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Jean Kwok's Mambo in Chinatown
Aug. 11th, 2014 11:55 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
pylduck.livejournal.comJean Kwok's second novel, Mambo in Chinatown (Riverhead Books, 2014), explores contrasts between Chinese and Western cultures as understood by an American born Chinese, Charlie Wong, who is the older daughter of immigrant parents. Her mother has passed away, so it is just her, her little sister Lisa, and their father who live together in a small Chinatown apartment in New York City.
The novel sketches out an insular world for Charlie, one confined almost exclusively to Chinatown where she works as a dishwasher in the same restaurant where her father makes hand-drawn noodles. Kwok works through a number of common themes regarding cultural conflict and generational differences. At the heart of the novel is Charlie's move to a new job as a receptionist at a ballroom dance studio, something she keeps a secret from her father (she tells him she is working as a receptionist at a computer company instead). Although Charlie's mother was a professional dancer in China, Charlie does not believe that her father would allow her to work in a dance studio because he would think it is too Western and too dangerous for a Chinese girl.
As you might expect, Charlie goes on to find herself over the course of the novel, coming into her own self and her own body through the vehicle of dance. Along the way, she learns to carry herself more confidently but also to dress more revealingly and to wear makeup as befits her age. On top of all that, she falls in love with a white male dancing student, Ryan.
As much as the novel carves out binaries between East and West, it also sees confluences and similarities in some places. Charlie's experience with tai chi, for instance, allows her to understand ballroom dance more quickly than otherwise. Ryan's understanding of feng shui and the idea of spiritual balance is partially what endears him to Charlie since she sees that he is, in some ways, also a bit Chinese.
The other major narrative strand in the novel centers on Lisa, who has always been the smart one in the family. Although she has a chance to test for entrance into Hunter High School, a prestigious public school in the city, she also comes down with a mysterious, debilitating condition where she loses strength in her legs. Her father tries all sorts of Chinese medicine (his brother has a traditional medicine practice in Chinatown) and even witchcraft (they consult the Vision, an older woman who performs rituals and spouts prophecies). The novel pits these Chinese medical arts and spiritual beliefs against Western medicine throughout.
The audiobook version made me cringe a little with the performer/narrator Angela Lin's use of accented English for the older generation of Chinese immigrants, even when those characters were supposed to be speaking Chinese. I understand that there is a need to differentiate the dialogue of different characters, and as Arthur Chu recently put it (I came across his blog post while I was listening to Kwok's novel, in fact), the immigrant generation does speak often in heavily accented English. I do wonder how performers of audiobooks might aurally signal dialogue spoken in a foreign language (but written in English) without recourse to accented English...
As I listened to this novel, I also kept thinking that there was another second novel by an Asian American author, published sometime in the earlier 2000s, also set in New York City in the subcultural world of dancers, but I couldn't remember the author, title, or other details of the story. After searching through our librarything list of reviews, I was able to figure out that the book I was thinking of is Patricia Chao's Mambo Peligroso. These two novels might make an interesting pair to read together, particularly to consider how each negotiates interracial contact as well as the physicality/spirituality of dance.
The novel sketches out an insular world for Charlie, one confined almost exclusively to Chinatown where she works as a dishwasher in the same restaurant where her father makes hand-drawn noodles. Kwok works through a number of common themes regarding cultural conflict and generational differences. At the heart of the novel is Charlie's move to a new job as a receptionist at a ballroom dance studio, something she keeps a secret from her father (she tells him she is working as a receptionist at a computer company instead). Although Charlie's mother was a professional dancer in China, Charlie does not believe that her father would allow her to work in a dance studio because he would think it is too Western and too dangerous for a Chinese girl.
As you might expect, Charlie goes on to find herself over the course of the novel, coming into her own self and her own body through the vehicle of dance. Along the way, she learns to carry herself more confidently but also to dress more revealingly and to wear makeup as befits her age. On top of all that, she falls in love with a white male dancing student, Ryan.
As much as the novel carves out binaries between East and West, it also sees confluences and similarities in some places. Charlie's experience with tai chi, for instance, allows her to understand ballroom dance more quickly than otherwise. Ryan's understanding of feng shui and the idea of spiritual balance is partially what endears him to Charlie since she sees that he is, in some ways, also a bit Chinese.
The other major narrative strand in the novel centers on Lisa, who has always been the smart one in the family. Although she has a chance to test for entrance into Hunter High School, a prestigious public school in the city, she also comes down with a mysterious, debilitating condition where she loses strength in her legs. Her father tries all sorts of Chinese medicine (his brother has a traditional medicine practice in Chinatown) and even witchcraft (they consult the Vision, an older woman who performs rituals and spouts prophecies). The novel pits these Chinese medical arts and spiritual beliefs against Western medicine throughout.
The audiobook version made me cringe a little with the performer/narrator Angela Lin's use of accented English for the older generation of Chinese immigrants, even when those characters were supposed to be speaking Chinese. I understand that there is a need to differentiate the dialogue of different characters, and as Arthur Chu recently put it (I came across his blog post while I was listening to Kwok's novel, in fact), the immigrant generation does speak often in heavily accented English. I do wonder how performers of audiobooks might aurally signal dialogue spoken in a foreign language (but written in English) without recourse to accented English...
As I listened to this novel, I also kept thinking that there was another second novel by an Asian American author, published sometime in the earlier 2000s, also set in New York City in the subcultural world of dancers, but I couldn't remember the author, title, or other details of the story. After searching through our librarything list of reviews, I was able to figure out that the book I was thinking of is Patricia Chao's Mambo Peligroso. These two novels might make an interesting pair to read together, particularly to consider how each negotiates interracial contact as well as the physicality/spirituality of dance.
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