Outsider Gaze Done Right
Oct. 15th, 2012 09:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Some time ago I was in the mood for some light, fun reading, I happened across White Tiger by Kylie Chan, the blurb intrigued me, I went with the book and was hooked right from the start.
Let it be said immediately, it isn't a 'perfect' book (if such things even exist) there are moments in which I wish the editing had been tighter, sometimes the romance is a bit schmaltzy and the action feels a bit repetitive, but nothing of this mattered overmuch to this reader, because a whole lot of things felt absolutely right, and one of these is the outsider gaze of the main female character, Emma.
Wave in front of me a book, any book, set in China (in the wider sense, including Taiwan and Hong Kong) and I'll bite, but most of the time when those books are written by non-Chinese authors (mrs. Chan is not an ethnic Chinese) I end up throwing them against the wall out of frustration (sometimes outright fury, thankfully those are few and far between) due to mistakes, misunderstandings, poor research, exoticizing, 'I want to show you how much research went into this' or anything in between. Not so with White Tiger and the other books in the series.
Emma, the female protagonist is an Australian expat living in Hong Kong, she works as a teacher in a kindergarten and, in her free time, as a nanny. In the same day she leaves her job and gets an offer from one of her private clients, a mr. John Chen, to become a live-in nanny for his daughter. John Chen isn't exactly what he seems and Emma finds herself catapulted in a world she didn't have an inkling about.
When I surfaced for air, having zoomed through White Tiger, Red Phoenix, and Blue Dragon I tried to find out what had me so enthralled in what basically is fantasy light reading, I found a few things.
The setting: as one could hope for, the author having lived there, Hong Kong comes alive in the trilogy, and not as the magical exotic city where magical things happen, Hong Kong here is alive and concrete (pardon the pun), pollution and maddening traffic very much included.
The cast of characters is wide, but not exaggerated and they are, by and at large, well rounded.
The supernaturals in Hong Kong are mono-cultural (a nice change from the usual) and part of a whole system that is internally consistent and get explained little by little.
The main thing, though, is Emma's gaze. She is a foreigner and an outsider, her closest friends are also foreigners (an American and an ethnic Chinese from Australia), at the beginning her relationship with the local people is just about work-only, she is adjusted, reads and researches but a lot of things go above her head while she has very present some matters that can directly impact her life ( the 'trophy Western worker' for instance as a way for a company to gain face),and this doesn't change all of a sudden when she finds herself working for a shen (I'm trying not to spoil too much).
Some of the supernaturals like her from the beginning, some are very standoffish because they don't like the idea of a foreign woman in their midst and, in either case, when they talk and joke among themselves a lot of it is lost to Emma because she doesn't share either their cultural milieu or their common history. It is very well done, half a sentence there, a literary allusion buried in dialogue here, a joke that has somebody reacting strongly for no apparent reason someplace else, definitely not enough to bore a reader with no previous knowledge of Chinese myths (and the tasty morsels are explained in the author's note), but at the same time enough to give cultural dephth to the whole and to startle this reader into delighted laughter more than once either because I got it or because I didn't and wanted to find out.
So, my compliments to mrs. Chan for the whole and, specifically, for using the outsider gaze as it should be used but too rarely is.
Let it be said immediately, it isn't a 'perfect' book (if such things even exist) there are moments in which I wish the editing had been tighter, sometimes the romance is a bit schmaltzy and the action feels a bit repetitive, but nothing of this mattered overmuch to this reader, because a whole lot of things felt absolutely right, and one of these is the outsider gaze of the main female character, Emma.
Wave in front of me a book, any book, set in China (in the wider sense, including Taiwan and Hong Kong) and I'll bite, but most of the time when those books are written by non-Chinese authors (mrs. Chan is not an ethnic Chinese) I end up throwing them against the wall out of frustration (sometimes outright fury, thankfully those are few and far between) due to mistakes, misunderstandings, poor research, exoticizing, 'I want to show you how much research went into this' or anything in between. Not so with White Tiger and the other books in the series.
Emma, the female protagonist is an Australian expat living in Hong Kong, she works as a teacher in a kindergarten and, in her free time, as a nanny. In the same day she leaves her job and gets an offer from one of her private clients, a mr. John Chen, to become a live-in nanny for his daughter. John Chen isn't exactly what he seems and Emma finds herself catapulted in a world she didn't have an inkling about.
When I surfaced for air, having zoomed through White Tiger, Red Phoenix, and Blue Dragon I tried to find out what had me so enthralled in what basically is fantasy light reading, I found a few things.
The setting: as one could hope for, the author having lived there, Hong Kong comes alive in the trilogy, and not as the magical exotic city where magical things happen, Hong Kong here is alive and concrete (pardon the pun), pollution and maddening traffic very much included.
The cast of characters is wide, but not exaggerated and they are, by and at large, well rounded.
The supernaturals in Hong Kong are mono-cultural (a nice change from the usual) and part of a whole system that is internally consistent and get explained little by little.
The main thing, though, is Emma's gaze. She is a foreigner and an outsider, her closest friends are also foreigners (an American and an ethnic Chinese from Australia), at the beginning her relationship with the local people is just about work-only, she is adjusted, reads and researches but a lot of things go above her head while she has very present some matters that can directly impact her life ( the 'trophy Western worker' for instance as a way for a company to gain face),and this doesn't change all of a sudden when she finds herself working for a shen (I'm trying not to spoil too much).
Some of the supernaturals like her from the beginning, some are very standoffish because they don't like the idea of a foreign woman in their midst and, in either case, when they talk and joke among themselves a lot of it is lost to Emma because she doesn't share either their cultural milieu or their common history. It is very well done, half a sentence there, a literary allusion buried in dialogue here, a joke that has somebody reacting strongly for no apparent reason someplace else, definitely not enough to bore a reader with no previous knowledge of Chinese myths (and the tasty morsels are explained in the author's note), but at the same time enough to give cultural dephth to the whole and to startle this reader into delighted laughter more than once either because I got it or because I didn't and wanted to find out.
So, my compliments to mrs. Chan for the whole and, specifically, for using the outsider gaze as it should be used but too rarely is.
no subject
Date: 2012-10-15 07:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-15 07:48 pm (UTC)Another thing: right at the beginning Emma may seem Mary-sueish, but there is a reason for it.
no subject
Date: 2012-10-15 07:45 pm (UTC)I really, really like the idea of a urban fantasy set in Hong Kong, but I have to admit I was massively turned off by the books by reading the backcover copy. I have no idea how accurate these are, but the description of a war between the deities and the demons from Hell just feels... very silly, I guess? Like it was lifted straight from a Christian conception of the universe instead of actually stopping and thinking about the place of Hell in Chinese beliefs. Is the demon/god dichotomy what actually happens in the books?
(I admit I was also turned off by a blog post I saw somewhere where Kylie Chan demonstrated she hadn't understood Chinese culture at all--can't remember the specifics, but she was complaining about how greeting every family member by title instead of by first name was such a quaint and backward custom. My blood shot up at that point)
no subject
Date: 2012-10-15 08:03 pm (UTC)No, there is no god /demon dichotomy in the Western sense in the books. There is a feud going on between some 'demons' and John Chen (and human allies on either side), actually some of the shen aren't that nice either and some 'demons' are allied with the shen (and some of the shen have a chequered past, up to and including John Chen / Xuan Wu.
One thing I noticed is that she mentions Japanese martial arts in connection to Xuan Wu as well as Chinese ones, honestly I have no idea if he carried over like Guan Yin / Kannon.
no subject
Date: 2012-10-16 05:57 am (UTC)(I don't know Xuan Wu well enough to comment on the Japanese martial arts, though I really, really wish people would fixate on other things beyond martial arts when writing books about China/Vietnam...)
no subject
Date: 2012-10-15 09:56 pm (UTC)Not having read the post you mention and going from what I read in her books I think that she *understands* the practice (after all she uses it in the books), but doesn't 'feel' it or get the point of it (which can be even more maddening, for sure), it sounds like expat-complaining to me (I'll post someting on the expat-specific brand of outsider gaze in a few days, about Donna Leon's whodunnits).
Seriously, though I enjoyed some writers' work much more before getting aquainted with them through their blogs, now I skim firs, and, if warranted, abstain.
no subject
Date: 2012-10-16 05:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-16 06:23 am (UTC)I don't consider it accurate outsider attitude as well, it *is* accurate for *some* outsiders, the kind I prefer to avoid.
My comment might have been confusing again (I really have to post about this) I meant that in the books the usage is correct, so she evidently understands, but, given what she posted (which I haven't read) she evidently misses the point.
no subject
Date: 2012-10-16 06:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-16 06:00 pm (UTC)I mentioned once that, for instance, I'd feel more nervous writing about Naples (where I've never been), than about Taipei (where I've lived and felt at home). Never mind that I am an ethnic Italian, Naples is another world, but a foreign reader would probably give more weight to my hypothetical Neapolitan book than to the (equally hypothetical) Taiwanese one.
no subject
Date: 2012-10-16 04:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-16 05:54 pm (UTC)This post is meant to go with my next one (not sure if I'll manage to put it up today or not) about a series (not fantasy), that in my opinion fails badly on the matter of outsider gaze.