The Heathen Chinee - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The Heathen Chinee, originally published as Plain Language from Truthful James, is a narrative poem by American writer Bret Harte

Bret Harte

Francis Bret Harte was an American author and poet, best remembered for his accounts of pioneering life in California.- Life and career :...

. It was published for the first time in September 1870

1870 in literature

The year 1870 in literature involved some significant new books.-New books:*Thomas Bailey Aldrich - The Story of a Bad Boy*Thomas Archer - The Terrible Sights of London*Rhoda Broughton - Red as a rose is she...

in Overland Monthly
Overland Monthly
Overland Monthly was a monthly magazine based in California, United States, and published in the 19th and 20th century.The magazine's first issue was in July 1868, and continued until the late 1875. The original publishers, in 1880, started The Californian, which became The Californian and Overland...

. It was written as a parody

Parody

A parody , in current usage, is an imitative work created to mock, comment on, or trivialise an original work, its subject, author, style, or some other target, by means of humorous, satiric or ironic imitation...

of Algernon Charles Swinburne

Algernon Charles Swinburne

Algernon Charles Swinburne was an English poet, playwright, novelist, and critic. He invented the roundel form, wrote several novels, and contributed to the famous Eleventh Edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica...

's Atalanta in Calydon (1865

1865 in literature

The year 1865 in literature involved some significant new books.-Events:* June 9 - Charles Dickens is involved in the Staplehurst rail crash....

), and satirized

Satire

Satire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement...

anti-Chinese sentiment

Sinophobia

Sinophobia or anti-Chinese sentiment is the fear of or dislike of China, its people, overseas Chinese, or Chinese Culture...

in northern California

California

California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

.

Harte, who is known to have repeatedly opposed racial discrimination since as early as 1863, intended the poem to be a satire of the prevalent prejudice among Irish

Irish people

The Irish people are an ethnic group who originate in Ireland, an island in northwestern Europe. Ireland has been populated for around 9,000 years , with the Irish people's earliest ancestors recorded having legends of being descended from groups such as the Nemedians, Fomorians, Fir Bolg, Tuatha...

laborers in northern California against the Chinese immigrants

Overseas Chinese

Overseas Chinese are people of Chinese birth or descent who live outside the Greater China Area . People of partial Chinese ancestry living outside the Greater China Area may also consider themselves Overseas Chinese....

competing for the same work. However, the predominantly white

White American

White Americans are people of the United States who are considered or consider themselves White. The United States Census Bureau defines White people as those "having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa...

middle-class

American middle class

The American middle class is a social class in the United States. While the concept is typically ambiguous in popular opinion and common language use, contemporary social scientists have put forward several, more or less congruent, theories on the American middle class...

readership of the Overland and the periodicals that reprinted it — including the New York Evening Post, Prairie Farmer, New York Tribune
New York Tribune
The New York Tribune was an American newspaper, first established by Horace Greeley in 1841, which was long considered one of the leading newspapers in the United States...

, Boston Evening Transcript
Boston Evening Transcript
The Boston Evening Transcript was a daily afternoon newspaper in Boston, Massachusetts, published from July 24, 1830, to April 30, 1941.-Beginnings:...

, Providence Journal, Hartford Courant, and Saturday Evening Post (published twice) — interpreted and embraced the poem as mocking the Chinese. Following the September 1870 publication, the poem was included in a book by Harte titled Poems, released in January 1871. Several periodicals and books would republish the poem with illustrations.

The Heathen
Paganism
Paganism is a blanket term, typically used to refer to non-Abrahamic, indigenous polytheistic religious traditions....

Chinee, as the poem was most often called, was recited in public among opponents to Chinese immigration

Chinese immigration to the United States

Chinese American history is the history of Chinese Americans or the history of ethnic Chinese in the United States. Chinese immigration to the U.S. consisted of three major waves, with the first beginning in the 19th century. Chinese immigrants in the 19th century worked as laborers, particularly...

, and Eugene Casserly

Eugene Casserly

Eugene Casserly was an Irish-American journalist and lawyer.The son of Patrick S. Casserly, he served in the United States Senate from California....

, a Senator

United States Senate

The United States Senate is the upper house of the bicameral legislature of the United States, and together with the United States House of Representatives comprises the United States Congress. The composition and powers of the Senate are established in Article One of the U.S. Constitution. Each...

from California who was "vehemently opposed to the admission of Chinese labour", apparently thanked Harte in writing for supporting his cause. Harte's poem shaped the popular American conception of the Chinese more than any other writing at the time, and made him the most popular literary figure in America in 1870.

When asked about it in later years, Harte called the poem "trash", and "the worst poem I ever wrote, possibly the worst poem anyone ever wrote."

Further reading