs. As for Chinese American, “Asian American sensibility” emphasizes a noticeable cultural and literary perspective shaped by the experiences of Chinese Americans navigating between Chinese heritage and American societal influences. This sensibility resists both Western stereotypes and the romanticization of Chinese identity, instead embracing a complex, self-defined cultural expression. This should be a key reason why Frank Chin endorsed Louis Chu’s Eat a Bowl of Tea as “the first Chinese-American novel set against an unexoticized (authentic) Chinatown” in the introduction: “Fifty Years of Our Whole Voice” in Aiiieeeee! An Anthology of Asian American Writers (Chin et al. 1974, p. xxxi). Although the definition of “Asian American sensibility” is contested, and its meaning has varied across different periods, the concept consistently seeks to highlight a hybridized identity as a new kind of American—one that is neither purely Chinese nor purely White American. Ben Loy, a second-generation Chinese-American, returns from World War II and, under the War Brides Act, brings Mei Oi to the U.S. through an arranged marriage. Mei Oi, eager to reunite with her father, finds herself in a tightly controlled Chinatown community, where she and Ben face immense pressure to produce children. However, Ben struggles with impotence due to these expectations. Isolated and confused by his lack of affection, Mei Oi falls into an affair with Ah Song. Fortunately, having experienced all the scandal, shame, and turmoil, Ben Loy and Mei Oi started anew in San Francisco, and the “bowl of tea” given by a Chinese herb specialist finally treated his impotence and restored his masculinity. As the epitome of the surviving families in Chinatown, their family went through the process of structural change and finally achieved a new life pattern during cultural integration. As Elaine H. Kim comments, Eat a Bowl of Tea “portrays the Chinatown community on the threshold of change, from China-orientation to American-orientation, from a community of aging bachelors to a community of young families” (Kim 2006, p. 110). In situations of forced migration and restricted social mobility, cultural survival often requires negotiation and balance between preserving traditional practices and adapting to new realities. Chu’s characters reflect this negotiation, as they seek multi-identity through the maintenance of their cultural practices in a hostile, exclusionary society.

Both Silko’s and Chu’s works demonstrate the power of cultural memory and literary narrative in resisting the forces of erasure. Native and Chinese American writers reflect the notion of cultural survival as an active, dynamic process that resists the violence of cultural erasure. According to Robin Cohen in Global Diasporas, the process of cultural survival involves both resistance and adaptation to external pressures (Cohen 1997, pp. 170–71), so influenced by multiple cultural, social, and historical factors, both the protagonists and the authors themselves undergo a dual struggle—a process of “negotiating identity” (Bhabha 1994a, pp. 196–98)—as part of the ongoing and dynamic formation of identity. Immigrants leave their homeland in search of a new place to establish their lives, while those under colonial rule lose their cultural and political autonomy. As David Der-wei Wang describes, colonized subjects and immigrants both experience a “great cultural severance and abandonment” (Wang 2007, pp. 47–48). Whether as the colonized or the oppressed among immigrants, they are forced to inhabit an interstitial space—a world of “in-between” cultures. Within the tensions and conflicts, they reshape their pluralistic and hybrid identities, which are “neither fully one nor the other”, but rather “both and neither” at the same time, with the characteristics of heterogeneity, hybridity, and multiplicity.

6. Conclusions

This article has examined the forced isolation, cultural erasure, and literary resilience of marginalized communities in the United States led by the Indian Boarding school system and the Chinese Exclusion Act. Despite the formal differences—boarding schools involved systemic cultural erasure, while bachelor societies were a product of exclusionary policies—both systems left a lasting effect on their communities. These parallels show the broader impacts of systemic political actions to suppress marginalized groups and their cultures by seeking to sever the inter-generational connection and cultural ties, revealing that isolation and cultural erasure greatly influence both collective well-being and the transformation of individual cultural identity. Silko uses literature as a form of resistance by portraying the protagonists’ reclamation of Native stories and ceremonies, thereby healing through cultural revival and rebuilding their intercultural identities, “postindian”. Similarly, Louis Chu shows his struggle to narrate the life stories and inherit the culture (tradition) of the isolated Chinese American men, which acts as defiance against systemic discrimination, while reflecting the process of reshaping Chinese American transcultural identity. In a word, these literary works do more than document histories of oppression—they preserve and reclaim the voices and experiences of communities that were silenced by colonialism and discriminatory policies. These ethnic writers use their works to illustrate how literary narration serves as a form of cultural resilience in the face of cultural suppression. At the same time, they depict the fluid process by which cultural identity transforms through negotiation and exchange, evolving into a hybrid identity—a cycle of “hybridity–survival–renewal” (Sheng et al. 2019, p. 277). Thus, in the context of cultural exchange, cultural identity can never return to an idealized, pure, and authentic origin of the past, and instead, it continuously hybridizes through cultural transformation and integration. People can only blend the essence and characteristics of traditional culture with modern civilization, drawing sustenance from both to shape a pluralistic cultural identity in new discourses. This ultimately leads to a culturally complementary, multicultural, and symbiotic global community (Sheng et al. 2019, p. 279), which echoes Homi Bhabha’s concept of “vernacular cosmopolitanism” (Bhabha 1997, pp. 30–31).

As the United States continues to confront issues of racial and cultural inclusion, the contemporary relevance of these historical experiences is still significant in today’s discussions about immigrant rights, cultural diversity, and national identity/multiculturalism. Finally, further research is needed to continue exploring the role of literary narration in the reconstruction of heterogeneous and multicultural identities, particularly within communities that have experienced cultural erosion and erasure. By examining these literary works and exploring other communities that have faced cultural erasure, we can gain a deeper understanding of their ongoing struggle for cultural survival and integration, as well as the role of ethnic literary narratives in the hybridization of marginalized groups’ cultural identities.