a magnificent distraction

The first time I read this book was less than a year ago, and it was a very different read the second time around. First off, it wasn't nearly as difficult to figure out what was going on -- and this includes Hwang's summary of the Madam Butterfly opera. Second, and more importantly, I knew Butterfly's secret from the beginning, which changed everything. Instead of having thoughts about Hwang's problematic representation of women, I was thinking a lot more about representations of race. In the class I took last summer (which is when I first read the play) we spent a lot of time talking about the problematic representation of gay men in this play -- the way that (plot spoiler!!) Gallimard laughs at Song after he strips...the way Gallimard "becomes" Butterfly at the end...the way the only solution to homosexuality that Hwang presents us with is suicide/death. All of that is still really problematic (it's not like Hwang's play changed at all since the last time I read it), but this time around since i knew where that was going, I was thinking about how race was portrayed.

I think Song's ironic use of the word "Oriental" and the way Gallimard is played the fool because of his presuppositions regarding Asians (men and women alike) is interesting, and the connection between Puccini's opera and the plot of this play creates a kind of tension between (mis)conceptions about Asians. Since Gallimard is working for the French government during the Vietnam War, and since people generally have an awareness of the US' disastrous involvement in that war, all of his suggestions seem immediately preposterous and he looks like a huge fool for believing what he says. Also, Song's sarcastic remarks about what Asians really want (that being forceful domination by the West) are ludicrous, but Gallimard buys into them wholeheartedly...there are so many moments like this where Gallimard looks like an idiot and Song comes off looking really intelligent and clever. However, Song's cleverness is also really closely tied to his deception, which detracts from it a bit. Also, the ending (the scene in which Song strips for Gallimard) detracts from this in general because of Gallimard's laughter (that annoying, problematic laughter again!) and Song's dismissal. In some ways, I guess this is my attempt to find some sort of redemptive aspect of the play because I was so disappointed by the ending the first time I read it, but I actually enjoyed the rest of the play.

The structure of this novel is really interesting -- it's divided into six chapters (kind of), but each "chapter" also has one or two shorter sections attached to it that are more abstract and often tell the stories of fabled and/or historical Chinese figures. These shorter sections aside, the six main chapters revolve around the story of different male relations in the narrator's life, and each of those men lives through some of the historically famous events of Chinese American men and of Chinese men in America. Through them, we experience the planting and farming of the sugar cane fields in Hawai'i, the building of the transcontintental railroad, the process of immigration and Angel Island, the Vietnam War, and the experience of trying to get by in America while family members who remained in China continue to ask for help (especially during the Cultural Revolution). It's interesting that Kingston doesn't give us these chapters in order, but instead begins with the story of the narrator's father when he first came to America and ends with her brother upon his return from the Vietnam War. In between these two narratives, she also gives us a second narrative about the narrator's father -- one that picks up after the first one left off -- as well as the stories of several of the narrator's male ancestors. But it's the shorter pieces that are more interesting. These shorter pieces present the reader with folk heroes, but also with the history of Chinese immigration to America ("The Laws") and a rewriting of Robinson Crusoe (in "The Adventures of Lo Bun Sun") with a Chinese man as the main character. While there's a possibility that Kingston's use of myths could have gone awry and exoticized or mysticized Chinese people as "others," I don't think she did. I think she successfully used these in-between stories as a means by which to rethink the history of Chinese immigrants and Chinese Americans.

Another aspect of the novel that I thought was really interesting is evident in the title: China Men. That is, this novel's focus revolves around men, even though the narrator appears to be a woman. It takes a close look at the narrator's father (twice), grandfather, great-grandfather, brother, and (in the chapter called "The Making of More Americans") several different men in her life (another uncle, a non-blood uncle, etc.). Women, therefore, are portrayed as obligations most of the time -- someone the men have to return to, report to, send money to -- but are rarely heard from. Even the in-between chapters, the main characters are men. This is not to say that Kingston is failing to represent women, or that she's portraying them negatively -- it's simply to say that she's not interested in them for the purposes of this novel, and so we only see/hear them through the men. I'll have to reread The Woman Warrior before I can comment further on this.

I've had this book sitting on my shelf since I picked it up at a discount book sale during my undergrad years. Now that I've read it, I wish I'd read it sooner -- it's really moving. At the foundation of Lee's novel is a huge question about what it means to be "related." Most obviously, this manifests itself through the main character, Doc Hata, and his strained relationship with his adopted daughter, Sunny. But it's there in other ways as well -- Sunny's son (Tommy) and his use of clowning to get others to like him, even to the point of almost dying; K and the relationship she forges with Hata based on their mutual "Koreanness;" Mary Burns and her attempts to integrate Doc Hata into her life (and the lives of the other Bedley Run inhabitants) -- underlying the events of Doc Hata's distant past, near past, and present. This question is interrogated by Sunny, who senses that Doc Hata needs her more than she needs him and isn't afraid to confront him about that. It's also complicated by his experiences in World War II as a Korean by blood, a Japanese by nationality, and a medic by trade. Questions about Doc Hata's allegiances and ties -- questions about who he owes what to -- plague him throughout his entire life until finally, as an old man, he simply wants to have connections to somebody. But even that changes when, finally, he realizes he just wants to take care of the people he feels a connection with -- to help their lives be easier for them.

The title is also interesting. It's Sunny who points out to Doc Hata that his life has been a life of gestures, a life of constant performance without deeper meaning. At first, it seems untrue and unfair since Doc is so apparently-beloved by everyone in Bedley Run. But as the novel wears on, this observation permeates the narrative, bleeding through into moments that should have depth (such as with his relationship with Mary Burns) but begin to seem transparent in their lack of it. Lee's use of analepsis has an interesting relationship with this "gesture life." The novel exists in three different times: the distant past (WWII), the near past (Sunny's childhood/adolescence), and the present (Doc Hata's life alone in Bedley Run). At first, the novel takes place in the present. It doesn't take long for the near past to start invading on that narrative, and we begin to get a better understanding of Doc Hata based on the information that seeps through about Sunny. However, the distant past doesn't really start to become an issue until halfway through the novel when suddenly it is not only alluded to, but begins to occupy large sections of the narrative. About 2/3 of the way through the novel, the near and distant pasts almost blot out the present, leaving little space for it between them. The more we learn of Doc Hata's past, the more it sort of makes sense that he lives his "gesture life" and keeps people at bay...and the more we begin to understand why he is the way he is (to an extent).

Okay, this is the second time I've read this unusual memoir, but I can't say I feel like I fully understood it this time either. Sadly, the blurb on the back of the book helped quite a bit, since it explained that each section is about a different person -- historical figures, family members, etc. This is one of the most unusual aspects of the memoir...that it isn't actually entirely about the author. It's about her mother, Joan of Arc, Yu Guan Soon, Greek goddesses, and herself. Of course, this is part of why I'm still struggling to understand it -- it's a memoir told through the stories of several women, and then there's the inclusion of poetry. Well, not only poetry. Poetry, letters (typed, handwritten, you name it), photographs, prose, different languages (Chinese and/or Korean calligraphy, French, English, Latin) -- it's more than just pastiche, it's downright collage-like.

Right, so the writing itself. It's not straightforward...it's very fragmented and also "experimental" (if I can use that word to describe her use of language). Cha likes to take words that are typically written as one word (like "anything") and split them with a large space (to become "any  thing"). The effect is really surprising -- I wouldn't have thought this would have made a noticeable or significant difference, but it really did. Whenever I came across a word like that, I found myself pausing over it and really thinking about its meaning. She also plays a lot with form. For instance, there's an entire "chapter" told half on the left page, half on the right page. It's hard to explain, but basically there are two voices, and one of them is stuck on the left page while the other is stuck on the right page. Anytime there's writing on the left side, the right side is blank. Once the left side stops, the right side starts. It's one of the most interesting methods for writing a dialogue (or dialogue-like stuff) I've ever seen.

Cha's method of telling her story by including the stories of others reminds me of the way that Oskar (from Günter Grass' The Tin Drum) and Saleem (from Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children) both believe that in order to tell one's own story, one must first tell the stories of one's ancestors. While Oskar and Saleem are both fictional characters, Cha's narrative is founded on a similar premise and effectively uses it to communicate key aspects of Cha's life. Instead of focusing on significant events from her life, as most autobiographers do, Cha focuses on mental and emotional states; this is not to say that the memoir is completely devoid of significant events, as it's not, but that its primary focus lies elsewhere...on a more internal plane.

Someday, I hope to understand Cha's memoir with more confidence, but for now I'll have to live with impressions that are sometimes vague and sometimes less vague.

This is the second time I've read this book, and I've come out of it with significantly different conclusions. Last summer, I read it for a class and in our discussion many of my classmates talked about it as a sex-positive book -- one that not only portrays sex in a positive light, but specifically child sexuality. With that in mind, I was a bit surprised to find that while I had tended toward agreement with my classmates less than a year ago, upon revisiting the novel I realized I actually thought it was not something that could be considered "sex-positive." Yes, many of the characters have sexual encounters in the novel. Yes, most of those who do seem happy about it. But no, I don't think Linmark is asking his reader to be happy about it. Katherine Katrina-Trina Cruz, a fifth-grader like the rest of the main characters, has a boyfriend who's a high school senior (star of the football team, etc.) and who she has been sexually active with for a while now. But the last chapter, "F for Book Report," leaves the reader with a sad look at Trina's relationship. While she claims to be happy and says that she feels sorry for a character in the book she read who remains a virgin, Linmark's narration invites us to feel sad for Trina instead. Every time she praises her "babe" in this chapter, it's clear that she believes what she says, but that what she says is not the truth. For instance, she says that "Erwin not dicking around when he say he love me [...]. And he no like met get pregnant, too. So everytime we go all the way, he always bring his box of rubbers cuz he no like me get pregnant too young too soon. I love him so much" (148). While Trina seems to think that Erwin's words are sincere and his actions gallant, they hardly seem so to the reader. Her insistence that he's not "dicking around" when he claims to love her highlights its false ring. Also, the way she proudly explains that he uses condoms as a consideration for her falls short of making the reader sympathetic to Erwin. Instead, the reader is able to see what Trina is not: that Erwin is using her, that he doesn't love her, and that he most likely cares about whether or not she gets pregnant because of how that would affect him and his football playing (not because of how young she is). Similarly, Edgar is extremely proud about his sexuality, and flaunts it for all to see. This is definitely something I would see as a positive portrayal in this book -- homosexuality is not denigrated here, and in that sense I'd say you could argue the book is sex-positive...except that it's not sex positive. Sure, Edgar's having a sexual relationship with Mr. Campos, the school janitor, and he lets Vicente witness this relationship. However, it's a "secret." The only reason he lets Vicente watch is because he's made Vicente his special project: he recognizes some of Vicente's desires and thinks that he can help Vicente by forcing him to come out of the closet. But when Vicente reveals the secret of Edgar and Mr. Campos to the rest of their friends, Edgar denies it, saying "I would never give my youth up that fast. I not that stupid. 'Sides, he stay married already. Vicente just jealous cuz I can get what I want and he no can" (135). The fact that he denies it (and then gets angry enough to call Vicente a faggot) indicates that he isn't proud of his relationship with Mr. Campos. Instead, he tries to hide it by giving reasons that can be interpreted as the very reasons he's not willing to admit to the relationship: he's given up something he can't get back, it isn't a smart thing to do, the man is old enough to be his father, and he can't get what he really wants (Scott Baio, or a young and attractive lover). That Edgar, who is usually so flagrantly proud of his accomplishments (everything from the Christmas presents he gives to the music he records off the radio) is not proud of what he does with Mr. Campos in the janitor's closet after school, and the reader can't really feel happy for him even when he purports to be happy himself. I will say this, though: Linmark's novel may not ask us to be happy about the imbalanced relationships these kids are engaging in, but he does ask us to be happy about their sexuality itself. Edgar has found happiness in being who he is -- and doing so in the open, for all to see. Trina has also found happiness in her attractiveness, unlike her teacher (who is her foil in many ways). Orlando Domingo, the school's high achiever, finds happiness in dressing up like Farrah Fawcett (in "Kalihi in Farrah," 22-25). Each of these kids has a sexuality, and when they embrace it the results are viewed in a positive light. When others take advantage of that sexuality, the results are viewed in a negative light. The most explicit example of this is Vicente and his encounter with Roberto Freitas in "Mama's Boy" (138-139). Vicente, who hasn't yet come to terms with his sexuality, has a sexual encounter forced on him and his experience is wholly tragic. Early in the novel, the chapter "Rated-L" (16-19) makes a significant point about truth and lies that runs throughout the entire novel: when characters tell the truth and follow their hearts, they are rewarded with happiness; when characters lie and deny their hearts, they are punished with misery.

One of the most unusual attributes of Ng's novel is the backwards chronology (each chapter chronologically precedes the one before it). I think this form nicely parallels the central event of the novel: Ona's suicide. In Ng's novel, Ona's suicide is at the heart of the family's breakage and Leila's issues regarding marriage (among other things). It has cast a shadow across all of their lives, tainting their memories and embittering them in various ways. The backward chronology of the novel places the suicide squarely in the middle of everything by making it the focus from the very beginning. Leila brings it up on the very first page, and from that point forward every mention of Ona, every detail about her unhappiness or her relationships is highlighted because of Leila's previous introduction of it as the event that altered the family irreparably. Besides that, the first 8 chapters deal with the aftermath of Ona's suicide and its many repercussions (some of which are more obvious while others would not ordinarily appear connected except that Leila makes those connections for the reader); then, three entire chapters are spent on the suicide and Ona's funeral (the immediate effects); finally, the last three chapters are devoted to pre-suicide life...but Ona still plays a key role in that life and all of her unhappinesses and difficulties are once again highlighted as key focal moments. In other words, Ng's novelistic structure is a formal match for the novel's primary catastrophe.

On a completely different note, I really enjoyed the fact that the novel took place in San Francisco's Chinatown and the Bay Area in general -- since I've spent a significant amount of time in the city during the past few years, being lucky enough to have friends who live there, I was familiar with most of the businesses and locations the characters visited. This added another dimension to the novel for me because I was able to firmly situate myself within the novel's world in a way that's different from the imagination-based way I do that when I read a book about an unfamiliar location.

I also thought Ng's representation of the immigrant's struggle was very well-rounded and portrayed a wide variety of different first- and second-generation immigrant experiences. Mah's story is one very particular story: a woman who comes to America with her husband, is abandoned, and finds another man to marry in order to gain citizenship so she can raise her children here. She works in a sweatshop and eventually begins her own business. Leon's story is another: a man who comes to America by purchasing a paper identity, and therefore his citizenship. Then, of course, there are Mah's daughters -- each one with a different attitude and a different set of problems...and a different relationship to and attitude toward her Chineseness. Unlike Okada's No-No Boy, where different characters feel like they're types more than they feel like they're people, Ng's characters seem like real people. They represent certain experiences, but are harder to put into boxes (although I think it's too reductive to say that Okada's characters are only types, as they are complex and have depth as well).

This is the second time I've read this collection, and I find myself equally enmeshed in Rosal's fresh language and poetic style. After reading Inada's Legends From Camp, I couldn't stop thinking of how Rosal's poetry is influenced by hip-hop in a way that's similar to how Inada's poetry is influenced by jazz (although with fewer explicit references to that influence). The first time I read this collection, I did my best to hear the rhythms and get the "beat" of the poems down -- that was before I had the privilege of hearing Rosal give a reading of his poetry. This time, I had Rosal's voice, Rosal's rhythm, Rosal's sound in my head as I read the collection, and it was a completely different experience. I remembered listening to him read "St. Patrick" at one of my professors' houses last fall, and I dug up the video and have embedded it at the end of this post. Experiencing Patrick Rosal reading his poetry is a wonderful experience -- he's so full of energy and rhythm, and he uses his entire body in the telling of his poems.

In any case, this second reading of the collection was immensely different than the first one. I also thought a lot more about the collection's title, and paid closer attention to Rosal's note at the collection's beginning that explains what a kundiman is and some of its cultural background: "The kundiman is a traditional Filipino song of unrequited love" and "was a coded desire, a manifest longing in song, a beloved poetic subversion composed and such in a time [of colonization] when overt expressions of love for the Philippines were looked down upon" (xi). I tried to keep that in mind as I read, and it helped me focus my reading (poetry is considerably difficult for me to read as I never really know if I'm "doing it right") a little more. I was able to see more of what Rosal might have intended when he said that this collection was meant to honor this tradition and be read as "love songs for America." The subjects of his poems tend to be people and places in his life, and reading them as embodying the spirit of the kundiman helps connect them to each other and shows the tissue that binds them together to be Rosal's love or admiration of them.

Okay, here's the video of Rosal performing "St. Patrick" from Autumn of 2008. Enjoy!

This novel was a little bit strange. I mean, it was very straightforward as far as content and narrative trajectory are concerned, but it was weird because a lot of the characters felt like examples instead of substantive people. I think there are two categories for these "examples" too: the first-generation Japanese immigrants living in America, and the second-generation Japanese Americans born to those immigrants.

With regards to the first-generation immigrants, there are four main characters/groups: families like the Ashidas and like Ichiro's family who moved to America with the single-minded purpose of reaping what they could sow (wealth, education, etc.) without partaking in or assimilating to anything even remotely related to American culture; families like the Kumasakas who came for a similar reason but eventually grew to like it enough that they purchased a house after a few decades and decided maybe it wasn't so bad; families like Emi's who came for similar reasons, grew to like it, but asked to be repatriated when it became clear that America was going to put them in the internment camps; and families like Kenji's who were more open-minded about their immigration and grew to not only like America, but to adapt to and take on some aspects of American culture and lifestyle. Of all these families, the ones like the Ashidas and Ichiro's (or at least, his mother) are villainized -- they are often blamed (directly and indirectly) for their children's struggles and failures, and they are depicted as being literally insane. On the other end of the spectrum, the Kumasakas are depicted sympathetically while Kenji's father is blatantly idealized. In some ways, the novel is walking a fine line between providing an interesting array of characters and illustrating the complex factors at play in the younger generation's decisions to enlist, accept the draft, or become no-no boys and simply being an assimilationist text. I think it's unfair to say it's actually assimilationist propaganda, but I also think that it could be argued that an assimilationist vein runs throughout the novel.

As far as the second-generation Japanese Americans are concerned, there are also four types: those like Freddie who are no-no boys and are failing to survive now that the war has ended; those like Ichiro who are no-no boys but ultimately find a way to re-enter the lives that were interrupted by internment; those like Kenji who enlisted and either died or were severely injured because of the war, but who ultimately feel that it was worth it; and those like Eto who enlisted and fought but remain angry and insecure because they have returned and are not really being treated any more respectfully than before the war. In this case, Kenji is romanticized and the reader is asked to be sympathetic toward Ichiro.

The point of all of this is that Okada's novel tells a compelling story, but at times seems like its sole purpose is to get the American public (most likely the non-Japanese portion of it) to better understand and sympathize with the plight of Japanese immigrants and Japanese Americans in a post-WWII America. That's not to reduce the novel to this one point -- I think there are a lot of other very interesting things going on in this text, but I wanted to focus on this particular aspect of it.

This play was much more abstract than I originally expected. I'll admit that I'm still puzzled by the idea of the "Chickencoop Chinaman." Chin introduces this character in the very first scene, when Tam says that he is "THE NOTORIOUS ONE AND ONLY CHICKENCOOP CHINAMAN HIMSELF" -- the "result of a pile of pork chop suey thrown up into the chickencoop in the dead of night and the riot of dark birds, night cocks and insomniac nympho hens running after strange food that followed" (7). He says that "in the beginning there was the Word! Then there was me! And the Word was CHINAMAN. And there was me. [...] I lived the Word! The Word is my heritage" (6). He goes on to say that he was not born: "Created! Not born. No more born than the heaven and earth. No more born than nylon or acrylic. For I am a Chinaman! A miracle synthetic" (8). So I get that he's supposed to be more a product of his environment than the result of generations of cultural history -- he's born of a word, the product of a mad night in an Oakland chickencoop. But is that it? It hardly seems like Chin would continue bringing up this Chickencoop Chinaman thing throughout the entire play if there wasn't more to it than that. I'm stuck, though. What else could it mean? What is the deeper meaning? Maybe there isn't one??

Okay, so on to something I have more conclusions about. There's this whole idea of cultural blending that continues to plague the play. Tam's speech is described as jumping "between black and white rhythms and accents" (6), and when he meets Charley Popcorn, the old man is thoroughly confused. Popcorn tells Tam, "The way you talked, why, I took you for colored over the phone. [...] Why would a Chinese talk like a colored man?" (40) -- a question that Kenji understands more thoroughly. Kenji's nickname is "BlackJap Kenji" because he "hated yellow-people" (20) and also talks like Tam does. But Tam's nickname was "Tampax" -- a nickname that grew out of another nickname: "Ragmouth" for his "fancy yakity yak" (26). The speech patters aren't the only indication of different cultures rubbing off on each other. Kenji's apartment itself is a visual indication of the influences that informed him: "Tatami on the floor. The walls are covered with posters of black country, blues and jazz musicians that clash with the few Japanese prints and art objects" (9). And of course, there's Lee herself -- a woman who's at least part Chinese, but has been passing as white. In fact, even her ex-husband thinks she's entirely white -- Tam is the only one who realizes she's not. Despite that, she's supposedly on her way to Africa and gets offended when other people try to criticize Blacks. Chin makes an interesting statement about what it means to be American, what it means to be Asian American, African American, etc. -- and how these different identities relate to and rub against each other.

Finally, how can I pass over the Lone Ranger and Tonto? Here's Tonto, played by the same actor who plays Tom. But when he was growing up, Tam was certain that the Lone Ranger was Chinese. He surfed the radio waves listening for a Chinese presence, and he thought he'd found it in the Lone Ranger: "I heard of the masked man. And I listened to him. And in the Sunday funnies he had black hair, and Chinatown was nothing but black hair, and for years, listen, years! I grew blind looking hard through the holes of his funnypaper mask for slanty eyes. Slanty eyes, boys! You see, I knew, children, I knew with all my heart's insight [...] he wore that mask to hide his Asian eyes! And that made sense of me. I knew he wore a red shirt for good luck. I knew he rode a white horse named Silver cuz white be our color of death. [...] And he was lucky Chinaman vengeance on the West...and silver bullets cuz death for a Chinaman is always expensive. [...] I knew the Lone Ranger was the CHINESE AMERICAN BOY of the radio I'd looked for" (32). But when the Lone Ranger turns out to be an old, white racist and Tonto is willing to butcher his perfectly good English to speak in the broken English the Lone Ranger insists he use, Tam is deeply injured (as symbolized by the gunshot to his hand -- a significant choice of places on the body since Tam is an aspiring author).

Murayama's novel(la) may be a short one, but it's not lacking in substance. One aspect I am very interested in is the way Murayama uses language. The novel is written in English...but...the English used is often pidgin English, incorporating Hawaiian words, phrases, and slang in addition to words and sentences in Japanese (with translations following in parenthesis). This doesn't alienate the reader, but it definitely makes them aware of their relationship to this story and its characters -- for myself, not being from Hawaii or of Japanese descent, I was reminded that this was someone else's world, someone else's culture. For someone who is from Hawaii and/or of Japanese descent, the experience of reading this novel would be much different. Since one of the novel's primary themes revolves around issues of nationality vs. cultural heritage, the use of language creates a kind of tension that helps complicate this idea. The protagonist is an American citizen, but the language he uses is a medley representing different heritages (one of which is Hawaiian -- something he doesn't have in his blood). This subtly brings up the idea of America as melting pot, and serves as a nice counterbalance to the post-Pearl Harbor view of anyone of Japanese ancestry (regardless of nationality or citizenship) is unable to assimilate and is actually incapable of learning English.

I was also really interested by the motif of the body in this novel. There is a struggle between the mind and the body throughout the story, as Tosh and Kiyo are both highly intelligent, but are unable to pursue an education and are forced to do manual labor instead. The title itself brings up Tosh's argument about how he just wants to be in control of his own body, his own life. Tosh's and Kiyo's attempts to become successful boxers (relying on their bodies without the accompaniment of their minds) indicate their reliance on their bodies to free them from their situation. At one point, Kiyo even says that he has no other option -- schooling won't get him a good enough job, and neither will anything else he could do. Most of the other eldest sons in the camp have given up on their minds (never enjoyed school, gave into their parents' pressure to be filial without questioning the system, etc.) and labored in the fields solely with their bodies. When Kiyo joins the military, he makes a trade: he signs his body over to the military in order to release it from the bonds of his filial duty. It is only by bartering with his physical self that he is able to simultaneously escape and fulfill his filial duties. But the specific means by which he gets the money -- learning to "padroll" (a method of cheating by knowing the odds and learning to throw the dice a certain way) -- revolves around physical prowess combined with mental proficiency. He has to be able to train himself to throw in a particular manner, relying on his movements and his brain to win the money his family needs. Murayama represents the body and the mind as being two great but different powers: the body is the physical embodiment of self that cannot be separated from the intellect (which Tosh and Kiyo have in abundance, but are never able to capitalize on). It is only by using BOTH the body and the mind that Kiyo is able to move forward with his life.

I don't quite know where to begin with this novel. It was certainly not a happy novel, but it was still good. I think the fire motif was one of the most interesting elements of the novel. Fire is everywhere -- in cultural folklore (the fox-daemons), in physical contact, in sexual attraction, in Peter's suicide, in Big Eric's death, and more. I'm not sure exactly what to make of all this fire imagery. The relationship between fire/heat and love/lust is a fairly common one, but Chee seems to be doing something more complicated than that here. Also, the explicit relationship between fire and the fox-daemons (introduced in the Prologue, of all places) shifts this motif away from that overused one. In any case, fire definitely seems to be a kind of release, a burning-away of extra or unwanted things...but that's pretty weaksauce as far as interpretation goes. "Hm, let me think, the fire seems to burn stuff." Yeah. We got that.

Moving on, I also think Chee is doing something unusual with narration here. For the most part, the novel moves forward chronologically and is narrated by Fee. However, it's broken down into four sections and the third one is narrated by Warden. Oddly, this section also has significant chronological overlap with the fourth/final section, in which the narration returns to Fee. If one were to remove the third section, the novel would continue relatively unimpeded (albeit lacking a complexity that that section introduces, and also lacking some information that would fill in the gaps -- which is what the fourth section is relegated to doing at this point). Given the otherwise-consistent nature of the narrative, I'm not entirely sure I understand the full purpose(s) of this deviant third section. For the most part, I think it's productive, and it does allow for a refreshing outsider's view of Fee.

Fee's sexuality kind of gets overshadowed by Big Eric's molestation of him and the other choir boys...something I'm not entirely sure I like. While Chee goes out of his way to make a point that what Fee feels and is is different from what Big Eric feels and is -- in other words, that being gay is an entirely different thing than being a pedophile -- I think that the lack of attention given to Fee's sexuality could potentially be misleading. I mean, it's true that Fee's feelings for other boys (specifically Peter) is introduced before he is molested, but it's also true that his fixation on Peter and his later obsession with / attraction to men and boys who look similar comes dangerously close to making Fee's "type" look very similar to a pedophile's "type" or "preference." Also, the fact that Fee ultimately gives in to Warden makes him all too similar to Big Eric in a way that I don't think Chee was going for. For the most part, Edinburgh is a gay-positive novel (I mean, even Peter says he wishes he could have returned Fee's love...which one could read as him wishing he could have been gay). BUT. Yeah, but...I think the way the cycle of abuse starts to repeat itself is not entirely innocent of implicating Fee as a potential pedophile. After all, he fell in love with a boy who died at a certain age and after that he constantly seeks out other boys/men who resembled that first love. This fixation on a certain age group and look reminds me all too much of one Humbert Humbert -- a connection that doesn't do any good for the gay-positive reading of Chee's text.

In any case, I also want to make sure I address the issue of names here. Fee, well, I'm not entirely sure about the connections except that I think it relates to the idea of a price that has to be paid. A fee, a toll of sorts. I haven't worked the rest out, but in the vague confines of my mind it makes sense. Big Eric, well, I think the important part of his nickname is the "Big" part -- he plays a big role in the boys' lives, he fails to realize he's "big" (i.e. grown), he is the "big" event -- the defining moment -- of their childhoods (not in a good way, of course), etc. Bridey, well, I'm not sure how someone named Albright comes to be called Bridey...and then play the role of the "housewife" (which Fee and Bridey both allude to several times in the final section) who Fee repeatedly picks up and carries places (like a groom carries his bride) and gets down on one knee to propose to. And of course, let's not forget about Warden...the disturbing/disturbed boy who smiles after murdering his own father and setting fire to his house -- a smile Fee soon realizes was a victor's smile borne of the misconception that he finally had control over Fee (in much the same way a jailer, or warden, has control over his inmates). Not to mention, Warden is the guard who ultimately tests Fee's innocence (a test he sort of fails and sort of passes) and determines his fate in many ways.

Chee's novel, while not a happy one (as I said before -- and I really liked Fee and Bridey together and wanted them to remain blissful...a wish I knew was futile from the start), is definitely a powerful read. I think Chee gets some unusual political points across and explores a sensitive topic in a way that doesn't glorify the sexual aspects of molestation while simultaneously not downplaying the trauma that results from molestation.

This collection has an interesting structure. The book is divided into five parts, and it's a palindrome (Parts I and V have 1 poem, Parts II and IV have 6 poems, and Part III has 2 poems). Parts I and V seem to be "bookends" in that they both appear to be narrated from "the present" and kind of ease the reader into and out of the collection. Part III is a kind of turning point, shifting away from the boyhood of Part II by focusing on loss and being lost, separation from family, the confusion of a new place. This section sets up Part IV nicely because the move from those issues to adult relationships in Part IV is made smoother by the title poem.

Structure aside, form is heavily influenced by the Bible (as is content, to a certain extent). This is somewhat obvious if you just skim the contents, as many of the titles are fairly explicit references...but it's also done in a subtle way. Now, I'll be the first to admit that I'm not on familiar terms with the Bible. What little I've read comes from undergrad courses, but I think its influence in Lee's poems is strong enough that you can catch on without being intimately acquainted with the Bible. For example, the title poem begins with Song of Songs 3:2 (other parts of Song of Songs are referenced in "Furious Versions"...something I just discovered when I looked up Song of Songs 3:2 to make sure it was a real part of the Bible) and from there, Lee's poem is a continuation of this premise. In other words, the Biblical passage is not simply an epigraph, it's the beginning of the poem. Many of the poems feel like they have a cadence that matches/imitates the rhythm of Biblical verses. Of course, I feel unable to take this line of reasoning any further since I really can't base it on concrete knowledge of the Bible.

Moving on, one of the most prominent motifs in the collection is the father-son relationship. Even in Part IV, when the narrator is typically an adult male, this relationship continues to be present (whether it's central or on the peripheries). More specific than simply a parent-child relationship, Lee explores the father-son relationship from every angle. His poems get at the strength of this bond, as well as the important role it plays throughout a boy's/man's life. While Marilyn Chin's poetry focuses on the mother at the grave expense of the father, Lee's poetry manages to focus on the father without compromising the mother/wife. She's not portrayed negatively, she's just not in the spotlight. He's much more generous with his women than Chin is with her men, but he's significantly less interested in them as well.

This collection was hauntingly beautiful. That sounds pretty cheesy, but it really was. The "beautiful" part comes with her language and the form of her poetry (which I found varied and unusual). The "haunting" part really applies to the tone and content of the poems. When I finished the collection, I felt lonely and small. Chin's poems circle around some very serious issues -- spousal abuse, rape, and discrimination -- in a manner that doesn't spare the reader.

Her formal techniques are (as I mentioned earlier) "interesting." That is to say, she's doing some different things with form. She incorporates a lot of Western musical genres and elements -- sonatas, rhapsodies, themes and variations, chords, Blues, arias, etc. -- into her titles which bleed into the form of the poems. At the same time, she fragments them. Her poems are visually scattered across the page, with lots of white space and many asymmetrical gaps and breaks. Also, to complicate matters, she includes a lot of Eastern elements -- Samsara, Chinese quatrains, the lunar calendar, Chinese characters, historical figures, etc. -- in the content of her poems, alluding to a more diverse cultural heritage. Because both cultures inform her poems (and to such a great extent), Chin sets up a tension between East and West...which plays nicely into the theme of assimilation and difference that runs throughout the collection.

Another moment where Chin creates tension is in her portrayal of men and women. The men in this collection are nothing short of dastardly, entering the stage as rapists, abusers, controllers, drunks, and bullies. They have little to no regard for the women in their lives, and often mistreat them. Some of the worst men in the collection are actually white men. At the same time, Chin really raises women up onto a pedestal -- the women here are often dying or dead, but they are also strong. Many of the women are mothers and wives, and they are looked up to and respected in the poems.

Chin's poems are complex, and they're not easy to access. While I feel confident with some of the poems, there are other poems that I read and reread but still know I'm not quite "getting." The notes at the end of the collection helped, but as usual with notes I found that things I wanted to be in there were not. In other words, I'm lacking some knowledge that would help me better understand the poems, and I think Chin does this intentionally. She gives you some handouts via the notes, but for the most part there's a lot of stuff the reader is just not going to know unless they share the wealth of cultural knowledge that she has. I think this is meant to alienate the reader, to an extent -- to put them in the position the characters in her poems are so often placed in: that of the outsider.

Throughout the collection, Cisneros explores the various roles a woman fills during the course of her life: daughter, sister, lover, mother, wife, friend. The picture she offers is bleak, with the female protagonists trapped in unhappy relationships, pregnant with unwanted children, and saddled with familial obligations and burdens. Her women tend to find strength somewhere within themselves, but often in defiance of or opposition to the men in their lives. They tend to go against the grain of what their families and cultures tell them to do, and when they don't they have difficulty achieving happiness.

At the same time, the men are depicted in a really negative light. When they're not abusing their girlfriends/mistresses/wives, they're being unfaithful to them or leaving them. Oddly, there's a direct correlation between Cisneros' men and their adherence to traditional Mexican culture: the more traditional the man, the more unhappy the woman. The final story, "Bien Pretty," comes fairly close to subverting this...until the protagonist's lover reveals that he has four kids from two different women -- his wife and his other mistress -- while trying to convince the protagonist that he loves them all equally. Obviously, this undoes any productive work Cisernos might have done with his character.

I think this collection is meant to be empowering for women, and I think that on that level it succeeds. However, I still have concerns about the way Mexican men are represented. At the same time, Mexican culture is represented in a very positive light in other ways. The warmth of the kitchen, the strength of the bonds between women, the happy memories from childhood, etc. There's a tension between these two aspects of the culture -- the men it produces and the lives of its women -- that might be able to be explained by a passage in the final story when the protagonist is talking about the women in the telenovelas she watches: "I started dreaming of these Rosas and Briandas and Luceros. And in my dreams I'm slapping the heroine to her senses, because I want them to be women who make things happen, not women who things happen to. Not loves that are tormentosos. Not men powerful and passionate versus women either volatile and evil, or sweet and resigned. But women. Real women. The ones I've loved all my life. If you don't like it lárgate, honey. Those women. The ones I've known everywhere except on TV, in books and magazines. Las girlfriends. Las comadres. Our mamas and tías. Passionate and powerful, tender and volatile, brave. And, above all, fierce" (161).

I read two short stories from this collection: "Interpreter of Maladies" and "The Third and Final Continent."

"Interpreter of Maladies" seems to be doing something interesting with its use of monkeys. There are monkeys all over the city, and as the story progresses they play an increasingly important role. At first, the Das family is entertained by them -- the kids get excited, and Mr. Das asks Mr. Kapasi to stop the car so he can photograph them. He explains that the children have only ever seen monkeys in the zoo. The monkeys, which are an ordinary part of life in Puri, are objects of fascination and entertainment for the American tourists. They reappear in the final scene as well. Mr. Kapasi warns the family that the monkeys are relatively safe as long as they don't tempt them with food. When Mina Das storms out of the car and goes to rejoin her family, she leaves a trail of food in her wake (a sign of her excess?), and the monkeys begin to trail her. However, rather than attacking her (because Mr. Kapasi follows her, preventing them from doing her any harm), they surround and attack Bobby. It's significant that they choose Bobby, who is not actually Raj Das' biological child, and that they beat him with the same stick that he provided them with. I'm not secure with my reading of this, but my thoughts are thus: Bobby, an American who represents the desecration of traditional family values (he's the product of a loveless affair, his parents have a loveless marriage, and he's the weakest child -- always having to be looked out for by his older brother) provides an Indian monkey with a stick. That monkey turns against him because of his mother's excesses, and becomes violent. The only person who can save him is Indian himself, and does so reluctantly (only acting after Mrs. Das begs him in a panic). Hm, I thought I had something more concrete to say, but I guess I'm still working it out in my mind.

As for "The Third and Final Continent" I think there's a really interesting thing happening with mothers. The narrator's mother, who we never meet, died before he ever left India. She was a widow, and slowly lost her mind. Her children had to take care of her, and when she finally died it was also a relief. When the narrator goes to America, he rents a room in Mrs. Croft's house and she becomes a kind of surrogate mother-figure for him. She treats him sort of like a child, and when he does something right she expresses her approval. While she has lost some of her coherence (repeating her awe at the fact that there's an American flag on the moon for several evenings in a row), she has not lost her mind. When the narrator finds out her true age (103), he begins to not only respect her, but also show concern for her. In fact, when Mala finally joins him, he continues feeling distanced and detached from her until he takes her to Mrs. Croft's house and she is subjected to the old woman's scrutiny. While Mrs. Croft is scrutinizing her, he begins to sympathize with Mala and finally starts to feel like they have a connection -- a connection based on being subjected to the Western world and its gaze. Once she has given her approval, saying that Mala is a "perfect lady," the narrator finally warms to his wife. In many ways, his reaction is like that of a child seeking his mother's approval. It's only once he gains that approval that he can invest himself in the very thing he sought approval for: his wife.

Technically, this book is a collection of poems. However, it's more than that. It's broken down into five different parts, each of which has its own cover photo and (prose) introduction. Each section revolves around a different theme, and within that section there are poems and short segments of prose. Inada has no rigorously-set style or form that he sticks to, but instead he varies from section to section. The third part (entitled "Jazz") has the most definitive style, as its name implies. He takes his inspiration from jazz music, which contributes to both the content and the form of the poems in this section. Of course, you can see the influence of jazz music in other poems as well, but none so strongly as those in this section.

Another interesting thing about this collection is Inada's focus on the intersections between different ethnicities. He grew up in Fresno, California, and he makes a point to bring up the fact that the biggest racial divide is the one between "affluent white" and "other" several times. At one point, he writes, "Fresno doesn't mean much. Unless you happen to be of Armenian, Chinese, Japanese, Pilipino ancestry. Unless you happen to be Hmong--and 30,000 Hmong moved there recently. Unless you happen to be German, Italian. Unless you happen to be Chicano, African American, an Okie--then Fresno rings bells in your family. Unless you happen to be one of many "people of the land" (33). This idea comes up again and again throughout the collection. Inada also spends a significant amount of time linking the Japanese who were interned during World War II and the Native Americans (it's the seizure of land and rights that makes this a strong connection, as well as the fact that many of the Japanese internment camps were apparently on American Indian reservations).

This collection started out exploring Inada's past, and his life in the internment camps and Fresno. It moves mostly chronologically throughout his life, ending up with his life in Oregon (where he's been a professor since 1966) and his performance poetry. The sectional divisions allow him to change the style and theme of his poems significantly as he progresses through his life. In some ways, the poems from the end of the collection don't seem very related to the poems from the beginning of the collection...which makes sense, since they cover parts of his life from at least 20 years after the early parts of the novel. I like the way the collection evolves, and it's interesting to experience highlights of his life through a variety of styles and forms.

I read this novel shortly after reading Salman Rushdie's novel Midnight's Children, and it was hard not to keep comparing the two works when I first started Grass' novel. There are a lot of similarities -- too many to ignore -- but given Rushdie's statements about how much Grass' novel influenced him and given his ideas about the "empire" writing back, it started to make more sense as not only the similarities, but also the differences began piling up. It's really interesting to think of what Rushdie might be doing, especially when you consider how much the "collective shame" of Germany following WWII can be connected to post-Emergency India. It's also interesting to think of the ways key symbols act within each novel (the tin drum in Grass', the silver spittoon in Rushdie's; the refusal to grow in Grass', the rapid growth in Rushdie's; the loss of the ability to singshatter glass in Grass', the loss of the All-India Radio in Rushdie's; the importance of the apartment complex and its inhabitants in Grass', the importance of the housing compound and its inhabitants in Rushdie's -- there are so many more, but these are some of the most interesting to me).

Moving away from this book-to-book comparison, Grass' novel has a lot to offer on its own. There are some interesting things happening with form here -- most of the chapters are fairly straightforward, but there are three chapters where the form of the narration is changed. In one, Oskar writes the chapter in the form of a script; in another, he turns his pen over to Bruno (his watcher) who writes most of the chapter; and in yet another, he includes Vittlar's court testimony as the way he relates the story of his arrest, rather than narrating it himself. The chapters are randomly placed, and none of them occur in the first book...but they're still interesting and I'm trying to figure out what I make of them. Partly, I think it's significant that they happen later on because I feel that Oskar's narration becomes less reliable the further into his story he progresses, so that's one thing. Also, I think that as he physically grows later in the novel, he loses some of his more creative capacities (along with the ability to singshatter glass) and the fact that he begins to allow others to tell his story goes along with the loss of his more creative abilities. However, the fact that he keeps drumming is an indication that he hasn't lost all of those abilities, but toward the end of the novel his drumming is primarily used to help others (and himself, in the case of how he uses it to help him write his autobiography) return to and relive their childhoods.

I'm really intrigued by this idea of a narrator writing his story from the confines of a mental hospital, especially when you add the fact that he really doesn't want to leave it. From the very beginning, he marks himself as an abject figure: "Granted, I'm an inmate in a mental institution; my keeper watches me, scarcely lets me out of sight, for there's a peephole in the door, and my keeper's eye is the shade of brown that can't see through blue-eyed types like me" (3). In fact, mentally unstable characters fill the pages of the novel, and the days of Oskar's life. Crazy Leo/Weird Willem is marked by his very name, and his inseparability from the cemetery also places him in that liminal space between life and death. Oskar's friends -- Klepp who tests his health by never leaving his bed, Vittlar who turns Oskar in so he can see his own name in the papers, Fajngold who speaks directly to his murdered family, and even Oskar's presumptive son Kurt who clearly has some severe issues with rage -- are a motley crew who are mostly mad, but also fairly harmless. What does it mean that Grass' characters are so rarely sane? I want to draw a connection between these madnesses -- which also multiply in the post-war part of the novel -- and the atrocities of the Second World War. Is Grass trying to make a statement about the effects of unleashing such madness during the war by presenting us with characters who are overcome by their craziness in the aftermath of that war? Is he illustrating a point about what happens when you try to move on from an era of such widespread destruction and devastation? Or is he trying to show us that there's a cruel madness in every person, and the war was only one manifestation of that madness that is always just beneath the surface? While I like this last hypothesis, especially since Oskar is so utterly devoid of conscience both before and after the war, I can't help but think that The Onion Cellar contradicts it and points us in the direction of the nation's recovery from the events their country set in motion.

Whatever his ultimate point about the war, Grass' novel certainly seems to have something to say about men and women. The representation of women is unflattering at best -- they're often the passive objects of male desire, and also tend to be sexually promiscuous and indecisive. That's not to say that the portrayal of men is flattering -- it's not. Most of the men are rather inept, and unable to satisfy the women in their lives. They either run away, die, or fail to "man up" in the ways the women in their lives would appreciate. I think this, too, comes back to the war, but I'm at a loss to say exactly how I think it relates.

The Tin Drum was a really intense (and dense) read, but I'm glad I read it. I can see how it fits into the canon of magical realist fiction, but it's also different than a lot of more contemporary magical realist novels I've read. The novel is quite bleak, offering characters few or no chances for happiness. Most of the time, characters' chances have passed, and they are left to live out the rest of their lives in misery (or take their own lives, like Greff the greengrocer). All love affairs end in death, unwanted pregnancy, or unhappy marriages. Many sexual relationships only exist as a symptom of another, deeper problem. Characters who seem like decent people have a hard time surviving, and characters who are rotten to the core come closest to prospering. Oskar himself is thoroughly unlikable, and reading his life as narrated by him is not entirely a pleasant affair. Compelling, yes. Intriguing, yes. Disgusting at times, atrocious at others. But ultimately enlightening and bewildering. After the adventure of reading this book, I still think it's worth reading at least once. I think I'll end up reading it again, in all reality.