Abstract: In Sky Lee’s Disappearing Moon Café, the three incestual incidents took place because of the ethical choices made by the early generations of immigrants in the Huang family, and the following confusion of ethical identities, both of which were closely associated with the unique ethical environment in the North American Chinese community. The ethical choices made by the early Chinese immigrants seem to be a result from suppression and distortion when the ethics of patriarchal kinship encountered the North American context. It embodies the spiritual disorientation of the early Chinese immigrants in North America and a kind of alienation of kinship ethics in a foreign land. The occurrence of the incestual incidents is closely related to the long history of the Chinatown community’s exclusion and segregation from the mainstream society. These tragedies fully indicate the hefty price the North American Chinese paid while readjusting and reconstructing their ethical order in a foreign land. The paper intends to argue that the author manifested the ethical value of his novel by critiquing the patriarchal lineage in traditional Chinese ethics and the unfair treatment of the Chinese immigrants in Canadian history as well.

Key words: Sky Lee, Disappearing Moon Café, patriarchal kinship ethics, ethical choice, ethical identity