Monique Truong's Literary South and the Regional Forms of Asian America

Abstract

Monique Truong's Bitter in the Mouth (2010) begins with an epigraph from Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird (1960). In an essay that reflects upon the importance of Lee's book, the South, and Southern literary traditions to her own writing process, Truong fondly recalls rereading Mockingbird, which she immediately thought of when she decided to set Bitter in the Mouth in her former hometown of Boiling Springs, North Carolina (2010 population count: 4647 [US Census]). When she returned to Lee's book, its final scene “sparkled anew” (“How a Mockingbird”). In these closing pages, Atticus Finch reads the boys' adventure novel The Gray Ghost to Scout, who falls asleep as he reads. When Scout wakes up, she claims that she has heard every word. In Lee's famous closing lines (which Truong used for her epigraph), Scout proclaims, “‘An’ they chased him ‘n’ never could catch him ‘cause they didn't know what he looked like, an’ Atticus, when they finally saw him … he was real nice. … ’ His hands were under my chin, pulling up the cover, tucking it around me. ‘Most people are, Scout, when you finally see them’” (295–96). Truong originally remembered these lines as referring only to Mockingbird's enigmatic Boo Radley (and of course they do). But they also accurately describe the ending of The Gray Ghost. “That Harper Lee,” Truong recalls with admiration, “is one cheeky writer. Her main character learns an important, indelible life lesson from a book on the last page of her own book. What elegant symmetry! And, how hadn't I seen it before?” (“How a Mockingbird”).