position of power who controls the symbolic order of society. "Everything that an

Antillean does is done for the Other," continues Fanon, "because it is the Other who

corroborates him in his search for self-validation." 296 The position of Henry's father is

comparable to that of the Antillean who finds himself trapped in an incomplete, aborted

circle of recognition, which does not recognize him.

 In a sense, the immigrant father is already symbolically castrated, and facing

constant reminders of inadequacy is painful and traumatic. Freud claims that "the essence

and meaning" of traumatic events or situations lie in "the subject's estimation of his own

strength ... and in his admission of helplessness in the face of it."297 The daunting

challenges of adjusting to a new environment, if not ameliorated over time, can be

overwhelming and induce a profound sense of helplessness. For immigrants, the loss of

familiar selfobjects and the difficulty of acquiring them anew in an adopted land are

extremely painful and hard to deal with, for they feel suddenly bereft and stranded. For

the immigrant father in particular, constantly straining to cope with new challenges

without the nurturing assistance of selfobject brings about different negative repercussion

on another level.

 The conditions of the immigrant father's life, which come with his diminished

authority in society, also make him feel that his masculinity is under serious attack. In her

examination of gender and ethnicity in Chinese immigrant literature, Saul-ling Cynthia

Wong asserts, "In a society like that of the United States, ethnicity is ... always already

gendered, and gender always already ethnicized." She also points out that since "the

ability to cope" is considered as one component of masculinity in both Eastern and

Western culture, male immigrants find their masculinity seriously challenged.298 The