- 1 Emily X. R. Pan, The Astonishing Color of After (Little, Brown and Company, 2018) 38. Further citat (...)
I hated how it came out. My tree was imbalanced. Mom wasn’t an orphan, but that was how it looked when the teacher stapled mine up on the bulletin board. Most of the other kids had made trees that were perfectly symmetrical.1
Emily Pan, The Astonishing Color of After
- 2 Published in 2018 as a young adult novel, Astonishing has won a readership of all ages and garnered (...)
- 3 Of studies on Astonishing, Caroline A. Tsai’s “’The Astonishing Color of After’ Paints Sincere Pict (...)
1Leigh Sanders, the Taiwanese American protagonist in Emily X. R. Pan’s The Astonishing Color of After (2018),2 arrives home to find her mother Dorothy Chen Sanders lying dead in her bedroom. Dorothy’s suicide traumatizes Leigh to such an extent that she cannot accept the reality until her father Brian Sanders retrieves from the wastebasket a crumpled note showing her mother’s farewell and ending with a cross-out incomplete message “I want you to remember” (7). Dorothy’s half-finished suicide note underscores the challenge facing the grief-stricken protagonist after her mother’s passing. How can Leigh learn about her mother as Dorothy, when alive, refuses to talk about her life and immigration history. Disconnected from her Taiwanese family since her birth, how can Leigh gain memory and preserve her family history? How can Leigh, who barely knows one or two Chinese characters and phrases, trace her late mother’s footsteps albeit she has found unopened letters sent from Taiwan to her mother? How can Leigh construct her identity when half of her lineage and heritage is missing from her lived reality? Attempting to keep memory and family history, Leigh tries to draw paintings of the objects in their house after her mother passed away. “I’ve been going through the house drawing the things that feel important, but I haven’t made a picture of the piano yet. It has so much history, and history means colors” (24). Leigh cannot find the right colors to give expressions because she does not know the significance of her mother’s piano and its relevance to her mother’s life. Leigh’s lament expresses her despair at the futile attempt: “The piano tells me nothing about my mother, the bird. Nothing about the box. It only mirrors back the story of a desperate girl [Leigh] who’s been getting up in the deadest hours to unlock the front door” (26). How can the desolate and helpless Leigh accomplish her quest to construct memory about her mother and connect with her entirely disconnected maternal family? Turning the foregoing series of relevant questions into an aesthetic inquiry, I maintain that Leigh’s challenge becomes Pan’s artistic task to represent her protagonist’s quest to learn about the past and to weave the gendered immigrant narrative in Astonishing. Thus, my research question is what narrative devices does Pan, characterizing Leigh as a person with stolen memory, employ to facilitate her protagonist’s journey to construct family history and connect with her Taiwanese family. The existing scholarship has analyzed Astonishing in terms of depression, suicide, patriarchal domination, interracial marriage, immigration, mixed child’s identity construction, Buddhist and Taoist beliefs.3 Nevertheless, no critical work is written about Pan’s deft narrative ploys and novelistic technique in representing Leigh’s memory journey. This paper aims to illustrate how Pan skillfully mobilizes and integrates magical realism, Taiwan’s Ghost Month folk culture, the Buddhist and Taoist concepts of karma to create a milieu which allows Leigh to uncover her family secrets, give voice to her mother’s willful suppressed life story and connect with her maternal family.
- 4 Magical realism, as defined by Christopher Warnes, is a mode of narration that “naturalizes or norm (...)
2Initiated by Latin American writers and gaining popularity around the world since its inception in the 1940s, magical realism4 has undergone some transformations in theme and its resources of supernatural elements. These changes are derived from the input made by the novelists who adopt this narrative mode but apply the myths unique of their own cultures to address, besides the theme of anti-colonialism, a broad scope of issues. In Magical Realism and the Postcolonial Novel, Christopher Warnes notes that magical realism has become a global phenomenon and local currents—be it cultural, literary, political, historical—always run through any fictional text (6). Underscoring the globalization of magical realism in his 2023 study, David Chichester remarks that the repertoire of sources for the supernatural is enriched and diversified. “As the locations shift, so authors of contemporary magical realism have widened the repertoire of sources for their supernatural elements. The typical reliance on the mythologies of cultures threatened by colonization or globalization has been subsumed as just one of many resources” (Chichester 214). In this light, I argue Pan is in line with this literary trend as she innovates magical realism by mobilizing Taiwan’s local currents to create a supernatural context which allows Leigh to address the mnestic lacuna caused by her disconnection from her maternal family and to put the missing Taiwanese part back into her identity configuration.
3The main body of this paper consists of two parts—namely, “Constructing Memory through the Supernatural” (Section 2) and “Constructing Connection through Place-Making” (Section 3). Section 2 shall illustrate how Pan interweaves magical realism with Taiwan’s Ghost Month folk culture, the Buddhist philosophy of karma and the Taoist belief in the deceased’s weekly return during the karma period to create the milieu for her protagonist to construct memory about her late mother and their family history. Drawing on the theory of emplacement (place-making in other words), I will discuss in Section 3 how Leigh reconstructs her mother’s willful suppressed life story by place-making with/in Taiwan and finally connects with her late mother and maternal family. Through the lens of place-making, my critical endeavor shall foreground Pan’s ingenuity and significance in infusing magical realism with Taiwan’s local currents to represent her protagonist’s quest to set her lopsided family tree right. The concluding section shall briefly discuss Pan’s innovation of the existing immigrant narrative tradition and her contribution to magical realist narrative mode.
- 5 Kimberly Beek, “Announcing New Buddhist Fiction: The Astonishing Color of After.” Buddhist Fiction (...)
4In Astonishing, Pan appropriates and reconfigures magical realist narrative techniques with Taiwan’s prevailing cultural currents—Ghost Month folklore, Buddhist philosophy of karma and Taoist belief in the dead’s weekly return during the forty-nine-day karma period—to allow Leigh to have mysterious visions of her family history and to learn her mother’s life story. At the same time, Pan utilizes Ghost Month folk culture, the Buddhist and Taoist ideas about karma to represent, through Leigh’s mysterious visions of the past, Dorothy’s reviewing of her life before she transits into her next life. According to Buddhist teaching, karma is the forty-nine-day period for the dead to review this life before entering into next life. Dubbing Pan’s novel as “a liminal narrative,”5 Kimberly Beek fleetingly notes on Pan’s appropriation of the Buddhist karma to frame the novel.
- 6 The term “liminality” is associated with the Latin word “limen” meaning uncertainty, transition, a (...)
- 7 Kimberly Beek, “Announcing New Buddhist Fiction: The Astonishing Color of After.” Buddhist Fiction (...)
The Buddhist aspects of the novel are liminal too. Leigh had been exposed to family altars and bodhisattva images but did not know about Taiwanese Buddhist death practices, such as the burning of joss paper crafts or the 49 days of liminality6 between the previous life and the next rebirth. This liminal period becomes a temporal framework for the story.7
- 8 Taoist beliefs and rituals have undergone some transformation after they are entwined with folk rel (...)
5Yet I argue that Pan integrates the Buddhist concept of karma with the Taoist idea of the deceased’s weekly return during the karma period so as to create a subtly well-wrought complex narrative. According to the Taoist belief in Taiwan,8 the dead’s spirit will return on each seventh day during the karma while reviewing his previous life from the third person’s perspective. Pan develops the storyline mainly following the seven-week-period of karma. Her narrative structure also delicately and aptly illustrates Taiwan’s local faith—that mysterious things happen on each seventh day during the karma period. The following diagnosis of the narrative structure demonstrates how Pan arranges mysterious and crucial events to happen on each seventh day of Dorothy’s karma and enables Leigh to trace her mother’s footsteps from America back to Taiwan:
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The 1st-7 (i.e. on the first seventh day after Dorothy’s death): Leigh’s mother returns in the form of a red phoenix to the traumatized and sleepless Leigh. The bird-mother leaves a long red feather as a token of her comfort for Leigh. Mysteriously, Leigh can sleep (Pan 8-10).
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The 2nd-7: Leigh’s bird-mother returns with a box of photos and unopened letters for Leigh. Speaking in Dorothy’s voice, the bird-mother instructs Leigh to bring the box back to Taiwan (21-23).
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The 3rd-7: The bird-mother gives the incredulous Brian a gust of crimson feathers to convince him that she, returning in the shape of a red-bird, does give the box to Leigh and want Brian to bring Leigh to visit Taiwan. Brian is shocked into cold silence for a week (40-42).
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The 4th-7: After a week of silence, Brian finally is convinced Dorothy wants him to bring their daughter Leigh to visit, for the first time, her Taiwanese grandparents (42-44).
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The 5th-7th 7s: Leigh’s month-long visit to her maternal grandparents coincides with the Ghost Month Festival in Taiwan. The first three weeks of her stay happens to be the fifth-seventh weeks of Dorothy’s karma. It is during this period that Leigh has mysterious visions of the past and learns the family secrets (43-427).
6Interestingly, Pan represents Dorothy’s karma through Leigh’s narrative on her mysterious visions of the past. In other words, Leigh “sees” her mother’s karma process and reflects on her mother’s life. Leigh’s viewpoint accordingly bespeaks the third-person’s standpoint the dead (Dorothy in this case) adopts to review the previous life during the karma. Employing the supernatural elements, Pan seamlessly expresses the Taoist belief that the deceased’s spirit would review his life from the third-person’s perspective as well as return on each seventh day of the karma period. More importantly, Pan’s narrative ploy conflating Dorothy’s karma with Leigh’s mysterious memory journey allows Leigh to learn about her maternal lineage and uncover her mother’s unspeakable pains.
- 9 Dorothy’s father is a Chinese Nationalist soldier fleeing from China to Taiwan in 1949. After settl (...)
- 10 The term “the angel in the house” originates from the British Victorian poet Coventry Patmore’s poe (...)
7Leigh’s mysterious visions unfold important events in her mother’s life and the oppression her mother has suffered due to patriarchal authority and domination. In one vision, Leigh sees her maternal grandparents, renouncing Dorothy’s talent in music, strongly disapprove her pursuit of a musical career. Other mysterious visions shock Leigh more. The unfurled memory segments show Leigh’s Waigong9 demands Dorothy marry someone Chinese and objects Dorothy’s liaison with Brian: “She can’t have this American boyfriend. She must marry some Chinese. She must” (311, original emphasis). My quote of Waigong’s injunction here suffices to refute Joey Lidyal and Liliek Soelistyo’s claim attributing Dorothy’s stressed life to Yuanyan’s authoritarian parenting (437-39). I argue instead Yuanyang is just an agent executing her husband’s decisions and practicing subconsciously patriarchal gender ideology. In other words, Yuanyang is a brainwashed “angel in the house”10 pleasing her husband and obeying his decisions pertaining to the family business. Waigong’s severe stroke and consequential loss of voice in his old age could be inferred as Pan’s poetic justice to redress Dorothy’s oppressed life.
- 11 Jingling is Dorothy’s beloved elder sister who is an English teacher and supports Dorothy’s pursuit (...)
8Waigong, seen in another vision, wants Dorothy be an obedient daughter and break off with Brian. “How did we come to have such a disobedient child” (406). Knowing Dorothy’s strong bond with Jingling11, Waigong and Waipo push Jingling to persuade Dorothy to listen to their parents. Leigh’s grandparents are so obsessed with Dorothy’s romance that they do not notice Jingling is so ill. Unfortunately, Jingling died of aneurysm on the very same day her parents push her to execute their order. What is worse, Waigong and Waipo blame Jingling’s death on Dorothy who, in America, is so grieved to learn of the bad news. Waigong even banishes Dorothy from their family when she asserts personal freedom and decides to marry Brian. Apparently, Dorothy’s hurt is double and her pains unspeakable. Going on this memory journey, Leigh also learns why her mother resolutely break off from her Taiwanese family and refuses to talk about her life. Dorothy makes this choice out of her love for Leigh. A memory segment exposes Dorothy’s motivation when Brian tries to persuade her to reconcile with her parents and let Leigh meet her maternal grandparents:
No. They don’t deserve to meet her [Leigh]. You don’t know them. I know them. They’re my parents. They have only disappointment in who I am. My entire life. Disappointment …. All I do is remember what they say. They say, “You are supposed to marry Chinese man. If you marry that white man, this is no longer your home. You are no longer our daughter.” How can someone say that to their child? ... They will never meet Leigh. They will never hurt her like they hurt me. (410-411, original emphasis)
9These unfurled memories about Dorothy’s life in Taiwan make Leigh recall their family life in America and recognize her mother’s great love for her. “Witnessing” via the mysterious visions her mother’s life negated by her grandparents—her talent in music denied, her pursuit of a musical career disapproved and her marriage with Brian absolutely objected, Leigh remembers her mother, supportive of her dream to be an artist, defends her against her father pushing her to stop painting and focus on study so as to have a “good,” lucrative career in the future. Dorothy’s birthday gift to Leigh—a beautiful leather case of various painting tools and gels—stands in sharp contrast to Brian’s Christmas present for Leigh, Wilson Edmund Sharpe IV’s career book Figure Out What You’re Destined For. Moreover, Leigh is reminded of her mother’s encouragements given when they talk about submitting a portfolio to Kreis in Berlin—an art gallery for young emerging artists, and competing for the opportunity to exhibit her artworks there: “It’s okay to be afraid. But not okay if be afraid means you do nothing. You must not do nothing. That’s not life worth living” (299). Dorothy also shares with Leigh her own experience of withstanding fear and making choice for her life: “I was afraid marrying Dad. I was afraid coming to US. But look now: how happy I am here. How happy I am, I have this wonderful daughter, so dedicated and talented” (299). In retrospection, Leigh realizes how brave her mother is in defying patriarchal authority, fighting parental domination, asserting personal freedom and protecting her from being hurt by her father and grandparents. At this juncture, it is apparent Pan, mobilizing the supernatural elements, creates the milieu for her protagonist to learn her maternal lineage, family secrets and the important events impacting her mother’s life.
10Whereas the supernatural visions disclose family lineage and secrets to Leigh, they also pose some puzzles to her. Moreover, some mysterious visions reveal facts whose deep significance Leigh cannot grasp. For instance, Leigh is reminded by mysterious visions that her mother used to make danhuang su (salted egg yolk red bean pastry) and they always have happy time whenever enjoying the desserts and tea together. But Leigh does not know what danhuang su and tea mean to her mother until their significances are disclosed by Feng. In other words, Leigh has learned through the supernatural memory journey about facts, the important events in her mother’s life and the family secrets, but she does not fully know her mother’s life. How can Leigh really connect with her mother and her Taiwanese family without getting those significances? Brian is bilingual and can be a mediator for Leigh to communicate with her maternal grandparents, learn about her mother and connect with her Waigong and Waipo. Unfortunately, Brian argues with Waipo over Dorothy’s suicide the very first day of their visit. To avoid having more quarrels, he leaves Leigh alone with her grandparents. Mired in this dire situation, how can Leigh continue her quest to construct memory about her late mother and family? There must be a mechanism to facilitate Leigh’s pursuit. Characterizing her protagonist’s helplessness but eventual success in memory construction, Pan demonstrates her craftsmanship in choosing the Ghost Month (the seventh month of the lunar calendar) as the temporal setting and thus making it natural for Feng to return from the underworld to help Leigh connect with her mother and Taiwanese family. Different from Japan’s Bon Festival,12 Taiwan’s Ghost Month folklore—a Taoist belief integrated with Buddhism—upholds the idea that the dead, particularly the unclaimed and the unmarried, will return to our world during the Ghost Month and people should feast them well on the street so as to secure household safety.13 Pan’s ingenious choice of the Ghost Month as the time zone for Leigh’s stay in Taiwan fittingly allows Feng, who died unmarried, to return from the underworld and guide in English her helpless niece to learn about Taiwan’s culture, custom, local faiths, lifestyle, food and, above all, Dorothy’s life in Taiwan. In this way, Pan characterizes Feng as the key player assisting Leigh construct memory and connection with her mother and maternal grandparents. This narrative ploy allows Pan to advance her narration and, in plot, her protagonist to continue her memory construction.
- 14 Feng, Jingling’s spirit, is visible only to Leigh. Leigh’s Waipo does not see her. Waipo picks up t (...)
11Leigh’s first mysterious vision is about danhuang su. In the first night after Brian leaves, Leigh finds a box of incense sticks in the guest room wherein she sleeps. Since therein also lies a big crimson feather, Leigh believes her bird-mother brings her the incenses. Wondering why her mother brings her this stuff, Leigh lights one incense stick and, unexpectedly, has the first supernatural vision of the past. It is about the happy time when Leigh’s mother makes danhuang su for them. “This is a section of the past, somehow preserved. I don’t remember it at all; and then I realize by some instinct that this memory belongs to my mother. That’s why it smells like her” (72, emphasis added). Next day, Waipo answers the door and brings in a box of sweets—followed by Feng.14 Since Leigh has never met her aunt, she supposes this young woman is Waipo’s family friend. Evoked by the trademark of the sweets, Waipo then brings Leigh to a pastry shop and tries to explain in Mandarin that danhuang su from this shop is her mother’s favorite. Feng’s English translation helps Leigh get the significance of this pastry in her mother’s life and, by extension, in their family life in America. At this moment, Leigh recalls the happy time whenever her mother shows her how to make danhuang su. Given the first supernatural vision and Feng’s guidance, Leigh realizes her mother has de facto created their family tradition and bond by making danhuang su for them. Dorothy has sweet memory of this sweet; so does Leigh. It also dawns on Leigh that she should visit her mother’s favorite places and understand their relevance to her mother if she is to know her. Leigh therefore longs to “go everywhere that’s important. The places my mother loved. The places that were her habits, where she walked, where she found inspiration, where she dwelled on things that made her sad, where she might have left traces of herself” (132). In terms of place-making, Leigh wants to emplace herself with her mother’s favorite places and accordingly to engage with her mother’s life. In doing so, she can construct connection with her mother. The question is how.
12The following section “Constructing Connection through Place-Making” will apply the theory about emplacement—place-making in other words—to discuss how Leigh reconstructs her mother’s willful suppressed life story by place-making with/in Taiwan and establishes connection with her late mother and maternal grandparents. Through the lens of place-making, my investigation shall foreground the profound significance of Pan’s befitting utilization of The Ghost Month folk culture and Feng’s supernatural return in emplotting Leigh’s quest to construct memory and connection.
- 15 In terms of Taoist teaching, it means “free will.” Please see “What is Karma in Taoism.” The Taoism (...)
13In “A Space for Place in Sociology,” Thomas F. Gieryn distinguishes “place” from “space” and defines “place” as a unique spot in the universe invested with meanings, values, memories, histories, interpretations, representations and identification. “Place is, at once, the buildings, streets, monuments, and open spaces assembled at a certain geographic spot and actors’ interpretations, representations, and identifications” (466-67, original emphasis). Likewise, Tim Cresswell remarks that space becomes what place is when it is endowed with meanings. “When humans invest meaning in a portion of space and then become attached to it in some way (naming is one such way) it becomes a place” (134-35). Thus, “emplacing” or “place-making” refers to the activities people engage in making meanings, interpretations, representations, storytelling and identification. Learning about a place functions as a way of understanding, of seeing connections between people and place. “When we look at the world as a world of places we see different things. We see attachments and connections between people and place. We see worlds of meaning and experience” (136). In terms of emplacement, Leigh establishes connection with her mother and Taiwanese family by visiting the places her mother loves to go and understanding their meanings to her mother. Waipo brings Leigh to a Taoist temple, a Buddhist temple, a Catholic church, a piano practice room on the campus of Dorothy’s alma mater, etc. Because of language barrier, Waipo cannot communicate with Leigh and just shows her sometimes by body language the beauty of the places they visit. In this manner, Leigh is like a traveler. It is Feng, who follows them, to tell Leigh the stories about Dorothy wherever Leigh and Waipo visit. For instance, at a Taoist temple, Feng tells Leigh her mother would come and make meditation here whenever she has difficulty or has to make choice. “This was your mother’s favorite Taoist temple. She would come here when she needed guidance, when she was looking for answer” (135, emphasis added). It can be inferred Dorothy must have come to this Taoist temple to think deeply about her choice to marry Brian after her parents threatens to expel her from their family should she dare to disobey them and marry Brian. The significant role this Taoist temple plays in Dorothy’s life is further revealed when Axel tells Leigh, later on, what her mother has shared with him about the issue of love and fear. Discerning Axel’s love for Leigh and fear to confess it, Dorothy tells Axel: “Leaving her family and coming to the States to marry Brian was the scariest thing in her life, yet it was one of the best decisions she ever made and the bravest thing she’d ever done. ‘Once you figure out what matters, you’ll figure out how to be brave’” (453). This remark indicates it must be at this Taoist temple that Dorothy, faced with her parents’ strong objection and threat of expulsion, ponders about what she should do and gets the answer. Dorothy’s words also suggest, it is at this temple that she finally figures out—rather than filial piety—Brian matters, love matters and personal freedom15 matters so that she has the courage to start a new life with Brian in America.
14Through Feng’s guidance, Leigh also understands what piano means to her mother. Bringing Leigh to a Catholic church, Waipo points at the grand piano within and tries to say something. But language barrier blocks their communication until Feng deciphers Waipo’s message to Leigh. This church is the very place where Dorothy learns to play the piano. A Catholic nun recognizes her talent and allows her to come during the empty hours to practice. Leigh recalls seeing her mother as a piano accompanist playing gorgeously at a choir concert in the US. “She was a sea creature and the music was her ocean. It had always belonged to her. It was in her every breath, her every movement” (219). Leigh’s intuitive response finds resonance with the professional observation by Brian, a bass player-turned sinologist. “And when she played piano—god, this is going to sound so corny—it was like her body just melted into the sound. It was like music was where she was born, and when she played the piano, she was home again” (426). Moreover, Dorothy and Brian’s romance is closely associated with the piano. Leigh’s place-making with this church helps her gain one more mosaic piece of her mother’s life story. When Leigh is brought to her mother’s alma mater next day and enters one piano practice room, Leigh suddenly finds one way to connect with her mother. She takes a photo of the view after Feng pushes open the only window of the practice room. “I guess I want to capture what my mother must’ve seen when she looked out there after hours of practicing” (303). The photo will help Leigh remember what her mother has seen. In other words, the photo will preserve Leigh’s memory of her mother’s memory of the scenery. The photo also betokens Leigh’s place-making with her mother’s piano practice room. A bond is thus formed between Leigh and her late mother.
15Yet there are more stories about Dorothy and piano. Leigh cannot get the full significance of the piano and recognize her mother’s love for her until two more things are disclosed to her. First, Leigh has a supernatural vision close to the end of her mother’s karma period that Waigong and Waipo do not appreciate her mother’s gift in music and disapprove her choice to be a pianist. Suffering from patriarchal tyranny and parental domination, Dorothy has led a pressured life. This terrible experience makes Dorothy support Leigh whereas Brian disapproves Leigh’s dream and keeps pushing her to abandon art. Apparently, Dorothy knows what it feels like when one’s talent and dream are denied simply for pragmatic reason. Secondly, when Leigh returns to America, she receives a letter from Kreis notifying her of the opportunity to exhibit her artworks at this renowned gallery for emerging young artists. Reading this notice, Leigh realizes her mother has secretly collected her artworks and submitted the portfolio to the Kreis competition albeit she is fighting depression then. Leigh thus understands fully what piano means to her mother and what connection the piano has created for her and her mother. Apparently, Dorothy translates her love for music into her support for Leigh’s pursuit of an artist career. Piano bespeaks Dorothy’s talent, her strength to withstand patriarchal oppression and parental domination, her romance with Brian, her love for Leigh and her wisdom to help Leigh fulfill her potential in art and realize her dream.
16Another important place-making occurs when Leigh is guided to a Buddhist temple where Dorothy’s yellow name tablet stands among others. Feng initiates Leigh to learn about Taiwan’s rituals for the dead and the local belief in karma. “After a person’s death, they have forty-nine days to process their karma and let go of the things that make them feel tied to this life—things like people and promises and memories. Then they make their transition. So the temple will keep each yellow tablet for forty-nine days. After that, they’re burned” (143). Waipo decides to have the rituals for Dorothy at this Buddhist temple because Dorothy and Waipo used to visit this place frequently. The temple carries the memory Leigh’s mother and grandmother share. Leigh’s place-making with this Buddhist temple where rituals for her late mother are conducted generates her own memory and establishes connection with her mother and grandmother. Unwilling to let her mother go, Leigh confesses that she sees her bird-mother follow her wherever she goes and that she wants to catch the red bird with the net she has weaved. Feng’s response brings to the fore the significance of place-making. “If the bird told you to come to Taiwan, then there must be something she wants you to do or see. Something more than just finding her” (302, emphasis added). In other words, Dorothy wants Leigh to come to Taiwan and make her emplacement with/in Taiwan. Tracing her mother’s footsteps in Taiwan, Leigh can learn about her life, connect with her Taiwanese family, and remember her mother by giving voice to her life story and immigration history.
- 16 “Popo” is an alternative Mandarin term for grandmother.
17Besides danhuang su and the piano, tea serves as an important agency for Leigh’s place-making in Taiwan. In America, Dorothy makes it a family tradition that they enjoy danhuang su and tea together. Leigh does not know however Waipo used to be a child laborer picking tea leaves, is good at making tea and makes it a family tradition that they enjoy tea together in daily life. Again, it is Feng who guides Leigh to learn Taiwan’s tea culture and reminds Leigh of the need to establish family tradition and connection. Making tea for Leigh, Waipo tries to give Leigh an introduction about tea, but Leigh does not understand what she says. Feng translates Waipo’s talk so as to make Leigh learn about Dong Ding oolong tea—special Taiwanese tea and Waipo’s favorite. After explaining the laoren cha tradition in Taiwan—the art of tea-making Waipo is applying at the time, Feng teases and hints to Leigh “I think this should be a new family tradition …. Afternoon tea and passion fruit …. I think family traditions are important” (140-141). When Leigh protests saying “we’ve got plenty of traditions [in our family in the US],” Feng straightforwardly points out Leigh’s disconnection with Waipo. “But you don’t have any with Popo” (141).16 Feng’s remark denotes the missing heritage which Leigh has to restore if she is to establish attachment to her Taiwanese family. After all the family secrets are disclosed, lessons learned and reconciliation reached, Leigh starts to connect with Waipo. Their bond is betokened by having tea together—as it used to be respectively between Dorothy/Leigh and Dorothy/Waipo.
Though I can’t understand much of what Waipo says, I love our quiet moments together .… She sits beside me in the sunny afternoons, looks on at my fingers sweeping charcoal across the sketch pad, pours me cup after cup of tea…
There are still things to be worked through. There’s no way to speed through the grief….
But something between us is different. There’s a special connection. (438-439, emphasis added)
18Dorothy’s life is remembered after Leigh has emplaced the places with which Dorothy has engagement, memory and connection. As Feng tells Leigh: “Maybe what she really needs is just to remember. And to be remembered” (339). With Feng’s mentoring, Leigh’s place-making enables her to learn about her Taiwanese family history, to understand her mother’s past, to establish bond with her maternal family and, above all, to remember her mother.
19Shortly after her mother’s death, Leigh recalls her childhood memory of producing a lopsided family tree. “Once, in the first grade, our teacher had us make family trees …. I hated how it came out. My tree was imbalanced. Mom wasn’t an orphan, but that was how it looked when the teacher stapled mine up on the bulletin board. Most of the other kids had made trees that were perfectly symmetrical” (38). This uncomfortable childhood experience—the awareness of missing half of her lineage and heritage—evolves into the young-adult Leigh’s identity crisis. Leigh’s nightmare of two girls asking her “who are you” and erasing her body gives expression to her deep anxiety. “They reached out hands that gripped blackboard erasers, the kind with felt on the bottom, and began erasing me, starting with my feet and working their way up. Once my knees were gone, I was stuck in place, forced to watch as my body disappeared” (175). Helped by the supernatural intervention, Leigh overcomes his identity crisis after constructing memory of her late mother and making connection with her maternal family. As Leigh remarks: “It was the final gift the bird could give us: the remembering. The pieces of my family history glued back together, so that I finally know and understand. And a reminder of the love that we’ve always had, even in the times when it was stormy, when it was hard to see” (433). Recounting her supernatural experiences and memory journey, Leigh gives voice to her mother’s silenced life story and family history. Eventually, Leigh sets her lopsided family tree right through connecting with her Taiwanese family.
20The foregoing analysis illustrates the depth and complexity of Pan’s employment of the supernatural elements in characterizing her protagonist’s quest to reconstruct family history and connect with her maternal family. Begoña Simal-González notes in “Of Magical Gourds and Secret Senses: The Uses of Magical Realism in Asian American Literature,” magical realism has been de-territorialized and become internationalized; and Asian American writers also employ magical realist techniques to construct their narratives and convey their ideas (123). Unfortunately, Asian American writers who appropriate this narrative device are susceptible to the charge of “pandering to Western desires for the exotic other” and satisfying an Orientalist desire (Simal- González 139). Simal- González disparages such a reading as the Orientalist approach to Asian American magical realism, arguing that this biased interpretive method has been eroded by new Asian American texts which, rather than portraying “the exotic other,” address a broad scope of issues covering, for instance, ecology, transnational capitalism and its impact (Simal- González 139, 141). In the same vein, Astonishing addresses a wide range of intertwined issues—depression, suicide, cutting grief and deep mourning, patriarchal domination, interracial marriage, immigrant narrative, memory construction and mixed-race identity. Thus, it can be argued Pan eschews the pitfall of exoticism.
21Defending Asian American writers’ use of magical realism, Simal-González maintains that we should focus on how effectively the novelists have employed this narrative mode: “If, as several theorists of the literary mode have argued, magical realism is more a question of attitude than of cultural and geographical determinism, the question that readers and critics alike should be asking is not where these magical gourds and secret senses come from, but whether they are effective or not” (143-144). Drawing on Simal-González’s criteria, I contend that Pan can fend off the allegation of self-Orientalizing because she, casting Leigh as a person with stolen memory and completely disconnected from her maternal family, makes the supernatural intervention a necessity in her helpless protagonist’s quest to construct memory and connection. Moreover, Pan skillfully incorporates Taiwan’s local beliefs and folklore into traditional magical realism to effect the occurrence of the supernatural force. Pan’s creation of Feng to help Leigh emplace with her mother’s favorite places, construct the past and build connection with her late mother demonstrates the utmost effectivity in her use of magical realist narrative mode. Infusing traditional magical realism with Taiwan’s local currents, Pan enriches, I assert, the magical realist repertoire of sources for supernatural elements and rejuvenates this narrative device.
22After having some mysterious visions of her family history, Leigh reflected: “Wonder, and sadness. Because I’d always imagined that one day it would be my mother telling me the stories of her family. Not memories materializing from wisps of incense smoke, memories that feel stolen” (164). Leigh’s wish that her mother tells her family stories foregrounds the tradition in immigrant families and the convention of immigrant narrative. For many immigrant families, immigrant parents or grandparents share with their posterity their lineage and life stories so as to preserve memory and family connection. This practice is translated into an immigrant narrative convention. In Asian American literature, Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts is a literary trailblazer laying the groundwork for this narrative convention of mother’s “talk stories.” Yet Pan’s Astonishing subverts this literary tradition with her representation of Dorothy’s deliberate silence about her life story and Leigh’s construction of the stolen memory and connection. Depicting Leigh’s quest to construct memory of her late mother and connect with her maternal family, Pan demonstrates her innovation in theme, deftly combining the supernatural elements of magical realism with Taiwan’s local faiths and skillfully conflating Dorothy’s karma of life reviewing with Leigh’s place-making in Taiwan. This ingenious narrative design presents Dorothy and Leigh concomitantly re/view the former’s past. Dorothy recalls her life by undergoing her karma while Leigh remembers Dorothy by constructing memory and giving voice to her mother’s life story. Evidently, Pan demonstrates her craftsmanship through such an economy of emplotting and narrating.
23Astonishing also illustrates how patriarchal dominance and objection to an interracial marriage has brought about tensions, struggles and silence in the transnational Taiwanese American family, Dorothy’s disconnection with her Taiwanese family and Leigh’s stolen memories, trauma and identity crisis. Therefore, Pan’s portrayal generates a gender-based immigrant narrative about Dorothy’s defiance against patriarchal dominance and practice of personal freedom to choose an international marriage. Employing the supernatural elements to facilitate Leigh’s quest to construct family history and help her late mother find a voice, Pan allows, as Lyn Di Iorio Sandin and Richard Perez put it, “a forgotten or repressed history or discursive formation” (1) to surface “to tell contemporary traumatic stories, rememory (in Morrison’s phrase) the dead” (13). In so doing, Pan has done justice to Dorothy as well her like. On the outlook of magical realism, Chichester pinpoints gender and sexuality as subjects worth exploring through transnational magical realism: “there are areas ripe for further development. Avenues of research that would benefit from more detailed exploration with this framework include gender and sexuality” (217). Given that Pan intertwines magical realist narrative device with Taiwan’s local faiths and folk culture to represent Dorothy’s and Leigh’s emotional journeys and creates a unique gendered immigrant narrative, I assert Pan contributes with Astonishing to the reconfiguration of magical realist narrative mode.
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