Afterword:
When I first thought about the incident that would start Jack Hong on this journey of personal growth and discovery, I wanted to show three sides of Jack’s life. One, represented by the Chinese unicorn, was the traditional Chinese cultural heritage of Jack’s ancestors. The keilin was an excellent representative of this heritage. Second, I wanted to show Jack’s more immediate heritage, in Chinese-American history. Third, I wanted to show Jack’s lack of personal roots in his own life.
Prior to the mid-1960s, a so-called bachelor society was a fact of life for many Chinese Americans. In the late 1800s, many more Chinese men immigrated to the United States than women and the Immigration Act of 1924 barred the immigration of Asian women for some years in an effort to prevent the cr
