The writing on the wall

Resource Information

The work The writing on the wall represents a distinct intellectual or artistic creation found in University of Missouri-St. Louis Libraries.

Label

The writing on the wall

Statement of responsibility

Hilda Glynn-Ward ; with an introduction by Patricia E. Roy

Title variation

Writing on the wall : Chinese and Japanese immigration to BC, 1920

Creator

• Glynn-Ward, Hilda, 1887-1966

Contributor

• Canadian Electronic Library (Firm)

Subject

• British Columbia -- Fiction
• British Columbia -- Race relations -- Fiction
• Chinese -- British Columbia -- Fiction
• Fiction -- Historical
• Japanese -- British Columbia -- Fiction
• Japanese -- Fiction
• British Columbia -- Emigration and immigration -- Fiction

Genre

• Fiction

Language

eng

Summary

Annotation:

Member of

• Canadian Electronic Library, Canadian publishers collection
• Social history of Canada, 20

Cataloging source

CaACU

Dewey number

C813/.52

LC call number

PR9199.3.H64

LC item number

W75 2010eb

Series statement

Social history of Canada

Series volume

20

Summary expansion

With tales of a gruesome murder, a typhoid epidemic, corrupt politicians, and a Japanese invasion, The Writing on the Wall was intended to shock its readers when it was published in 1921. Thinly disguised as a novel, it is a propaganda tract exhorting white British Columbians to greater vigilance to prevent greedy politicians from selling out to the Chinese and Japanese. It was also designed to convince eastern Canada of British Columbia's need for protections against an onslaught of the 'yellow peril.'This novel is not exceptional in its extreme racism; it reiterates almost every anti-oriental cliché circulating in British Columbia at the time of its publication. While modern readers will find the story horrifying and unbelievable, it is in fact based on real incidents. Many of the views expressed were only exaggerated versions of ideas held throughout the country about non-Anglo-Saxon immigrants. The Writing on the Wall is a vivid illustration of the fear and prejudice with which immigrants were regarded in the early twentieth century