Discrimination against Chinese Immigrants in America in Louis Chu’s eat a bowl of tea

ABSTRACT

Among hundreds of social phenomena and problems in societies’ life, discrimination is the most common issue. It is caused by the human being inclination to discriminate the others. Discrimination treats people not same with the other people, in which this treatment is made based on the characteristic which has been represented by that people.

Related to the phenomenon above, this study is aimed at describing kinds of discrimination experienced by the Chinese immigrants in America described in the novel Eat a Bowl of Tea, the struggle of Chinese immigrant against discrimination, and the discrimination happened in the novel reflect the real condition in 19th century. This research is a literary criticism using sociological approach. Sociological approach is suitable for this research because this analysis is based on the social phenomena, and the literary wok is influenced by the social phenomena and environment. The literary work is not written in the empty condition, many things influenced the appearing of literary works. The purpose of this research is to find the relationship between literary work and the condition of the society from many aspects.

After analyzing the data, the researcher finds several points about the real condition in 19th century in America. First, there are two kinds of discrimination happen in 19th century based on the novel Eat a Bowl of Tea. They are 1, Legal discrimination; is restricted to those areas of social intercourse connoting close degrees of intimacy on planes of equality. Laws or other practices restricting marriage between dominant and minority people fall under this heading. 2, Institutional discrimination; is discrimination which happened because of social activity. 3, Gender discrimination, discrimination against a person or group on the grounds of sex, sexual orientation, or gender identity. Unfair discrimination usually follows the gender stereotyping held by a society. Second, the discriminate society struggle against discrimination by using their action to show their struggle, and the last, the story in the novel Eat a Bowl of Tea reflects the real condition in 19th century.