Wishing Well

The feeling of reading stories/books/anything in particular that’s beautifully written is so hard to describe.

It’s like you’re eyeing a work of art… but you feel it in your bones. It makes some kind of lasting imprint in your thoughts. Maybe visual art makes some people feel that way too, I don’t know. But I’ve only really felt it through books.

The title story of “The Paper Menagerie” made me feel that way. Without giving anything away, the core concept is about a kid being born in America to a (native) Chinese mom and a white father, and resenting that he couldn’t be “American” like all his friends.

This storyline is important cause it usually sucks. There’ve been plenty of stories/books that address the two-sided “Oh, I’m sometimes American but as the child of immigrants I can’t be, I’m also -insert other race here-” and they’re always the same. Not to disparage the difficulty of writing an actual story about it, but it always has boiled down to the main character managing to reconcile both sides of him/her and accepting the fact that there’s always going to be a duality in their culture.

Not this time, though. Reading this work made me feel like I’d been punched in the chest. It didn’t make me feel like I was being lectured on the importance of appreciating your ethnic race, it didn’t end with a feel-good message on how life could be lived just fine this way.

I saw my own life and emotions reflected there; sure, my parents speak English just fine, and sure, I never resented the fact that I was Chinese, but I felt it just the same. I felt the joy my mom feels when she gets back from work and can finally speak in the language of home. I felt the undercurrents of pride my dad has in his city of Tianjin and how much he cares about us understanding, like that one time he took us back to the university he went to and couldn’t stop smiling. Most importantly, I felt their heartbreak if I ever decided to turn my back on who they are and who I am.

I don’t even particularly identify with the immigrant identity struggle, but this story hit me like a truck. And I do understand myself, and my parents, a lot better after this — crazy, huh?

PS. Here’s a pdf http://a1018.g.akamai.net/f/1018/19022/1d/randomhouse1.download.akamai.com/19022/pdf/Paper_Menagerie.pdf