An admirable first try at Chinese-American male storytelling
Written: May 04 '01 (Updated May 04 '01)
Product Rating:
Pros: For the first time, a look at the Chinese-American male experience. Both funny and sensual.
Cons: Feels unedited. Curious inconsistencies. At time, drags. Ends with a whimper.
The Bottom Line: An excellent first for Chinese-American male literature. However, inconsistent editing, and awkward pacing leave room for others to take the lead.
benho's Full Review: The Barbarians Are Coming: A Novel Books
As an American born Chinese man, I am free to say that we are an emasculated, invisible lot in American society. In movies or television, we are still relegated to the role of kung-fu guy. At least the Chinese American female has found voice through Ming Na, Connie Chung, and Amy Tan. David Wong Louie’s The Barbarians are Coming takes us at least a small but significant first step in the right direction.
Plot
In the tradition of Amy Tan, Jung Chang, and other Chinese-American writers, Louie writes about three generations of Chinese in America, but from the male perspective. The main character is Sterling, son of Chinese immigrants names Genius and Zsa Zsa, born in Long Island, and raised in the back of Chinese laundry. Sterling comes to reject his own culture, attends a top liberal arts college, and finishes the top of his class in French cuisine from the Culinary Institute of America (CIA).
We follow Sterling’s life as he deals with the conflicts of his adopted American ways and his Chinese duties. We hear about the trials his father underwent, fresh off the boat in America during World War II, trying to establish himself in a new land with a fast machine culture. We then see Sterling, as he tries to relate to his own sons. The story is about the eternal conflict between the two parts of his hyphenated identity, his initial rejection of his Chinese self, and how he comes to reconcile the two.
Style
The style is the most important distinguishing characteristic of this book. Reading the quotes on the back cover, many reviewers found it to be “uproariously funny.” I think for me, it was too true, too identifiable to be that funny, though I did find myself cracking up throughout. We catch glimpses of the Chinese-American experience, the attitude towards milk, the multiple dialects, the stereotypes, the non-use of ovens that I easily identified with.
As Sterling is a chef, we have delectable passages describing the pleasures of food. Sexually charged passages that writhe with energy. All this makes the book a delight to read.
The most entertaining and significant aspect of Louie’s writing is the unique juxtapositions he uses liberally throughout. Sterling is talking about himself at a dinner when another guest all of a sudden shouts “Vermin.” It’s only a few paragraphs later that we realize he was referring to a deer and not Sterling. Or, when Sterling is discussing the evacuation of bodily fluids, and them places himself in the next sentence.
However, despite his virtuosity in his prose, Louie, whose previous work was a short story collection, seems a bit unsure in his first assay at constructing an entire novel. Minor factual inconsistencies constantly crop up from scene. It feels as if he wrote lots of ideas for the story on note cards, and then pasted them together. More likely, used to writing short stories, he wrote a collection of short stories, of incredibly powerful vignettes, which unfortunately loses their effectiveness when clumsily strung together.
Certain things don’t make sense, like the educational backgrounds of certain characters seem to change, or the wedding guests at a certain wedding party. We hear all the little details and life histories that go into making characters real. However, from time to time, they don’t always line up. Searching back, it is hard to find evidence of any real contradictions. However, there is plenty of evidence that they were there, but then inexpertly erased.
The one most troubling is Sterling’s language skills. Throughout, Sterling is constantly beset by people who try to speak Mandarin to him, and he is always upset, since he does not know that dialect. However, he must. His parents speak Toisanese, so fine, he speaks that at home. However, at college, he took 7 semesters of Chinese and even starred in a Peking Opera. This should imply that he knows mandarin, but there is an off chance that he was taught Cantonese. But he can’t know Cantonese because he panics when confronted with a girl from Hong Kong who he thinks he can’t communicate with.
That is the thing. The contradiction is hard to find, but there are numerous occasions when you just feel that it is there.
Therefore
The Barbarians are Coming shows an accurate, believable depiction of the struggles of three generations of Chinese as they try to deal with life in a barbarous land. However, the insights he provides are not particularly novel, or do they differ particularly from those already expressed by female Asian-American authors. Further, his inexperience with novel writing makes the pacing somewhat awkward, and it tends to drag at times. However, Louis should still be given credit for being a first, bringing to light the voice of the Chinese-American male. However, his lack of novelty and the little factual inconsistencies make it a faltering step, leaving room for either Louie’s second attempt, or someone else to lead us in the charge out from the shadows.
In a tale that alternates between black comedy and out-and-out slapstick, David Wong Louie explores the painful alienation between a Chinese-American ...More at Alibris
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