In the 1870s and 1880s, however, many Americans resented the presence of these Chinese immigrants, whom they saw as cheap labor and, therefore, an economic threat. These protectionist Americans pressured Congress to pass the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, which specifically restricted most Chinese from entering the United States and prevented those who were already in the country from gaining citizenship. To discourage the Chinese men who were already in the country from settling down and forming families, the act also barred Chinese women from entering the United States. In addition, anti-miscegenation laws prevented Chinese men from marrying non-Chinese women. As a result of these exclusionary laws, many Chinese who came to the United States in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries did so illegally. As illegal aliens, they lived underground lives, used fake identification papers, never mentioned their immigration status to non-Chinese people, and always avoided immigration authorities and the police. The Chinese Exclusion Act was not repealed until 1943.
In The Woman Warrior, although Kingston does not elaborate how her parents arrived in the United States, at least one of them must have arrived illegally. In China Men, the companion volume to The Woman Warrior, Kingston describes how her father used fake identification papers to gain entry into America and then, fifteen years later, sent for his wife from China. And in The Woman Warrior's last chapter, "A Song for a Barbarian Reed Pipe," in which Kingston discusses her childhood memories of talking about illegal stowaways arriving in San Francisco's Chinatown, Brave Orchid warns her daughter never to mention her parents' immigration status to anyone, lest they be deported. Not surprising, such a life of existing outside of mainstream America deeply affected Kingston and many Chinese immigrant families, whose enforced silence protected parents from being deported but psychologically and emotionally confused the children trying to assimilate into a new, foreign culture.
