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 festering up in the home of first generation Chinese immigrants. Throughout the book he relates the trials and tribulations endured by himself and his family in California, ranging from major events like the Great San Francisco quake at the beginning of the century to everyday occurrences like dealing with widespread racism in the white majority. In the end, the author relates his triumph in care Stanford College and later attending one of our nations most prestigious business schools. In doing so, he presents an Asiatic-American success story that serves as a tribute to the spirit and polish 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 past to try and build a library of books to convey the experiences of early Asian immigrant s. 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 fathers behavior is a fraud, but he does not mean this as a derogatory statement. Instead it is a subtle compliment to his fathers powerfulness 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 stories of immigrants building large businesses and b ecoming 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 amazement at the wealth of some of these people. At no point does he impute this wealth to a shedding of traditional Chinese ways or to a complete adoption of American attitudes either.