I stumbled upon Gish Jen’s 1996 novel, Mona in the Promised Land, one afternoon at Barnes and Noble. With only a cursory look at the summary of the back cover of the book, I knew I had to read it. The brief synopsis introduced Mona Chang, a second-generation immigrant of Chinese descent, growing up in a 1960s affluent suburb in New York, with a desperation to shed her ethnic ties and become Jewish. I thought at the very least that it would be an interesting read, but I hadn’t the slightest notion of how important this work would reveal itself to be.
Mona’s parents, Ralph and Helen, are first generation immigrants who escaped the Revolution in China and moved to America after World War II. In the vein of the traditional immigrant narrative, Ralph and Helen are immigrants who “made it”—that is, made it not only to America but also made it to the prestigious, notoriously white suburbs. The 1960s—the dawn of multiculturalism and the death of the old melting pot theory of the days of yore—became a fertile ground for discovering and asserting your racial and ethnic identity. However, Mona perceives her parents old world traditions as inherently “un-American” and resents their thinly veiled attempts to perform their American identities through material items and an obsession with Harvard (which comes to represent the quintessential American experience.). In a desire to disassociate herself from her parents’ “backward” values, Mona decides to become “Jewish”—which she calls a “model minority” for their ability to assimilate and “Americanize” themselves so well. However, when Mona begins to amerce herself in Jewish associations and traditions, she becomes even more aware of her “otherness”. The Jewish friends around her accept her into the community open-armed, however it is unclear whether they simply gain some amusement out of seeing a Chinese girl “become” Jewish, as they begin to refer to her as “Changowitz” (Jen, 56). Mona then feels the need to perform her Jewishness by involving herself in temple-affiliated activities, working for a Jewish hotline, employing Yiddish in conversation, and dating a Jewish boy, Seth. Her authenticity is questioned, however, as she is missing a key ingredient—what the book wryly calls, “what-the-mother-is-the-child-is theory” (Jen, 56). This raises the age-old question: how do we determine one’s racial and ethnic identity? Is it a choice? Biological? Or is it simply what others decide for you?
Thus, identity is a paradoxical idea in Mona in the Promised Land, as the characters change their identities like they change their underwear. The flippant and colloquial tone of the book suggests that ethnicity is both performed and is not a permanent state, but that it is also based on descent and somewhat fixed no matter what. For even though Mona is completely ignorant to what it means to be Chinese because of her parents’ desire to downplay it in favor of a more “American” identity, Mona is still exoticized by others. In a scene where Mona is out for dinner with a wealthy “wasp” family at a fancy country club, her friend’s stepmother begins to ask her all sorts of questions about China which she just assumes Mona knows the answer to simply because she’s Chinese. In the same vein, her own boyfriend, Seth, assumes that just because she’s Chinese and wants to be Jewish that she’s some kind of radical individual with a political and social agenda. Seth is disappointed when he realizes that this isn’t the case; that Mona’s choice to become Jewish had nothing to do with anything other than her desire to assert her agency in choosing her own ethnicity. These kinds of false assumptions based on superficial observations demonstrate a common type of ignorance that is exhibited in even the most well-intentioned individuals.
The novel also fulfills its duties as a tribute to the vast quilt of identity and the desire to belong through Alfred, the African American cook that works for Mona’s parents at their pancake restaurant. When Alfred’s wife kicks him out of his house for cheating on her with another woman, he seeks refuge at Barbara Gugelstein’s, a friend of Mona’s. As Barbara’s parents are away for the summer and her cousin Evie is staying there as a resident for the season, Barbara attempts to hide Alfred from her cousin in order to keep him a secret from her parents. For if Barbara’s parents knew a black man was staying at their house while they were away, there would be hell to pay for Barbara and who knows what consequences would be in store for Alfred. As a result, Barbara, with the help of her friends, discovers an underground tunnel through which Alfred can enter and exit the house. The room Alfred is offered at first was originally used as a servant’s quarters. In order to keep Alfred a secret from her cousin, Barbara imposes rules on him whereby he can only be seen in common rooms and use the television at certain times. The result, of course, is Alfred’s resentment towards Barbara, Mona, and Seth, whose misguided attempts to “save” Alfred from being homeless actually result in a kind of imprisonment. Through this incident, Gish Jen demonstrates how the white adolescents use Alfred, an African American man, as an instrument for their social experiment, which stems from their own liberal guilt.
Alfred is an interesting character as well because he expresses racist, essentialist notions of race and ethnicity, while at the same time fighting for the equality and rights of African Americans. Alfred often refers to Barbara’s father as a “Jew Daddy” and criticizes Mona by telling her she’ll never be any more Jewish than he will; that unless she figures out a way to grow her nose, it’ll never happen. Alfred’s notions of race speak to the hierarchy he sees that exist between various minority groups, as even though Mona is Chinese, she can still pass for white the way Alfred cannot. In addition, Alfred’s friends are also extremely race conscious, as “Luther the Race Man” makes fun of Alfred’s wife, Charlene, for being a light-skinned black woman. He teases her light skin—“you could see the veins in her arms right through her skin”—suggesting she is less black because her skin is lighter (Jen, 142). We also know that Charlene is from Jamaica where, according to Luther, “Negroes didn’t always realize they were Negroes” (Jen, 142). This suggests a different racial enculturation in places outside the U.S. where the color of your skin is ascribed different meanings than they are here. Furthermore, the fact that Charlene’s father is a doctor also makes her a less authentic African American, according to Alfred and his friends, because their internalized racism prevents them from transcending the stereotypes that have been so well ingrained in their minds. As a result, Charlene is left feeling like she must cover her light skin with a “high-neck long-sleeve shirt even in the summertime” (Jen, 142) in an attempt to be accepted and feel a sense of belonging within the black community.
Mona and the Promised Land presents a fresh view of race through the eyes of a flippant teenager whose observations and chronicling of her quest to find herself inadvertently give way to broader issues concerning race, ethnicity and identity. Gish Jen’s novel demonstrates ideas of performativity, alienation, and belonging for a second-generation immigrant Chinese-American girl growing up in the 1960s, and seems to champion the right for us all to self-define by acknowledging the various selves within. Jen also illustrates a world where everyone has prejudices—from white people to African Americans to the Chinese—but suggests that these notions can be transcended if we would only accept one another for who we are--and that’s whoever we choose to be. While the ending of the novel may seem a bit too neatly tied up for some or perhaps enforcing a kind of colorblind sensibility about race, the novel is definitely worth reading for its demonstrations of how race is performed, questioned, assumed, and portrayed in the various episodes of Mona’s life. Jen’s wry sense of humor and flippant narrative voice provide a nuanced account of race in the 1960s, and allow for a bit of comic relief on subjects we are seldom able to laugh about.
Works Cited:
Jen, Gish. Mona in the Promised Land. New York: Random House, Inc., 1996.
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