Background
Yuen was born to a Chinese Jamaican family in Kingston.
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Patsy Yuen
Edit Profilemanager Costume designer organiser
Education
She studied marketing management in Miami, Florida.
Career
She began playing tennis while in school. In 1973, she was 21 years old and working as a salesgirl. There, she was the organiser of the Mission Jamaica Miami beauty pageant.
She would later return to Jamaica, where she worked as a manager for American Airlines in Montego Bay.
Achievements
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Yuen entered the Mission Jamaica pageant that year, breaking an "informal colour line" which had seen women of Chinese descent voluntarily restricting themselves from participation in such events. On 5 August 1973, she was named the pageant"s winner. She went on to a third-place finish in the Mission World 1973 pageant behind Evangeline Pascual of the Philippines and Marjorie Wallace, the pageant"s first American winner. However, Wallace was fired from the Mission World duties after the pageant. Organisers extended an offer to Pascual to complete the duties of Mission World for the remainder of the year, but without holding the title. When Pascual turned down that offer, organisers next turned to Yuen, who accepted. During the course of her duties, she expressed concern that "winners find themselves coping with financial commitments out of their reach". Yuen"s strong showing in the Mission World pageant elevated her to the status of a national hero in Jamaica, but also exposed her to controversy. While Yuen was growing up, the Chinese Benevolent Association had held annual Mission Chinese Jamaican pageants, but such "openly racialised" events ceased in 1962 after charges from Afro-Jamaican journalists that the ethnic pride on display there was "unpatriotic" and "un-Jamaican". After her win, she was forced into the awkward position of strenuously denying any connection to her Chinese heritage so that she would not "disrupt the official picture of the country"s identity", going as far as to make public proclamations that she preferred Jamaican national dishes like ackee and saltfish and entirely disliked Chinese cuisine. Two years later, Jamaica withdrew from participation in Mission World and Mission Universe events amidst public complaints that black contestants faced discrimination from judges and a lack of coverage by British news media.
