In the introductory note to the original edition of her autobiography, Jade Snow Wong attempts to justify her life story to the prospective readership. The text we, the anonymous public, are about to read is to be read as one author's, one woman's, one Chinese American woman's "attempt to evaluate personal experiences, many of which were not 'typical'". She continues to explain how these experiences were significant to the formative aspect of her character, her identity in twentieth century American society, which in turn, may not necessarily equate that of any other American. Thus, even before we turn to the actual story, delivered in the objective third person singular point of view, apologies for what is about to come are being made.
My question goes towards the need for such a self-justification: does it - the prefaced apology - arise because the text may pose a threat to someone's ego? Is it perhaps a customary cultural tradition of Wong's patriarchal upbringing to say that 'you are sorry before anything bad begins to take place'? Is is because she is a woman? Is it because she is a woman and a member of a large yet conveniently marginalized ethnic minority in the US? Is it the time itself (1960) when the autobiography was published, a rather conservative period in American social life? Is it something her editors had 'encouraged' her to do, as a way of combating the coming hailstorm of discontent?
As I voice these thoughts, I also realize that they may or may not be of high consequence to the way I read Wong's life story at the beginning of the twenty-first century. I am tempted to put instant labels on the text, a fashionable trait in our otherwise unfashionable postmodern sentiment.
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