Friday, March 20, 2009

Crossing

This story explores origins, and Ms. Hempel's Chinese-American heritage is revealed. Ms. Hempel seems somewhat conflicted about that heritage. She seems to want to downplay that part of her identity. But she also feels guilty about passing up the opportunity to interview her grandmother about her immigration and failing to learn Mandarin as she had planned.

What do you think captivated her so much about the colonist re-enactors?
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13 comments:

kc said...

I'll think about this over my coffee, but here's my quick answer: their enthusiasm!

This story notes that Ms. Hempel "loved enthusiasm, in nearly all its forms." (It's kind of an aside in the text, but I think it's maybe her defining characteristic).

And who is more enthusiastic than historical re-enactors?!

But you're right, it's a bigger question than that, so I'll get back to you.

12:11 PM, March 21, 2009
kc said...

She also was enamored of how the man re-enacting “Governor Bradford” could charmingly bullshit the students when they were pestering him about the whereabouts of the colonists’ children. The children weren’t there, they self-importantly surmised, because they were in fact modern children, not colonial children, and thus had to be in school. Ms. Hempel’s students enjoyed poking holes in the re-enactors’ “authenticity,” but Governor Bradford was able to mislead them and lie to them and explain away reality. Ms. Hempel was touched by that and, I think, envious. After all, when a student asked her a hard question that threatened to poke through her own authenticity as a qualified teacher of the seventh-grade — like the kid who enjoyed hypothetical situations and always asked stuff like “What if Ferdinand and Isabella hadn’t given Columbus the money?” she could only give silly answers like “Then I guess we wouldn’t be sitting here!” It’s an answer that’s meant to be casually dismissive of the question, like Bradford’s answer about the colonial children’s whereabouts, but it lacks Bradford’s imagination and slyness. He functions in a world of fiction and thus has license to make stuff up as he goes, to tell expedient lies, while Ms. Hempel has no such means to protect her “authenticity” as an able educator. She has to rely on rather dumb evasions.

Related, there’s a bit later in the story where she’s noticing the rising trend of “myth-busting” in historical scholarship — how all manner of received wisdom has been thrown into doubt. And she muses: “History was so difficult to tell truthfully. A person could not be relied upon to faithfully recount her own past, much less the story of an entire country.”

I didn’t notice this until I was skimming back through the story just now, but as the kids are on the bus going to Plimoth, she notes that the seats are high-backed and that “probably every kind of mischief was occurring unseen” (how fantastic), and when they are returning on the bus she herself sleeps and dreams of getting an ivory peach from her father in a Chinese garden. The top of the peach comes off, and “it is as if, inside the peach, every kind of mischief is occurring, unseen.” I’m not sure, but it seems like an observation that it’s the unseen things that are really at the heart of life, that matter the most vs. the public, recordable details that we call history.

1:27 PM, March 21, 2009
Erin said...

Excellent! I hadn't noticed that, either! What a fantastic detail.

I really like your analysis, too, about Ms. Hempel's appreciation for enthusiasm and also the all-consuming illusion of the colonists, how they could stay in character and deftly deflect attempts to poke holes in the act. And I think she was somewhat envious of the relative freedom of pretending all day. You don't have to deal with the ethical quandaries of teaching children or even deal with your own identity confusion if you're just pretending to be an 18th-century colonist all the time.

3:25 PM, March 21, 2009
kc said...

You mentioned that this was the first time her ethnic heritage was revealed and that she seemed somewhat conflicted about it. I was surprised by the casualness of the revelation at first. Were you? It seems like kind of an important detail that might have been mentioned in an earlier story, but then, based on the way she seems to feel about it, maybe it's not. She seems less interested in the detail than others are — for example, the history teacher at her school who tells her she should go by the Chinese name "Ho." She finds the suggestion faintly ridiculous. And she's a bit embarrassed by her involvement in the students-of-color club (they don't necessarily have anything in common with one another other than being non-white). Her mother, who is full Chinese, doesn't seem (from the later stories) to attach any grand importance to ethnicity — she finds it merely interesting as in urging young Ms. Hempel to interview her grandmother, but she doesn't treat it as something that's a deep matter of identity. It all kind of brings up the issue of whether this obligation that people seem to feel about exploring and honoring their ethnic heritage has a certain kind of phoniness about it — something that doesn't spring from the individual heart but from social pressure? I mean, maybe a lot of people have only a very minor curiosity about their ethnic heritage, maybe they just don't identify with it except in some really abstract way, and yet there seems to be a fair amount of guilt for feeling that way. I don't know. Do you think something like that was going on with Ms. Hempel? (like, if she really wanted to learn Mandarin or if she just felt sort of obliged to express the desire to do so).

7:01 PM, March 21, 2009
Ben said...

It seems like Ms. Hempel could be at a turning point in her view of the importance of her heritage. It sounds like it's always been something she's thought should be more important to her, but maybe she's now getting to the point in her life where she's actually going to do something about it. The rejection of the colonial life (in her daydreams) for something from Chinese culture is a strong hint that she may be on the verge of getting around to studying the history and language.

And that may be part of what appealed to her about the re-enactors -- I agree that enthusiasm was a primary reason, but I think it is also important that they were from somewhere else -- they had accents from the counties they had come from -- they were immigrants. She has such a vivid imagination life that she really wanted to submerse herself in another place, time, or culture. Then she realized that she still had her own heritage waiting for her.

2:06 PM, March 22, 2009
Erin said...

Yeah, maybe she's at a turning point. I mean, you can see that the reminders of her ethnicity in her life had made an impression on her. I think kc may be right that Ms. Hempel's interest in her heritage may be more tied up in obligation and guilt than any real enthusiasm for it. But maybe she's starting in this story to see some value in it. In some ways this book feels like a coming-of-age story even though the protagonist is well into adulthood.

6:31 PM, March 22, 2009
kc said...

I don't think she's at a turning point. The story ends with her realizing that she is in fact one of those people she disdained in school (a coltish privileged American kid). She recognizes that she had in fact belonged, despite her feelings of difference. And the very last paragraph is about how she had always meant to be more engaged with her heritage (but failed to be) and how she STILL meant to be (but will surely fail to be — and there's dramatic irony in our knowing that she will fail). I think the passage derives its poignancy from the "boats against the current" ending, the notion that she's clinging with futility, as we all do, to a good intention, to a dream of self-improvement. I think if the author had wanted us to believe that Ms. Hempel was on the verge of actually turning over a new leaf with regard to her heritage that she would have ended the story with a concrete action, such as Ms. Hempel actually asking her mom about the Chinese objects, instead of the expression (once again) of a mere good intention.

6:38 PM, March 22, 2009
kc said...

We posted those last two comments almost at the same time. Hehe

Remember the ending in "The Great Gatsby"? Tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther, and one fine day...

Ms. Hempel's restatement of her intention to get in touch with her heritage, especially coming at the exact end of the story, for me, is just like that promise of trying harder tomorrow in "Gatsby."

It's like the "tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow" in Macbeth.

I'm going to lose 10 pounds. I'm going to learn a foreign language. I'm going to do this and that. And on an d on. Starting tomorrow.

6:52 PM, March 22, 2009
Erin said...

I guess to me it just sort of sounds like Ms. Hempel is considering some of these things in a new light. Teaching history and visiting the colony make her think twice about her own history, which she always took for granted. I'm not thinking that means she'll run out and learn Mandarin, but her dream, for instance, about the peach and inkstone makes me think maybe she's starting to feel some ownership in her ethnicity and its symbols.

6:55 PM, March 22, 2009
Erin said...

Again! Hehe

I see your point about the good intentions. Nice link to "Gatsby."

6:58 PM, March 22, 2009
kc said...

Maybe. But her relationship to China is so tenuous. Her mother came over here at age 6. She has no memories of China. Her ethnicity didn't seem like a big deal in their household. She was a completely American kid and the Chinses stuff is more or less an abstraction. I think the only reason she even thinks of it is because occasionally things like a trip to Plimoth remind her that half of her didn't come from Europe. So she gets momentarily enthused, as she has throughout her life, but the enthusiasm never leads to action. Why? Because, I think, it's just not truly a priority for her.

7:03 PM, March 22, 2009
Erin said...

No, I agree that it hasn't been important to her in her life. She even actively tried to avoid that identity of a child of an immigrant. But I think it also might be natural for someone in her 20s to revisit those issues and reconsider their effect on her.

8:28 PM, March 22, 2009
Ben said...

Good point, kc -- in some ways, this does read similar to a failed coming-of-age story. The change I saw on the horizon was in the middle of the story, not the end, where it would have really shown something coming.

6:42 AM, March 23, 2009

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