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“The Trip”
by Weike Wang
from the November 19, 2019 issue of The New Yorker
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[fusion_dropcap boxed=”no” boxed_radius=”” class=”” id=”” color=”#003366″]I[/fusion_dropcap] first heard of Weike Wang when her story “Omakase” showed up in The New Yorker last June. The story received mostly positive comments here and went on to win a 2019 O. Henry Prize. I’m glad to see her work back in the magazine and I’m anxious to hear what you think.
Here’s how it begins:
In Beijing, he boiled the water. It was August, so the hottest month of the year. He put the water into a thermos and carried the thermos on a sling. He called himself a cowboy because he thought he looked dumb. Other people in the group carried a thermos, too, though his wife did not. Their tour guide was Felix. Like Felix the Cat, Felix said, and he replied, O.K. He had been to Europe before, the six-hour time change was fine, but when thirteen happened something yellow crusted around his eyes. The bus was air-conditioned. He dozed off, woke up, and by then his wife had finished his cowboy water. On the Great Wall, he had to run, since she was sprinting. She had come here long ago with a cousin. She was trying to show him a specific spot. This spot, when they got there, was where she, admiring the mountains, had learned from her cousin the word for “cool.” To not know that word, shuang, until she was thirteen, did he know how that felt? But you knew it in English, he wheezed, no oxygen left. She made a face. They sprinted on.
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I enjoyed the story but unless I missed something it seemed tendentiously identitarian. By that I mean the central character seemed so involved in an identity quest that there seemed to be little else going on in the story. The counterpoint with the American family back home was a nice device. Now I see that on the New Yorker website Wang’s commentary is exactly entitled with this theme… so maybe I will listen and see if there is something fresh.
I hadn’t read anything by Wang before, but this story has my interest piqued. While the Chinese-American wife would have been the obvious choice of protagonist, given Wang’s background, Wang instead takes the more interesting route of telling the story from the American husband’s POV. Here we have a story of two adults disjoined from their familial history. In the case of the husband, this has seemingly been self-imposed (consider the scholarship for first-generation students he refused). In the husband’s mother, Wang adeptly captures the voice of the parochial, culturally uninformed American (one that, having been raised by working class Midwesterners, I am familiar with). There’s a lot going on in this story and it probably demands a second read. Overall, a solid entry.
I liked the jumpy, skittering rhythm of this and I imagine it’s a bit like being on a tour or a hectic vacation and being surrounded by new sights or constantly meeting and talking with people. The “identitatrian” theme is there but I’d say that’s not such a bad thing. If not that much else IS going on then I’d say the story glides by on its brisk, tart style and humor.