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Author:

Ken Liu is an American born author of science fiction. He was born in 1976 in Lanzhou, China and spent most of his childhood with his grandparents. His mother received her PhD in chemistry, and is a pharmaceutical chemist, while his father is a computer engineer. The family immigrated to the United States when Liu was 11 years old. They lived in various states before settling in Waterford, Connecticut. Liu graduated from Waterford High School in 1994 and later attended Harvard College, where he studied English Literature and Computer Science. Upon graduation, he worked as a software engineer for Microsoft. He later received his law degree from Harvard Law School in 2004 and worked as a corporate lawyer and eventually became a high-tech litigation consultant.

           “The Paper Menagerie” was his first short story to win two major literary awards: the Nebula Award and the Hugo Award. Besides writing science fiction and fantasy fiction, Liu is a translator and editor. Liu believed he could make stories that “turn values upside down and inside out to gain new perspectives” (Wikipedia Contributors).

Isolation in “The Paper Menagerie”:

“The Paper Menagerie” is about a nameless Chinese immigrant who is the mother of the story’s narrator, Jack. Jack’s mother was from a very poor farming family and born at a time of famine in China. Her own mother was self-sacrificing; she would eat mud so that she could give Jack’s mother the little bit of food that was left.  In the story, Jack’s mother represents the Chinese community and throughout the story she tries to present this culture to her American –born son. One example of her attempt to gift her culture to her son is the Zhizhi (origami) paper menagerie that she creates and gives to Jack when he was a toddler.  As Jack matured, he started to choose American culture over Chinese culture. This rejection of her culture by her son compounded her feeling of isolation in the English-speaking Connecticut community to which her white American husband had brought her.  As an adult, her son’s rejection of her culture caused isolation and was too much for her to handle.

Many immigrants have dealt with the issue of isolation presented in Lui’s story. They had to leave all that was familiar to them and assimilate into a new country, oftentimes without the comfort of family and friends. They have even tried to incorporate their culture into their new homeland. Some have even created families of their own with the intent of passing on family culture and values. This effort has sometimes led to disappointment in that some children of immigrants reject the culture of their parents.

Jack's mother cherishes her culture because it is the only thing remaining from her family. The rejection of her heritage would lead her to feel isolated, because there is no one else she can interact with freely about her own culture. Nevertheless, in the story she is rejected multiple times just for being different. When the family moves to Connecticut, two white neighbors visit them, and express disgust towards her ancestry. They’re blatantly racist remarks are insulting to  the physical attributes of Jack’s mixed ancestry. “Something about the mixing never seems right. The child looks unfinished. Slanty eyes, white face. A little monster” (Liu).

It is not clear if the neighbors’ contempt planted a seed of doubt and anger in Jack towards his mother's heritage, causing him to act out against his mother but as the narrator, he vividly remembers them calling him “a monster” for being biracial. What is clear is that Jack’s rejection of his mother’s culture begins when Jack’s American classmates bully him and call him a racist name (“chink”) (Liu), so he decides to avoid anything that would identify him as Chinese. When his mother cooks a Chinese meal, he refuses to eat it, he also refuses to respond to his mother when she speaks to him in her native tongue. Jack and his father then force the mother to embrace American culture in ways that would try to overwrite her Asian heritage and make her feel alienated: “I pushed the chopsticks and the bowl before me away; stir fry green peppers with five spice beef ‘we should eat American food’” (Liu). Even though Jack’s mother tries to fit in, her efforts are not enough for her son, leading him to show contempt and later indifference towards his mother. Jack’s behavior was very painful for the mother because she was experiencing rejection from the one person she loves. Symbolically, this rejection leads to her death; though the story does not indicate what her illness is, we are to understand that she dies of a broken heart.

At the end of the story, Jack realizes that his mother’s death caused him to feel isolated because he had lost a person who loved him dearly. Her death also represented the loss of a part of his cultural identity and heritage. The rejection of his mother’s culture is also a rejection of part of his own identity, and he now has no opportunity to know this culture hands on. This is most evident at the end of the story when Jack reads a letter that was left for him by his mother in Laohu, the paper tiger that symbolizes his own self, and tries to reconnect with her by refolding Laohu, referring to it as “we.” By following the creases of Laohu, he is finally following his mother’s way of teaching. Jack ends the story with “[w]e began to walk home”. This “we” shows a level of acceptance, reconnection, and rebirth.

An immigrant’s story:

           I am the fourth of eleven brothers and sisters. We lived in extreme poverty as my mother struggled to care for us. When the opportunity came to come to America, my mother was happy because I would now be able to help myself and them. It was one of my biggest dreams going up. I believed I would have the opportunity to work hard and help myself and my family. I arrived at JFK in the summer of ‘88. I came to America to attend school. My plans for school did not workout. I wanted to fulfill a dream of going to college--which would make me the first of my eleven brothers and sisters to go to college. When I arrived, I lived with my aunt. She told me she did not have money and I would have to seek employment. She allowed me to work at her beauty parlor business as I tried to save up money to attend school.

Upon arrival, I felt that the people were cold and unfriendly towards me. This was a big change for me. In Trinidad, I lived in a village where most people were related. I remember being given a key to my aunt’s apartment. I was shocked by the number of locks that were on the door. It was scary for me to see this. In my community there was a sense of relative safety. My accent made it difficult to communicate. I had to repeat myself often. I was also met with bias and stereotypes often. I once recall a woman ask me if “you all wear grass skirts.” My husband’s southern family would ask me if I wanted a “Beef patty,” or call me “coconut.” I felt like I was a joke because I was different.

           I married an American person and our cultural barriers made it difficult for us to relate to one another. At first it appeared to me that he was interested in the Trinidadian culture. However, within the household, he didn’t seem interested in my cultural foods. When I prepared these meals for him, he would taste it and push it aside. I did try to cook American foods as well; I once remember buying “cold cuts” for a sandwich. When he asked me to prepare him a sandwich, I began cooking the cold cuts in a pan on the stove, because I did not know better. This was not expected. He was upset by this and made me feel bad. His mother is from the South and was able to cook him more American meals.

This rejection of my culture also made it difficult for my children to assimilate to my culture. When the children did not want my food, my husband would quickly substitute it with American food and asked me not to force them to eat it. My kids would begin to prefer American food over my traditional Trinidadian dishes. Ultimately, I felt useless within my household by not being able to contribute in the ways that I knew how. This caused me to feel isolated. Ultimately, my marriage was dissolved. It seemed to me that my ideas were never good in the eyes of my children. But we were able to bond during a time that I was very sick. They began to realize they were taking me for granted. They then began inquiring about my past, and about my home country and culture and attempting to cook me some traditional dishes from Trinidad. I believe my illness was a wake-up call to them and they began to appreciate me and everything I have to offer a lot more.

References

Wikipedia contributors. "Ken Liu." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free

     Encyclopedia, 3 May. 2022. Web. 15 May. 2022.

  Liu, Ken. “The Paper Menagerie.” Fantasy & Science Fiction, vol. 120, no. 3-4, Spilogale, Inc, 2011, p. 64–.