consequences of diluted culture

While reading Fred Wah’s Diamond Grill, which depicts Fred Jr.’s attempts to navigate the hyphen of his Chinese-Canadian identity as an adolescent, my mind immediately wandered to a book I read a few years ago in an Canadian Lit class here at UBC. This novel, called The Jade Peony, is a story by Canadian author Wayson Choy that depicts the struggles of three young Chinese-Canadian children living in Vancouver’s Chinatown in the 1930s and 1940s. This novel also highlights the children’s attempt to navigate their hyphenated identity. 

Two of The Jade Peony’s narrators are Chinese-Canadian children Jook-Liang and Sek-Lung Chen. Their parents were born in China, but they themselves were born in Canada. They are also very in touch with their Chinese heritage and traditions; their Grandmother Poh-Poh is the matriarch of the family and the arbiter of the Old Chinese Ways. She speaks numerous Chinese dialects, practices old Chinese medicine, tells the children Chinese folk-tales and generally immerses them in Chinese culture despite their living in Vancouver. In contrast, Diamond Grill’s Fred Jr.’s father, Fred Sr., is a multi-racial Chinese-Canadian like his son. Throughout Diamond Grill, I did not get a sense of Chinese culture being as omnipresent or as potent as I found it to be in The Jade Peony. While reading Diamond Grill, I found the Chinese culture present in Fred Jr.’s life to be diluted and mixed in with Canadian culture. The only time Chinese culture features prominently is when Fred Jr. references food. 

I found myself thinking back to The Jade Peony while reading Fred Jr.’s story, and wondered if there had been a dominant figure like Poh-Poh in Fred’s life, perhaps he might have been more sure of his identity. Fred mentions his Aunty Ethel who went to China as a young girl, but whenever he asks her about China, “she doesn’t want to talk about it” (Wah 89). The Chen children have Poh-Poh to firmly root them in their ancestry, while Fred has no such figure, and the Chinese ways of his family have been interspersed with the ways of his Scandinavian mother and his Scots-Irish grandmother, as well as with the Canadian culture Fred Sr. has assimilated into. A prime example of this is the menu at the Diamond Grill; it features Salisbury Steak, pies, and donuts, and “the Chinese section of the menu is quite small” (45). This highlights the way in which the Fred Sr.’s and Jr.’s Chinese ancestry has been overshadowed by Canadian culture in an attempt to assimilate. The result is Fred Jr.’s occupation of a liminal space of identity. 

Even though Fred Jr. makes it clear throughout Diamond Grill that he is glad to appear Caucasian, I feel as though a more solid rooting in his Chinese heritage would have helped him find a more comfortable footing in his identity. 

You can listen to an interview with Wayson Choy about The Jade Peony here.

Works Cited

Choy, Wayson. The Jade Peony. Vancouver: Douglas and McIntyre, 1995. Print. 

Wah, Fred. Diamond Grill. Edmonton: NeWest, 2006. Print.