of immigrants building large businesses and becoming reasonably successful. There are families that own laundries and others, like Lowe’s, 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 attribute this wealth to a shedding of traditional Chinese ways or to a complete adoption of American attitudes either. Instead he admires the way his father can move smoothly between the two cultures and adopt the best qualities of each. Lowe recalls travelling around town with his father on business trips that took him from White San Francisco to the heart of Chinatown. In conducting business with both peoples, Lowe admires the respect his father is treated with by whites during the first part of the trip and then watches in amazement as he moves smoothly to dealing with the more traditional Chinese. In addition to respecting the first generation, he also talks of the advances made by the children of these immigrants. As Asian-Americans who had never spent any time in the “old-country” these children were more likely to reject the old culture in favor of the new American one, but this was not so. Lowe speaks of attending American schools and learning American ideals, but at the same time he speaks of how many of these ideas were tempered by more traditional Chinese principles. This is not a rejection of Chinese culture but paints a picture of the amalgamation that had to occur for these people to be productive in their new surroundings and relates a crucial aspect of the early Asian-American experience.Next, Father and Glorious Descendent is neither a “document of self-contempt” nor an attempt to “derogate everything Chinese.” At no point does Lowe ever condemn the Chinese or lament the fact that he was born into this culture. Lowe’s belief...
