The Love Wife by Gish Jen

When The Love Wife was coming out in 2004, I heard Gish Jen speak at an author event to promote the upcoming release. I had read her book of short stories, Who’s Irish?, and had felt an unusual connection with it because, for the first time, I encountered Chinese-Americans portrayed in a way that was true for me, that I could relate to. I was very interested to hear that The Love Wife turned the tables a little bit by featuring a family with a Chinese American husband, a Caucasian wife, and two adopted girls from China. The conflict of the story seemed to revolve around a nanny who is Chinese. Strangers assumed that the nanny was the girls’ mother. How interesting!

I feel like a terrible person, but I only read about 120 pages in before I just gave up. Then, in a terribly uncharacteristic moment, I flipped to the back of the book and read the ending. Guilty on two counts. I haven’t been able to get it out of my mind ever since. I’ve been trying to figure out why I disliked the book so much, and more importantly, why I feel so guilty about it.

The Love Wife turned out not to be about the modern American experience of being a “hyphen,” and having hyphenated families. It was in fact a melodramatic soap opera featuring the usual cast of repressive mothers and missing fathers. Unfortunately, the only character that I found to have any depth at all was Mama Wong, who I hated intensely. I also tired immediately of the nanny LanLan, her “foreignness” to the family, and her run-of-the-mill Cultural Revolution sob story. (Judging by the Chinese-themed novels published in recent years, you’d think the entirety of Chinese history consisted of the Cultural Revolution.)

See that? I am a bad person. How could I be so shallow as to dismiss the suffering of an entire country’s people, let alone a people of my own ancestry? How could I not find Chinese history and culture fascinating? Every time I read a book that takes place in China, I get depressed. Everybody’s poor, persecuted, sick, or a combination of the three. It’s far from enjoyable. But I’m just too Chinese: I have this ingrained belief that if it’s not enjoyable, it must be good for you. Just like Mama Wong always says.

I believe that the two greatest pleasures of reading about a foreign culture are to experience a place and people removed from one’s own familiarity while simultaneously identifying with the universal qualities of human ideas and our constant struggle. If the setting is not exotic, and the struggle is the same every time, do I still have to like it?

The Love Wife by Gish Jen

tags: books book reviews china chinese american Gish Jen