Finally, a novel that was much unexpected. When I say this, I mean in the sense that I wasn’t expecting to be reading a book about Asian Americans. Every book that we have read so far had to do with either rich white people or African Americans committing incest or trying to find themselves or something else along those lines. It was only my last post that I was talking about how I was so tired of every book being so predictable. So I’m happy that we are finally stepping out of those boundaries and reading something that is totally different and new.
However, what I did notice is that this book didn’t fail to have some sort of tragic death like all the other novels we have read. In this novel, Henry and Leila’s son die at the tragic age of seven, from being dog-piled by children in his neighborhood; which is a very unusual way for a child to die.
Upon thinking about this child’s death, I thought about what people stereotype Asian children to be and many people say that Asian boys are small, frail, skinny and weak. Not that I feel this way because stereotypes are always off point but I’ve heard many people say things like that. So when thinking about why the author would chose to kill off the main characters child the way he did I think about that and maybe he did it in the way he did because Asian boys are stereotyped as being so frail. It didn’t take much for this boy to die and it was only a little dog pile by kids his own age. Why didn’t he fight harder to get the kids off him? It’s just so bizarre. And because the author did kill of this child in the way he did, I can help but picture the boy as a frail weak child that didn’t even really fight for his own life. It’s really sad.
