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Final Assignment

Submitted By: Muhammad Awais Khan (263185646)

Submitted To: Dr. Fatima Sayeda

Minority Literature

Course: ENGL-516ASP25

Department of English (FCCU)

Title:

Framing the Other: An Intersectional Study of The Chinese Lady

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This study explores the first-hand experiences of Afong Moy, a multiply marginalized

individual in American society who suffers from ‘otherness’ not only as a ‘woman’ but also as an

immigrant in a white society. Afong Moy is a protagonist of Lloyd Suh’s play, The Chinese Lady

(2019). Lloyd Suh is an American playwright, originally from Indianapolis, Indiana. Being an

immigrant in America, he has portrayed the image of an immigrant attractively by engaging the

audience’s attention throughout the narrative, and he pictured ‘Afong Moy’ outside the country

as an ‘other’ for the natives.

The play opens with a scene where Afong narrates her story of how she was brought from

Guangzhou to America in 1834 when she was only fourteen, “I am fourteen years old, and newly

arrived in America” (Suh 12), her parents sold her to an American couple. They presented her “I

will be on display here at Peale’s Museum” (Suh 12), as a living exhibit in front of the audience.

From the very young age of fourteen, she started performing as the first Chinese lady, exposed to

the American audience (society). Throughout the play, she performs for captivated audience,

showcasing aspects of Chinese culture, norms, and values, including her bound feet, eating

habits, and clothing, “I understand it is my duty to show you things that are exotic, and foreign,

and unusual.” (Suh 13). The scenes always open with a beautifully decorated stage with different

attire, vases, and artifacts that belong to Chinese culture, described as a ‘box’, focusing on how

an individual can feel him/herself as a caged animal among natives who came there to see the

performance, just because the performer is ‘other’. Over time, the play follows Afong’s

transformation and her changing perspective as she deals with her identity crisis and the impact

of her ‘exhibition’ on her life. By the end of the play, Afong Moy appears as an entirely

transformed personality, reflecting the effect of being an ‘other’ in a society where you are

perceived as a minor, not only based on your gender, but also because of your race or ethnicity.
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The best thing about the play is, it is based on the true story of a Chinese woman who has

suffered in America. They put Afong Moy on display as a sideshow attraction for amusement,

objectifying her as a piece of art from some distinct part of the world. This also reflects the

theme of dehumanization. This play uses Afong’s story to offer insights into the double

marginalization of being Afong as a woman (gendered marginalization) and her Asian American

ethnicity (ethnic marginalization), and a quick reflection on themes of otherness and belonging.

This study argues that the experiences of Afong Moy mirror the sufferings of women,

particularly when they are displaced from their roots, through the lens of ‘intersectionality’ by

Crenshaw. Kimberlé Crenshaw is a Black American scholar and civil rights activist and has

worked for black American women who face discrimination in their lives not only due to their

gender also because of their color.

This research deals with ‘intersectional’ study of The Chinese Lady, drawing insights

from Crenshaw’s scholarly article, “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black

Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory, and Antiracist Politics”

(1989). By applying Crenshaw’s unique idea of intersectionality, “broaden feminist and antiracist

analysis” (Crenshaw 139) to The Chinese Lady, this study aims to investigate how Afong Moy

looks towards her own self as a marginalized individual within the marginalized community or

society. This study explores how an individual’s experience turned out to be an experience of the

whole community.

In her paper, “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black

Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory, and Antiracist Politics”,

Crenshaw critiques how legal systems and feminist discourse often sideline black women and

center white women as the “standard” (145) subject of (sex) discrimination. When a black
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woman faces discrimination that stems from both race and gender, her claim is treated as ‘hybrid’

and is often excluded from either category (race, gender). This eventually leads to the erasure of

unique experiences faced by (black) women or any multiply marginalized individual. In her

paper, she claims that black women's experiences are not accurately captured by feminism

focused on white women. Based on these arguments that Crenshaw has made, this research

explores Afong’s experiences in America as an Asian American woman, exoticized and

sexualized due to her multiply marginalized identity.

Afong Moy, like the Black female plaintiffs Crenshaw refers to, does not fit the

“standard” model of either racial or gender discrimination, as a Chinese person, she faces racial

exclusion (she’s seen as exotic, foreign, and unassimilable), and as a woman, she is sexualized

and treated as a passive, decorative object, but as a Chinese woman, her oppression is not simply

racial plus gendered, it’s specific to the intersection of both. This echoes just as black women’s

discrimination is not exactly glorified by feminism focused on white women, Afong’s suffering

is also not truly valued if we do not analyze it through the lens of intersectionality, exploring

both gendered and racial discrimination (Crenshaw). In her paper, Crenshaw states that,

“Discrimination against a white female is thus the standard

sex discrimination claim… the fact that it has particularly

harsh consequences for Black females places Black female

plaintiffs at odds with white females.” (Crenshaw 145)

Looking through the window of the intersection, this statement supports the main argument that

Afong Moy’s experience is intersectional and invisible in a system that tries to separate race and

gender: Afong Moy’s marginalization, like that of the Black women Crenshaw references,
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reveals the limitations of single-axis frameworks. Her identity as a Chinese woman places her

outside the “standard” victimhood recognized by both feminist and racial justice systems,

resulting in a layered erasure where her oppression is simultaneously racial, gendered, and

silenced. Afong Moy’s position as a Chinese woman in 19th-century America places her at a

discursive and legal margin: too ‘female’ to be read solely through a racial lens, too ‘foreign’ to

be embraced within mainstream feminism. Like Crenshaw’s Black female plaintiffs, she

becomes hyper-visible as an object of spectacle, yet invisible within systems of advocacy and

rights. In the play, Afong Moy tells that,

“What is happening is a Performance. For my entire

life is a performance. These words that you hear are not

my own. These clothes that I wear are not my own.

This body that I occupy is not my own.” (Suh, scene 1)

This powerful dialogue by Afong in scene 1, where she says that ‘my life is not my own’

it is scripted by others, performed for the white gaze, and mediated through interpreters (first

Nathaniel, then Atung). This reflects Judith Butler’s idea that identity is performative, “that

identity is performatively constituted by the very ‘expressions’ that are said to be its results”

(Butler 25), and more importantly, that some identities are forced into performance more than

others, especially marginalized ones. Afong’s race, gender, and class intersect to deny her an

authentic self. This supports Kimberlé Crenshaw’s intersectionality: Afong isn’t just a racialized

or gendered subject; she is shaped by both, in ways that erase her individuality entirely. Her

statement that her “body,” “clothes,” and even “words” are not her own symbolizes the total

alienation she experiences. As a minority woman, her body is objectified (fetishized bound feet,
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doll-like image), her voice is erased or translated, and her identity is flattened into stereotype

(“the Chinese lady”), Afong Moy becomes not a person, but a living metaphor, a symbol of

China, rather than a human being. Afong Moy says that she is “the first woman from the Orient

ever to set foot in America” (Suh), calling herself as an ‘orient’ in front of whites (oxidants)

resonates with idea of orientalism introduced by Edward Said in his book Orientalism explained

as, “The Orient was almost a European invention, and had been since antiquity a place of

romance, exotic beings, haunting memories and landscapes, remarkable experiences” (Said 1),

which shows how the West often constructs the East as a decorative, inferior, voiceless Other.

This moment of describing her “to illustrate and demonstrate the form and function of my feet.”

(Suh) is a clear dramatization of intersectional erasure, as a Chinese, she’s viewed as alien and

ornamental, as a woman, she’s viewed as passive, beautiful, and silent. Only an intersectional

reading explains the depth of this dispossession: race, gender, and class converge to dislocate her

from her own self completely.

In scene 2, when Atung says that “she says things like this, I translate them as: ‘she says

yes, she is excited.” (Suh) illustrates that Afong is spoken by Atung (man) and by white society

(race), and how female voices are misrepresented through these blending (intersectional)

experiences. This misinterpretation of Afong by Atung aligns with Crenshaw’s (1989) idea that

women of color are often not only excluded from feminist discourse but are actively

misrepresented within both race- and gender-based frameworks:

“Because the intersectional experience is greater than the sum of

racism and sexism, any analysis that does not take intersectionality

into account cannot sufficiently address the particular manner in which

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Black women are subordinated.” (Crenshaw 140)

Apply this to Afong: her identity is not just mistranslated, “so the act of translation is more

like…interpretation than direct recreation” (Suh); it is reconstructed to erase complexity, where a

woman’s voice is interpreted according to the requirement of the audience (society), a uniquely

intersectional form of silencing. Afong Moy says, “But most of the time, when I dream, I dream

of the Room” (Suh) she mostly dreams of the Room reflects how long-term marginalization

becomes internalized. Her identity is shaped not by who she was, but by how she is seen. The

“Room” is more than a physical space; it’s a metaphor for intersecting oppressions: racial

exoticization, gendered objectification, and social isolation. It is where she is both visible and

invisible, central and silenced. Crenshaw's intersectionality theory helps here to explore Afong’s

racial, gender, and classed identity limit her access to space, freedom, and even memory. The fact

that the Room dominates her dreams shows the psychological impact of being reduced to a

symbol rather than seen as a full person.

In conclusion, Lloyd Suh’s The Chinese Lady offers more than a theatrical retelling of

Afong Moy’s life, it is a reflective meditation on how systems of race, gender, class, and history

intersect to silence, objectify, and ultimately erase minority women from dominant narratives.

Through the lens of intersectionality, Afong Moy’s experience is not merely one of racial

discrimination or gendered objectification, but of a compounded marginalization that renders her

hyper-visible as a spectacle and simultaneously invisible as a subject.

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As Kimberlé Crenshaw argues, identities like Afong’s do not fit into single-axis

frameworks, “Single-axis framework erases Black women in the conceptualization, identification

and remediation of race and sex” (Crenshaw 140). Her suffering is the result of race and gender

working together, reinforced by legal exclusion, cultural fetishization, and economic

disempowerment. In reclaiming Afong Moy’s voice and positioning her as both a character and a

witness to history, The Chinese Lady resists the historical forces that sought to erase her. The

play does not offer closure or justice; instead, it offers testimony, a theatrical act of resistance

that confronts the audience with the cost of their gaze. Through intersectionality, we see that

Afong’s story is not just her own, it is emblematic of how minority women have been written out

of history, even as they were put on display.

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Works cited:

Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. Routledge, 1990.

Kimberlé W. Crenshaw, Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist

Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics, 1989 U. CHI.

LEGAL F. (1989).

Crenshaw, Kimberle. "Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence

against Women of Color." Stanford Law Review, vol. 43, no. 6, 1991, pp. 1241-1299.

Said, Edward W. Orientalism. Pantheon Books, 1978.

Suh, Lloyd. The Chinese Lady. Theatre Communications Group, 2022.

de Beauvoir, Simone. The Second Sex. 1949. Translated by H.M. Parshley, Vintage Books, 1989.

Bhabha, Homi K. The Location of Culture. Routledge, 1994.