While reading Guji Guji, a book by Zhiyuan Chen, my brilliant daughter asked, "Who are the bad guys for us?"
She's always a little too disconcertingly insightful. She and our two boys are adopted from Vietnam. The story involves a crocodile egg that is transplanted into a duck's nest. When the eggs hatch, one of the offspring is decidedly different from the others.
To that point, there's not much to distinguish between this story and the Brothers Grimm's "Ugly Duckling." Well, except that the different duck is a carnivore and that the story is likely to involve the phrase “ugly crime scene.”
Then other crocodiles come wandering in. They confront the crocodile-raised-as-duck about his identity, telling him that he is just as they are--he has sharp teeth to eat ducks, sharp claws to catch ducks, and a hungry nature to enjoy eating ducks. In short, he's an evil duck-eater, just as they are.
Perhaps my troubled reaction to this section of the book (which may have influenced Penelope to ask her question) is oversensitivity. I had recently watched a film about Vietnamese-Americans who became involved in Vietnamese gangs (the film had the word “dust” in its title). The story was similar—you’re one of us, not one of them. To be Vietnamese, you need to belong to our family, not yours. We may be bad, but you’re like us—you belong here.
My reaction may have been heightened by a general sensitivity to and hatred of racism. I’ve been taught to avoid it all my life, and our family makeup has made us even more peculiarly sensitive to matters of race and ethnicity.
I wonder how other families react to this book. How would a white family with black children react? Does it suggest that those who look like you are all bad and that you should avoid them entirely? I think it does.
The flyleaf mentions a friend of the author’s who is of Korean ancestry but who was adopted and raised “by a non-Korean family.” How would a white family with a Korean child react to this story?
I haven’t given an adequate answer to Penelope yet. I fobbed her off with some nonsense about it just being a story and that we’d talk about it some more.
As with all books that we don’t particularly care for or that are particularly troubling, the children love this book. They keep bringing it to us to read, even though we keep pointing them toward other books.
Mainly, I think I should tell Penelope that she’s much more like an innocent, harmless duck that’s been adopted by a family of crocodiles! Those who look like her are wonderful people—and we’re the ones who are in danger of eating her up. As we raise her, we need to be gentle and delicate, but we’re not necessarily up to the task. In fact, it’s only by the grace of God that we’re not complete crocodiles.
2 comments:
I'm interested in the "non-Korean" family. People often think in terms of "Vietnamese" and "American" instead of "non-whatever."
That's a good point. If I can turn to my brilliant daughter, again . . . she said (a few years ago) that we ARE a Vietnamese-American family now. Really, we think that's idea--to be so involved and engrossed in Vietnamese culture as to be a Vietnamese-American family.
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