‘A Thread Of Sky’ Unites A Family in Their Ancestral Home

My novel, A Thread of Sky, is the story of a family of six strong-willed, Chinese-American women who reunite for a tour of their ancestral home, a story inspired by a tour of China that I undertook ten years ago with the women in my own family. I should mention that it was a package tour; that it was my mother’s idea; and that calling the women in my family “strong-willed” is a bit of an understatement. 

“My grandmother was a revolutionary.” Nora said it ironically. There was no other way.

 

“I didn’t know those still existed,” Jesse said.

 

“I guess they did then, in China.”

 

“I’m not sure I knew you had a grandmother, before all this.”

 

“I’m not sure I did, either.”

 

“No family reunions? Holiday visits? And you say my family’s cold.”

 

“We’re not cold,” Nora said defensively. “We’re just—different. In immigrant families, absence becomes normal, I guess.”

 

“Maybe it is time for a reunion.”

 

“But why in China?”

 

“Well, you are from there.”

 

She knew what Jesse meant; still, she lashed out. “Are you from Holland, or the Netherlands, or whatever? I don’t have any connection to China. It would make more sense to do a historical tour of Queens.”

 

“Don’t get so worked up. I’m sorry I put it that way.”

 

“God, you sounded like your parents.”

 

Their idea of getting to know her had been asking her where she was from, originally; where her parents were from; whether they practiced Buddhism or Taoism.

To be more inclusive, they’d pushed her to pick a Chinese restaurant and order for the table. It surprised and amused them that she couldn’t read the menu.

 

Jesse, on the other hand, had thought being sensitive meant overlooking the fact that she wasn’t white. “She’s American. Like us,” he’d hiss at his parents. She thought this was relatively sensitive, too, until she found herself saying, “I’m not. I’m not like you at all.” And then found him so clueless that she’d actually tried to use one of those “You know you’re Asian” forwards as a teaching tool.

 

You know you’re Asian if . . .

. . . a trip to McDonald’s means stocking up on condiments and napkins.

. . . you ask your parents for help with one math question and two hours later, they’re still lecturing.

. . . another Asian shows up and people say, “Is that your mother/sister/father/brother?”

. . . leaving rice in your bowl is a sin.

 

Jesse had scrutinized all twenty traits on the list—bowl haircuts, plastic on lampshades, fish heads sucked clean. “But you don’t do that.”

 

“Of course not. That’s not the point.”

 

Being Asian—or Asian American, or Chinese, or Chinese American?—meant something, even if she wasn’t fresh off the boat or an activist like her sister Kay. It meant saving, it meant overcompensating. Having to be smarter, tougher, more practical. The fear of good things running out. It meant never being completely at ease. It meant constant guilt toward your parents. It meant feeling vaguely ashamed, even if you didn’t know why, even if your family was by no means poor or unaccomplished or spectacularly dysfunctional.

 

“It’s like, everything goes unsaid,” she’d finally said.

 

“Oh, that I get. I’m a Wasp.”

 

So that wasn’t it, either. She supposed her Asian identity was inseparable from being female, and first-generation, and the eldest.

 

She’d taught Kay to curse at the neighborhood boys who pulled slanted eyes at them and called them Chinks—yes, even in New York, even in this day and age. By the time she was twelve, with Kay skipping alongside, she’d learned to hold her head high against a daily barrage of men professing lust for their Asianness—which meant, she soon figured out, sexy, docile, and inarticulate. No wonder she’d ended up with a man who genuinely believed himself colorblind.

 

Nora had always known, in a way her parents couldn’t, how as Asian females in America she and her sisters were doubly burdened, and she’d sought a path that felt groundbreaking—which was, in itself, part of the point. She’d defy any put-downs or pigeonholing, would make a difference by being different—which was only possible in America, wasn’t it? Hence her parents’ sacrifices, hence the immigration.

 

She’d become a top trader because she’d willed herself to. Because anything less would have meant utter failure. Her first day on the trading floor, she’d stalked in with head held high, in a sleek new suit and fierce boots, and a guy at her desk said, “Hey, you look like a girl I jacked off to this morning. Hotorientalbabes.com—you one of them?”

 

Jesse had come to understand this outline, but he’d never fully understand that inner drive. And maybe Nora didn’t either, because she still failed to see how it could have originated in China, in her grandmother, a grandmother she’d seen once in seventeen years.