Review of David Small's Stitches

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Annotated Bibliographies

My four annotated bibliographies can be found by clicking here.

It is not often that you can read a book and be impressed the entire way through just by its sheer uniqueness. The lack of words and almost cinematic feel of the “text” was at once old and new, completely strange and oddly familiar. Tan’s ability to create a gorgeous and broad cityscape, as well as the minutely beautiful created the feeling that I was watching a film, following the director’s artistic vision of what shots would be wide and what images would be zoomed in. Aside from his obvious creativity with visual art, Tan is also a provocative storyteller. I thought Tan did a masterful job of capturing the feeling of complete disorientation that comes with moving to a new and foreign place. The writing that is present means nothing to the reader and compliments perfectly the lost feeling the main character must be experiencing.

Shortly after finishing my undergraduate degree, I decided to move to Japan for a year and a half to teach English. I had never studied Japanese and knew next to nothing about Japanese culture so the first few months of living and working in the country were a whirlwind of new experiences. It was completely disconcerting to walk into a business and have no idea how to order. I relied, much like the main character in Tan’s text, heavily on the kindness of strangers (I can’t tell you how many times a kind Japanese person would literally take me by the hand to where I was attempting ask to go). Not being able to read, write or talk made me feel utterly alone. On the other hand, I learned nearly every day the amazing lesson that so much can be said without speaking a word. In a similar fashion, Tan proved in this book that so much can be written without typing a single letter.

From a critical perspective, Tan’s use of surrealism to create a sense of disorientation and awe is a dynamic metaphor for the notion of “foreign”. The city the man encounters upon his arrival is so massive and strange that it is completely overwhelming. After immigration, the man physically enters this new world by riding in a telephone booth-looking compartment attached to a giant weather balloon. This notion of coming out of the sky to a new land, of literally landing as an alien alone in a strange and new place, symbolizes the detachment and unease experienced by the protagonist. Another image that worked particularly well was the moment the protagonist moved into his new apartment. He carefully opens his suitcase on his bed. What magically appears for a single panel is his wife and daughter in miniature sitting around their table at home. For just a moment, he is able to be home again. Tan is almost taunting him with this bit of magical realism-where the man’s whole life is small enough to fit into his suitcase, but is still maddeningly out of reach.

A second artistic technique that Tan utilizes is the use of detailing to create a sense of familiarity and a deeper emotional connection with certain characters. When the protagonist is at the market and meets the other man and his son who later take him to their home, they are illustrated in emotive detail, their faces full of feeling and life. To contrast this, in other images, peoples’ faces are left intentionally abstract. Detailing is also used to create emotional intensity, the three immigration stories told to the protagonist are all graphically violent and are presented with a similar attention to crisp lines and facial expression. The surrealism and detailing work to create a world that is entirely believable yet entirely foreign. In the end, The Arrival is wonderfully successful at making the reader feel like a stranger in a strange land.

A couple of weeks after being hired by Champlin Park, I was invited to their staff breakfast in order to meet the department, get supplies for the upcoming school year and get situated in my new classroom. When I got home, I noticed that mixed within my textbooks was a brightly colored book that had all the signs of a comic. On the front page was a note that told me to read this over the summer because the author was coming to visit in the fall. I have to admit that in the craziness of those quick months, this text was all but forgotten. Almost as an after-thought I finally opened it in the week before school began. I had read only a couple of graphic novels up to this point and didn’t have the highest of expectations. To my surprise, this text asked profound questions of racial identity and did not provide easy answers.

Gene Yang’s visit was nothing short of awesome. A fantastic storyteller -he captured my students’ attention and held it for the entirety of his 85-minute presentation. However, they were already deeply intrigued by the book, as was I from the very beginning. The first vignette of the text, where the Monkey-King attempts entrance into a party in heaven and was denied based on the fact that he wasn’t wearing “shoes” unfortunately reminds me of a story my friend told be about a club in downtown Minneapolis. My friend is the bouncer and is in charge of who gets in and who is rejected. He told me that the job is much harder than kicking out drunk people because the club’s owner watches on the security cameras and will contact my friend with specific instructions. My friend will get reports like “don’t let them in, they’re Asian” or “Too many blacks man, slow it down” or “Our Indian Quota is all maxed out”. As a result, my friend will be forced to make up some innocuous reason to turn them away. Maybe he’ll say their shoes aren’t right even though the white person that just got in is wearing the same pair. The end message always being the same, “you are just not good enough the way you are”. This idea is masterfully explored in American Born Chinese.

From a critical perspective, American Born Chinese, directly speaks to the feeling of racial shame that plagues people of color in the United States. Forced to compete in a society that puts an inherent premium on whiteness, people of color are confronted with the notion that the only way to succeed is to deny their own identity and transform. The Monkey-King never noticed his monkey-ness until he was othered by the deities on the hilltop. The psychological turmoil of this experience of shaming disconnects the Monkey-King from his own community and nearly destroys him.

In a similar fashion, the protagonist Jin so strongly wants to rid himself from his racial identity that he is transformed to the popular, white, Danny. Of course this level of psychological tearing creates internal conflict. To this end, Yang creates Chin-Kee, the personification of the darkest Chinese stereotype in order to force Danny to confront his deepest fears and feelings of inadequacy. Chin-Kee, the caricature of the Chinese immigrant upholds all of America’s ignorant assumptions of asian culture and is in effect an example of Yellow-face. Like the Black-face that pervaded minstrel shows in the early 20th century, Chin-Kee reifies what is and what is not white and therefore what is and what is not rewarded. Traditionally used as a method of social oppression, Yang flips the script and reappropriates this stereotype as a way to make Danny understand exactly what he is and what he is not, as the Monkey-King explains, Chin-Kee is a “signpost to [Jin’s] soul”. Danny realizes the mask that Chin-Kee wears is the mask thrust upon him by American society.

Suzy says, “Today, when Timmy called me a chink, I realized . . . deep down inside . . . I kind of feel like that all the time.” As does the Monkey-King when he is sickened by the smell of monkey fur. As does Jin when he perms his hair and later transforms into Danny. Ultimately, In American Born Chinese Gene Yang asks us to consider the ways in which we are made to feel less than human.