The Great Wall of Chinese America: Counterhegemonic boyhood masculinity and the Boy Scouts in New York’s Chinatown before World War II

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article analyzes a troop newspaper entitled The Great Wall created by Chinese American Boy Scouts in New York’s Chinatown in the late 1930s. I argue that Chinatown Scouts constructed a counterhegemonic boyhood masculinity through expressions of physical strength, ethnic heritage, and binational allegiances. Although Chinatown Scouts resisted stereotypes of Chinese Americans as feeble and Chinatowns as insular, they stopped short of articulating an alternative to the BSA’s masculinist vision. The Boy Scout movement in New York’s Chinatown before World War II urges scholars to give greater attention to the intersection of race, gender, and age in Asian American history.