Reading Notes: East of Eden

The blog has been quiet for the past few days because I’m riveted in a very good book: East of Eden by John Steinback. The original plan was to peruse this landmark novel of the Salinas native who was awarded the Nobel Prize and and finish it as the Amtrak Coast Starlight chugs through the Salinas Valley on Friday. With less than 150 pages away from the end, I might very well have turned the last page before I get on the train. To while away the 11-hour train ride, I consign to Plan B: doubling up Ian McEwan with The Comfort of Strangers and The Cement Garden. Both are very thin volumes under 150 pages that hopefully would suffice filling the hours that will be interlarded with eating in the dining car and journaling in my roomette.

Once upon a time a meme asked the question of what fictional character I would like to be and my mind drew a blank. I have found the answer by reading East of Eden—Adam’s servant Lee, the son of an imported laborer from China to build the railway is what I want to be. Lee was an accident: he was conceived at a dangerously inconvenient time. His mother, already pregnant, disguised as a man to sail across the Pacific with his father and gave birth to him. What I resonate most with Lee, a loyal and smart servant filled with wits and insights, is that he hides his English fluency in order to preserve the stereotype that befits a Chinese man. Winning the trust of a master is conducive to the survival of any foreign man who contrives to make a living. Lee’s reverse assimilation makes me question whether the obsession to assimilate to white America now (i.e. whitening skin, all-American labels like Abercrombie & Fitch, speaking like white folks) actually does the minority any good? What has caused the tipping over the balance?

I was watching the Chinese New Year Parade, turned my back to the television and checked on work on the computer. The anchor was interviewing this girl who just spoke like a Caucasian girl, who enunciates certain consonants and stressed on a syllable (and said “amazing…” at least 3 times). I turned around and was surprised to see that the interviewee was nobody but our very own Miss Chinatown USA 2010, who grew up in the Richmond district in San Francisco! (Note: She speaks no Chinese.) In my day-today encounters, I cannot help feeling a misgiving about the impression that if someone speaks English with an accent, be it Chinese, Tagalog, Spanish, or Hindi, then the person is thought of less. You’re FOB (fresh off the boat), or more accurately, FOJ (fresh off the jet). Lee rules.

Another big kudo to Lee, and this especially close to my heart, is that he aspires to save up, move to San Francisco, and open his own bookstore! Steinbeck must have imbued his literary gene into this minor and yet pivotal character who has maintained a collection books that has never been unpacked during his service at the master’s house in King City. Lee might be be the backbone of East of Eden, his relationship to his master and the two boys is one of the reasons why I have been so taken up by the book, which is literally and literarily a page-turner.