At a horrific, life-changing moment, a Chinese immigrant in
the United States under a false name and false pretenses thinks of some wisdom
his mother had given him. He is about to be separated from his hand as two
thugs drag him to a table saw, he remembers his mother’s aphorism: “Trust rock,
she told him. Break fear upon rock. … Go toward fear. Trust fear. Steer toward
rock.” She told him this as she was preparing to sell him to an illegal
immigration ring in the U.S.
So the young man, who must make payments to his mob boss for
the right to live, sustains himself at this ghastly moment. And Steer Toward Rock becomes the aphorism
by which this novel’s characters must live if they want to find meaning,
family, and happiness. Impressive for its sustained obliquity, Fae Myenne Ng’s
book brought me into the Chinese culture in San Francisco’s Chinatown like no
other book ever did. She stretches this culture taut across a frame of
trans-Pacific exploitation and racketeering. We learn of the purchased boy from
China whose name becomes Jack Moon Szeto, a multiple falsity rooted in a scheme
to allow illegal entry to Chinese immigrants. Before confessing his status to
the American authorities, he becomes another link in the illegal and oppressive
chain. He must take a bogus bride purchased for him from China, but here he
finds companionship and eventually fathers a fiery, headstrong daughter.
This entire history leads to the daughter. This is really
her story – how she hasn’t steered toward the rock of honesty in her love life,
but does free her father from the tangled, fear-ridden narrative of his past by
shepherding him through the naturalization process.
I love the conversations between the Chinese men in San Francisco.
They holler at each other, tease each other, voices seemingly raised at all
times; they want to get each other’s goats. Through it all, though, there is
honesty, good will, humor, and bemusement at life.(Jack himself exhibits wisdom
unusual in one his age; his almost every
statement, every piece of advice for friends and family drips with ancient
Chinese wisdom.) This banter, with its glimpse into Chinese culture, is a major
delight here, and worth the price of admission all by itself. I could have
wished for a more-closely-described San Francisco, but this may have been
absent by authorial intent. She tells her story obliquely, until roughly the
last quarter of the book, when the daughter’s character takes center stage and
the narrative takes on greater concreteness. Until then, though, the story is
told as though through a mist, becoming visible like Victorian homes on a foggy
day in San Francisco.
It would be hard to top this book’s intent look at the San
Francisco Chinese culture, or its treatment of the Hon Pak confession program, pursued in the 1950s by U.S.
Immigration authorities as a sort of bait-and-switch tactic to get better
records on Chinese and other immigrants. The family histories feel all too
true, and the saga of exploitation all too consistent with the world’s
ever-present greed.
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