{"id":40741,"date":"2015-04-03T20:39:48","date_gmt":"2015-04-03T20:39:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=40741"},"modified":"2015-04-03T20:49:00","modified_gmt":"2015-04-03T20:49:00","slug":"mixed-race-migration-and-adoption-in-gish-jens-the-love-wife","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=40741","title":{"rendered":"Mixed-race Migration and Adoption in Gish Jen\u2019s The Love Wife"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mixed-race Migration and Adoption in Gish Jen\u2019s <\/strong><\/em>The Love Wife<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Canadian Review of Comparative Literature \/ Revue Canadienne de Litt\u00e9rature Compar\u00e9e<\/a>
\nVolume 42, Issue 1, Mars 2015<\/a>
\npages 45-56<\/p>\n

Jenny Wen-chuan Chu<\/strong>
\nNational Kaohsiung Normal University, Taiwan<\/em><\/p>\n

Migration is a way of geographic movement. It involves a sense of belonging, nostalgia and diaspora issues. Besides, adoption in the migrated family illustrates the fluidity and tenacity of racial boundaries in different national and racial origins. In Gish Jen\u2019s<\/a> The Love Wife<\/em><\/a>, the question of Mama Wong\u2019s motives haunts Blondie and Carnegie. Is Lan a nanny who teaches their two Asian daughters to be more Chinese, or is she a love wife who drives Blondie out? In contemporary America, an interracial marriage like Carnegie and Blondie\u2019s is increasingly common. We might expect Carnegie to naturally speak Chinese and know his culture, but it is Blondie who speaks Chinese and instructs their adopted children on Asian heritage. It is not natural. However, when Carnegie discovers that he is adopted, and adoption is a natural occurrence in China, he finally realizes that nothing is unnatural. His home is based on mutual love and sharing multiple cultures, not blood or skin colour.<\/p>\n

In the dimension of mixed-race migration, home is a discourse of locality, and place of feelings and rootedness. According to Henri Lefebvre<\/a>, home belongs to a differential space, i.e., a spiritual and imaginary space. Our memories and souls are closely related to such differential space. Gaston Bachelard<\/a>, too, argues that our home is a privileged entity of the intimate values that we take it as our differential space: \u201cOur [home] is our corner of the world\u201d (4). Home is no longer fixed, but fluid and mobile. Nostalgia is inevitable. But loving homes provide more stability than do memories of good old days. In the dimension of mixed-race adoption, the American dream is internalized as the way of the mixed-race family\u2019s lifestyle. In America, Chinese culture is also highly strengthened in the diversity of Chinese American families. However, how can the second generation of Chinese immigrants enjoy their individual American dreams, but still have to cope with the demands and expectations of their familial Chinese parents?<\/p>\n

In The Love Wife<\/em>, we observe that the adopted children perceive and negotiate their ethnic\/racial identities and sense of esteem as well as their acceptance and ease with such an adopted status. Wendy and Lizzy are both Asian Americans. Blondie, who has a WASP<\/a> background, has always been at the mercy of Carnegie\u2019s Chinese mother, the imperious Mama Wong. When Mama Wong dies, her will requires a \u201crelative\u201d of hers from China to stay with the family. The new arrival is Lan, middle-aged but still attractive. She is Carnegie\u2019s mainland Chinese \u201crelative,\u201d a tough, surprisingly lovely survivor of the Cultural Revolution<\/a>. Blondie is convinced that Mama Wong is sending Carnegie a new wife, Lan, from the grave. Nevertheless, through identifying the sweet home with multiple cultures, Carnegie and Blondie\u2019s mixed-race family opens the room for the practices of migration and adoption.<\/p>\n

The author, Gish Jen, is a second generation Chinese-American. Her parents emigrated from China in the 1940s, her mother from Shanghai<\/a> and her father from Yixing<\/a>. She grew up in Queens, New York<\/a>, moved to Yonkers<\/a>, and then settled in Scarsdale<\/a>. Different from those prominent Chinese-American writers who look back at Chinese-American history for their subject matter and focus on the conflicts between Chinese parents and American children, such as Amy Tan<\/a>, Maxine Hong Kingston<\/a>, etc., Jen is developing her distinctive voice. She aims at full participation in American life and reveals in her writings a strong desire to be a real American. The Love Wife<\/em><\/a>, her third novel, portrays an Asian-American family with interracial parents, a biological son, and adopted daughters as \u201cthe new American family.\u201d Jen turns to the story of transnational adoption, addressing that kinship plays a crucial role in an interracial family.<\/p>\n

Jen\u2019s The Love Wife<\/em> has been discussed critically in several articles. Fu-jen Chen and Su-lin Yu\u2019s paper explores the imaginary binary relationship between Blondie and Lan, as well as \u017di\u017eek\u2019s<\/a> \u201cparallax gap,\u201d through the gaze of the (m)Other in The Love Wife<\/em>. It argues:<\/p>\n

The polarized differences between Blondie and Lan are sustained on the grounds of a safe distance at which they…<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mixed-race Migration and Adoption in Gish Jen\u2019s The Love Wife Canadian Review of Comparative Literature \/ Revue Canadienne de Litt\u00e9rature Compar\u00e9e Volume 42, Issue 1, Mars 2015 pages 45-56 Jenny Wen-chuan Chu National Kaohsiung Normal University, Taiwan Migration is a way of geographic movement. It involves a sense of belonging, nostalgia and diaspora issues. Besides, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,16,1196,8],"tags":[19805,6418,19804,19806],"class_list":["post-40741","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-asia","category-literary-criticism","category-media-archive","tag-canadian-review-of-comparative-literature","tag-gish-jen","tag-jenny-wen-chuan-chu","tag-revue-canadienne-de-litterature-comparee"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40741","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=40741"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40741\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=40741"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=40741"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=40741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}