In the second half of the nineteenth century, many East Asians traveled to the United States for various reasons. To Euro-Americans they were regarded as others who were unfamiliar and strange. Due to economic reasons pertaining to the growing number of East Asians, the American print media invented degrading stereotypes that eventually became standard characters in the frontier melodramas of the 1870s American Theatre. Through a historical perspective lens, this study examines three stereotypes of East Asian people and their application in four frontier melodramas that were written by prominent authors of the time: Two Men of Sandy Bar (1876) by Bret Harte, Ah Sin (1877) by Bret Harte and Mark Twain, The Danites in the Sierras (1877) by Joaquin Miller, and My Partner by Bartley Campbell (1879). The East Asian characters in the four plays fit into three main categories of stereotypes that evolved out of the growing prejudice against East Asian immigrants: the simpleminded Chinaman, the Chinese money-stealer, and the sexually ambivalent or feminized Chinese man.
I. Introduction
II. Immigration and Anti-Chinese Sentiment
III. Building and spreading anti-Asian stereotypes
V. The Chinese money-stealer
IV. The simpleminded Chinaman
VI. The sexually ambivalent or feminized Chinese man
VII. Conclusion
Works Cited