Chapter Six - Boy Fever

I'm well ahead of chapter six right now but I still remember a lot that happened in this chapter more than the others. This is probably because I was surprised by a lot of the events in this chapter. 

I will start off with what I wasn't surprised about: Poh-Poh is not very fond of Jack. She dislikes his crude humor and mockery. She even threw a broom at him (I visioned my grandmother doing this and laughed). Even after 10 years of being neighbours, the Chens and O'Connor's never attempted to get along or develop friendships with each other. However, they did gain respect between one another in this chapter. When Kiam dropped all of the groceries, Mrs. O'Connor helped him by replacing the spoiled food with food from her own cupboards. Stepmother repaid the favour by sending her flowers and Chinese tea. This friendly exchanged occurred a few more times. Poh-Poh still did not allow Jack into their home, claiming that "Chinese air kill him" (Choy 232). I thought since 10 years has passed Poh-Poh would at least talk to the family, but she didn't.

The continuing culture struggle is apparent when Father notices that Kiam-Kim's Chinese grades are slipping, but he is doing excellent in his English classes. Poh-Poh is very persistent and is trying her hardest to make sure her grandson is not a mo yung say doi (stupid) or mo li (have no manners). Father enlisted Kiam into more Chinese classes in order to improve his grades. I think him hanging around Jack O'Connor so much helps him with his English, but narrows down his Chinese knowledge.

This chapter focuses mostly on the maturing of Kiam and his friends. He is now fifteen and doesn't see Jenny Chong as only a nuisance anymore; he starts to like her. It's still weird flipping back to the first few chapters and stumbling upon a conversation he and Jenny had. The conversations usually ended in him being extremely irritated by her as if he would never like her as a friend, never mind more than that. I see Kiam as being the one who always has to do the right thing, especially since he is the well-respected 'dai-gou' (First Brother), so I was shocked when Kiam went out to smoke and drink with his friends. I guess he is like most teenagers and is experimenting to try and discover more about himself. I think Jack is a huge influence on him too. Kiam did a few things only because he thought Jack would think he is not manly if he didn't. Some examples would be smoking, drinking, and also kissing Jenny. 

Kiam came home drunk one day; I was surprised to see that Poh-Poh and Stepmother didn't react negatively. Everything that Kiam did that would usually be frowned upon, Poh-Poh labeled it as 'boy fever'. When Kiam threw up, she even cleaned it up for him. The two didn't tell Father what had happened to Kiam. This shows that they are able to forgive or tolerate such behaviour, unlike Father. It could also be that they know how much Father can overreact, so they thought it best to hide it from him. It didn't work; he found out about it and yelled things I was surprised to see him say, "Useless boy! Drunken dead boy!....Go, I kill you later" (Choy 240). It is almost expected that he react negatively, but I would never of thought he would go as far as saying he was useless or dead; the word 'kill' is a hugely over-exaggerated word, obviously he didn't mean it, but the fact he said it means a lot. What he said to Kiam instantly drew parallels between this and what Mrs. Chong said to Jenny earlier in the book, when she called her a dead girl and a useless daughter.

I was introduced to a new character in this chapter: Chinatown's black sheep, Frank Yuen. He is known as the bad guy around town; aggressive and dangerously carefree. It is he who teaches Kiam and his friends things that their parents or teachers wouldn't teach them. He teaches them about proper fighting and safe sex.The boys were afraid of him at first, but once he started teaching them useful lessons they became less nervous around him. I think Frank definitely played an important part in the maturing of Kiam. I feel that without Frank, Kiam would have many more questions looming around in his head than he already has now.

It is this chapter that I find out the war as come to Canada's door. The young men are told to prepare for war. Being Kiam, he constantly thinks and thinks about situations and this is definitely one he ponders on a lot. He is filled with frustration of where he belongs, "but where would I go, with barely any memory of the old country? What world did any of us belong to? What world would we fight for?" (Choy 281). He does not know what country he should fight for (Canada or China), but he knows he will eventually have to fight.

Choy tends to cover a lot of events or topics all in the length of just one chapter. By the time I am done finishing the chapter I usually have to quickly skim what I read before. It's easy to get lost if you skipped a page or two by accident. If I could interview the author one question I would want to ask if why he made the book consist of only 9 chapters, when he could have easily separated them into more. It's nice to not have 25+ chapters, but at the same time so much happens in one chapter that it seems that all the chapters kind of blend together in my mind. I'm not able to say "Oh this happened in chapter 3 and this specifically happened in chapter 6" It's different, but I'm slowly getting used to it. 

Words looked up from this chapter:

rote 
edict
futility
cadged 
filched