American Knees by Shawn Wong

Abstract

86 Western American Literature weaves together in this collection of short stories the power of suggestion, ambiguity, and poignant insight to explore “the mysteries of name and time and ordinary living and ordinary pain.” “Half Past Four” reminds us that people with the same name exist all over the world and yet have their own stories to tell. Not until the third vignette of eight does the reader realize the narratives have nothing to do with each other even though they all talk about Ann, Ella, Stephen, and Todd. In “The Spoons in the Basement,” Le Guin explores the mystery of time by explaining that one of the previous tenants of Georgia’s house, “leaving for the holidays in June of 1910 or for a year abroad in September of 1951,” accidently left six apostle spoons. In “Daddy’s Big Girl” Le Guin studies ordinary living from a most unconventional per­ spective, that of the sister of a young girl who never ceases to grow in height even after she reaches a stature of forty-five feet at the age of fif­ teen. “Olders” tells the story of a farm wife who must confront not just the death of her husband but his planting as well, for in his dying he metamorphosizes into a tree. After his skin browns and grains, he is stood upright in a bucket of water to sprout roots until he can be planted in the Old Grove with his ancestors. Le Guin wonders if there was cruelty in his not dying. At the end of “Half Past Four,” Le Guin wonders, “Was it better, more honest, to tell only very short stories, like that?” Yes, most definitely. You’ll agree, even if you avoid science fiction, for Le Guin’s creativity and artistry require a “reversal of the usual process of knowing” and thus offer a beautiful, delightful, and challenging reading experience that touches the hidden recesses of the reader’s spirit. R. L. STRENG International Christian School San Jose, Costa Rica American Knees. By Shawn Wong. (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995. 240 pages, $21.00.) When criticized by Chinese American male writers for misrepresent­ ing China and for subscribing to Chinese American stereotypes, Maxine Hong Kingston responded by saying that, instead of talking, they should be home writing stories. Shawn Wong, one of her critics and writer of the earlier novel Homebase (1979), did just that when he created American Knees, an intensely comic and psychologically enlightening novel about what it means to be ethnically conscious in America, especially when one Reviews 87 has a hyphenated identity that sets him or her apart from the rest of Americans: hence the title from a childhood joke, “What are you— Chinese, Japanese, or American knees?” After being divorced from his wife, Raymond Ding, a forty-year-old Chinese American working as a college affirmative action officer, meets Aurora, half Japanese and half Irish, at a party where they are the only two Asian Americans. Although Aurora moves in with Raymond in San Francisco and works as a photographer for a newspaper, their relationship lasts only two years because of Raymond’s insistence upon being 100 per­ cent Asian. In writing the novel, Wong dutifully bears the burden of rehabilitating the Chinese American image. But unlike other writers with heavy politi­ cal agendas, Wong is actually playful and at ease; in contrast, he was in his first novel, Homebase, a bit too intent on “correctly” representing early Chinese immigration history. Raymond is sufficiently human: sensi­ tive, whimsical, sardonic, sexually creative, and pathetically foolish. And as the narrative viewpoint swings back and forth between Raymond and Aurora, readers gain valuable psychological insights into the characters. Wong has shown other ethnic writers how to write politically sound fiction without losing the mainstream audience. SEIWOONG OH Rider University Nightland. By Louis Owens. (New York: Dutton, 1996. 217 pages, $22.00.) Louis Owens’s Nightland is a ghost story, a mystery, and a grail myth all tied into one small book. As with his previous novel, Sharpest Sight, Owens presents a ghost endangered by the “Anglo” blindness of his Native American protagonists. Unlike Sharpest Sight, however, in Nightland the very quality...