Summary
By the summer of 1941, Sek-Lung and his family have made peace with Grandmother's death while also honoring her memory. Sek-Lung is now much stronger and healthier, and spends time playing and roughhousing with his brothers and other boys from the neighborhood. In his play, Sek-Lung and other boys pretend to be fighting Nazis or Japanese soldiers, integrating the context of World War II into their games. For residents of Vancouver, and other locations along the Pacific coast, the potential of Japanese aggression is a very real threat. This also increases racism towards Japanese individuals in Vancouver.
In September, Sek-Lung is finally deemed healthy enough to be able to begin school. He is placed in Advanced Grade Three, which is a class primarily composed of children from immigrant families. The class is taught by a teacher named Miss Doyle, who is strict but also very devoted to her students. She emphasizes bravery and personal responsibility, and focuses on helping the students improve their English so that they can have more opportunities. Miss Doyle keeps the children updated on the events of the war, and she also tells them many stories about her brother, John Willard Henry Doyle, who lives in London, and works in neighborhoods that have been bombed.
Sek-Lung becomes fascinated by these stories, and begins to imagine Miss Doyle's brother as a heroic figure. He even shares some of the stories about Miss Doyle's brother with his own brother, Jung-Sum. Jung-Sum listens to Sek-Lung, and then tells Sek-Lung that Miss Doyle's brother was killed in a bombing months earlier. Sek-Lung initially refuses to believe what he is hearing, and goes to class early to talk to Miss Doyle. Sek-Lung bluntly asks if her brother is dead, using the graphic expression "blown to bits" because that is the terminology that Jung-Sum used. Miss Doyle is shocked, but slowly realizes that when she first started to talk about her brother with the class, she had told the children that her brother had been killed in the war. However, Sek-Lung was absent on that day, and never realized that this whole time, Miss Doyle had been speaking about someone who was dead. Sek-Lung continues to look to his teacher with deep respect and awe, because she is a stern authority figure. Miss Doyle's highly regimented classroom creates a space where the children are treated equally, regardless of their backgrounds and history.
Outside of the classroom, Sek-Lung continues to have lots of time to play with other neighborhood boys. His family members are all very busy with their own work and studies, and Sek-Lung is still perceived as delicate, and therefore not expected to attend Chinese school or take on extra studies. One day, while pretending to be playing a bombing game, Sek-Lung sets some newspapers on fire in front of the house. A neighbor sees the fire, and douses the papers with water, creating a mess. Sek-Lung's parents are annoyed, and decide that from now on, Sek-Lung cannot be left home alone. Since no one else in the family has time to watch him, he will have to stay with Mrs. Lim after school and when the rest of the family is working. Jook-Liang would be the obvious choice to care for her younger brother, but she does not want to spend time looking after Sek-Lung, and the two siblings also do not get along.
Meanwhile, Father is growing increasingly agitated and worried about stories of what is happening in China. Despite Stepmother's pleas, he does not try to hide these events from his children. Sek-Lung and his siblings grow to perceive Japanese people as bloodthirsty monsters based on the stories they hear. The news is also very compelling to them because many people in Chinatown have family in China who are potentially in danger. At school, children fight amongst themselves, often bullying Japanese children.
Mrs. Lim is an elderly woman who was close friends with Grandmother. Mrs. Lim has an adopted daughter named Meiying; Meiying's mother was an alcoholic who abandoned her daughter when Meiying was 8. Meiying has adjusted well, and grown up to be a studious and beautiful young woman. Sek-Lung and his siblings like her, and Meiying also sometimes spends time with Stepmother. She is 17 in the autumn of 1941. Mrs. Lim is known to be very strict and traditional, and Sek-Lung dreads having to spend time with her. He is also very resentful and angry, because he does not want to give up his freedom, especially while his siblings seem to be able to do whatever they want. Nonetheless, beginning in early October, Sek-Lung begins to go to Mrs. Lim's house every afternoon after school. Mrs. Lim lives in a precarious, rickety old house, accessible only by very steep steps. Mrs. Lim's late husband bought the house, and died in an accident at the mill where he worked. Although Sek-Lung has assumed he was going to spend his time stuck in the house with Mrs. Lim, he is shocked when, as soon as he arrives, Meiying ushers him out of the house.
Sek-Lung assumes that he and and Meiying will go to a nearby park, and is very surprised when she leads him to a neighborhood that he is unfamiliar with. Sek-Lung is shocked to see that Meiying has brought him to Powell Ground park, a park with a baseball diamond, located in a predominantly Japanese neighborhood. A young Japanese man greets Meiying; his name is Kazuo, or Kaz. Meiying sends Sek-Lung some distance away so that she and Kaz can speak privately. However, their interaction attracts the attention of the other Japanese people spending time in the park. They begin to yell and tell Meiying to stay away from Kaz, implying that she has caused problems for him. Sek-Lung and Meiying leave the park; as they walk, Sek-Lung tries to understand what is happening. He can tell that Meiying and Kaz have some sort of relationship, and he knows that Meiying would get in a lot of trouble if the Chinatown community knew what was going on. He likes having some power over her, and he also feels like he should protect her, and keep an eye on the Japanese if she is going to continue to go to this neighborhood. However, Sek-Lung is also confused, because all of the Japanese people he had seen seemed very ordinary and unthreatening, and he had been impressed by the skill of some Japanese men playing baseball. He decides to keep Meiying's secret for the time being.
For the next few months, Meiying and Sek-Lung go to the park whenever the weather is bearable, and there is a chance that Meiying might be able to meet with Kaz. Kaz goes to the same high school as Meiying, where Japanese students are often bullied and sometimes attacked. The same thing is occurring at the school that Sek-Lung attends. Sek-Lung is much happier now that he has something to do in the afternoons, although he knows that terrible things could happen to Meiying if the secret is found out. One day, when Meiying drops Sek-Lung off at home, Stepmother quietly hugs Meiying, and seems concerned about her. By December, Sek-Lung spends time with Meiying almost every day. If the weather makes it possible, they sometimes still go to Powell Ground, and Sek-Lung suspects that she must also have other ways to meet up with Kaz. Kaz and Meiying sometimes go into a nearby building together while Sek-Lung plays outside. Gradually, Sek-Lung becomes fond of Kaz, who sometimes plays and roughhouses with him. One day, Sek-Lung even asks his father if all Japanese people are enemies; Father asserts that they are, but hints that he and Stepmother disagree on this topic.
One morning, Sek-Lung and Jung-Sum are awakened by noise and chaos in the house. They get up and learn that Japanese forces have bombed Pearl Harbor; it seems inevitable now that America will enter the war. Most of the family is happy, since it makes more likely that the Japanese will be defeated, but Sek-Lung and Stepmother seem to be uneasy. Beginning in mid-December, Meiying also starts coming to Sek-Lung's house to get him. They stay there until Stepmother goes to work, and then go to the park, or on other adventures. She usually talks with Stepmother until it is time for Stepmother to go to work, and the two women sometimes sound distressed and worried. Meiying also sometimes seems ill. One day, Meiying has still not arrived by the time that Stepmother needs to leave for work. Stepmother asks Sek-Lung about where he has gone with Meiying, and he lies. When Meiying arrives, she and Stepmother disappear to talk for a while, and then Meiying and Sek-Lung leave the house. They rush to the park, where Meiying and Kaz say a final good-bye, and she gives him her favorite scarf.
After that, Sek-Lung does not see Meiying anymore. Stepmother tells him that Meiying is sick, and sometimes questions him about what he and Meiying did together. More time passes, and in early January 1942, Japanese Canadians begin to be sent to enemy internment camps. Stepmother and Father get into an argument, and all of the children are surprised, because it rare for the two of them to openly argue. Stepmother expresses unhappiness at her position within the family, and implies that Father should have done a better job standing up for her over the years. Just as Sek-Lung is heading out to play, Mrs. Lim comes rushing across the street, screaming about Meiying. Stepmother rushes over to the Lim house, and Sek-Lung follows her; he goes up to Meiying's room, and sees her collapsed in a pool of blood, with knitting needles between her legs. Meiying has tried to perform an at-home abortion, and died as a result.
Stepmother and some of the neighbors call for an ambulance, but it takes a long time to come. When the paramedics come to deal with the body, Mrs. Lim goes home with Father, Stepmother, and Sek-Lung. Stepmother goes up to her room in shock. Sek-Lung follows her, and once in the room, he calls her "Mother" and gives her the jade ornament that Grandmother had given to him.
Analysis
While Sek-Lung adored his Grandmother and benefited from their close relationship, her death liberates him to integrate both into the world of children (Sek-Lung has been quite isolated, and spent most of his time at home) and into the world of education. Sek-Lung's time with his grandmother seems to have both infantilized him and kept him in a somewhat sickly state, hinting that isolation and lack of exposure to the wider world does not benefit the development of a child. He becomes much stronger, and physically and intellectually healthier once he begins to play with other children and attend school. However, Sek-Lung's emergence into the wider world also exposes him to a key historical context: by this point in the narrative, World War II is raging, and having a significant impact on the Chen family, and Vancouver's Chinatown community in general. Because the narrative is recounted from the perspective of a child, Sek-Lung is often not fully cognizant of or attentive to the full political circumstances, or the horrors of the violence. However, Sek-Lung quickly becomes immersed in a milieu where violent struggles, and hatred of "the other" are absorbed by children who don't fully understand what is going on.
Sek-Lung's experience at school exposes him to a much more diverse range of individuals; it also functions as a microcosm of what an accepting and diverse society could look like. Miss Doyle's classroom, much like the boxing gym for Jung-Sum, or the movie theatre for Jook-Liang, functions as a place where Sek-Lung can be accepted, and not made to feel isolated or othered. Almost all of the children in Miss Doyle's classroom are immigrants from different backgrounds, but they are able to work hard together because she provides strong leadership to them. The novel hints that this classroom is a rare example of a space where Sek-Lung will not be met with racism or xenophobia, but also that this experience is foundational to his belief that it is possible to be accepted.
While Sek-Lung enjoys his experience at school, he continues to show xenophobic mistrust and even hatred towards people he perceives as alien and dangerous. Sek-Lung and his siblings have grown up immersed in a family and community where it was very common for Chinese individuals to dislike and mistrust Japanese people. There was a long history of military conflict between Japan and China, and in the lead-up to, and then outbreak of, World War II, people in China were injured and killed as a result of military conflict with Japan. Sek-Lung's father, and other individuals in Chinatown, often expressed hatred towards Japanese individuals, and once Canada entered into World War II, it was fighting against Japan (which, along with Nazi Germany, was a key member of the military alliance known as the Axis powers). All of the context leads Sek-Lung to have extremely biased and negative views of Japanese people, even Japanese-Canadians who may have lived in Canada for generations. As a child, Sek-Lung can be somewhat forgiven for uncritically absorbing the messages around him, but his viewpoint also shows how pervasive this xenophobic attitude was. The tensions between Chinese and Japanese immigrants to Canada is also interesting because it shows that the experience of being isolated, othered, and even hated does not necessarily lead to compassion for other groups experiencing the same troubles. The Chinese-Canadians might be able to relate to how Japanese-Canadians are shunned and mistrusted, but they do not band together. Instead, there are even deeper tensions between these immigrant groups, reflecting broader geopolitical events.
The first time that Sek-Lung is challenged to think beyond his prejudiced beliefs occurs when he realizes that Meiying is in love with a Japanese boy. Meiying functions as another friend figure in the novel, and she very explicitly broadens Sek-Lung's perspective beyond what he has been taught within his family and community. While on the surface Meiying conforms to many expectations for a young woman in the Chinatown community, she is secretly much more free-thinking and rebellious. Meiying serves a key purpose in the narrative since she is older than any of the three Chen siblings, and therefore can encounter different experiences and different conflicts. The 3 child-narrators begin to experience tensions between more traditional values, and a desire to imagine their own futures; however, none of them are old enough to experience these tensions with the same scope that Meiying does. Sek-Lung's friendship exposes him both to someone who makes her own rules and defies expectations, as well as to the idea that not all the beliefs he has been taught are necessarily true. This exposure does not fully transform Sek-Lung, and it mostly leaves him ambivalent and confused. It does encourage him to mature and progress because it broadens his horizons.
While Sek-Lung does not fully understand everything that is going on in Meiying's relationship, and Stepmother's involvement with the young woman, readers are able to infer based on what he does notice. Stepmother's character becomes increasingly complex in this section, since she shows strong sympathy with a younger woman who is struggling with feeling trapped by limited choices. This solidarity, paired with Stepmother's outburst when she finally expresses her anger and frustration about how she has been treated within the family, show that Stepmother is not simply passive and accepting. She seems to be someone who has had to sacrifice her own desires and visions for what she wanted her life to be like, and she copes by trying to help Meiying seize her own chance to experience happiness. Especially once Grandmother has died, Stepmother can achieve a new sort of power and agency, where she is more open to speaking up for herself, challenging her husband, and taking action to help those who need it.
Despite Stepmother's attempts to support Meiying, her experience ends in tragedy. After Pearl Harbor, beginning in 1942, more than 20,000 Japanese-Canadians were placed in internment camps. This historical context makes it impossible for Meiying and Kazuo to continue their relationship. Her pregnancy, and her attempt to end it, represent the failure of integration and cultural acceptance; as Paul Lee writes, "her abortion symbolizes the eradication of an unborn child whose very existence embodies the deconstruction of boundaries between Chinese and Japanese" (30). Had Meiying been able to bear and raise her child, that child would have literally synthesized two distinct cultural identities; however, the cultural and historical context made that impossible. Meiying's rebellious and independent spirit led her to take her pregnancy into her own hands, just as she had gone ahead independently and pursued a relationship. However, she reached the tragic limit of how much agency she could exert.
The novel's abrupt end provides little consolation or resolution after Meiying's death; as a child, Sek-Lung is too young to process or make sense out of what he witnessed. Historically, years of ongoing violence, warfare, and xenophobic tensions within Canada lay ahead beyond the end point of the novel. Nonetheless, Choy does embed small hints of hope in the novel's conclusion. Even though he is only a child, Sek-Lung can sense Stepmother's distress, and goes to her. For the first time in the novel, he calls her "Mother" rather than "Stepmother," symbolically ushering in a new stage of their relationship in which the two are closer and more transparent with one another. Sek-Lung also gives Stepmother the jade peony ornament, symbolically linking together Grandmother, Stepmother, and Meiying as women who all encountered great suffering in their lives, but whose memories are also treasured.
