“Detective Dogs”
by Gish Jen
from November 22, 2021
This is the second story by Gish Jen published in The New Yorker, the first being “No More Maybe” in March 2018. Browsing the interview with Deborah Treisman, I think the opening question introduces the story nicely:
Your story “Detective Dog” centers on a wealthy Hong Kong family who moved, to escape the violent protests of 2014, first to Vancouver and then to New York, where they construe many things differently than most Americans might. When the nine-year-old Robert joins the People of Color club at his school, for example, his mother Betty, wants to tell him, “We are not people of color, Robert. We are rich.” What does she mean.
I’ll let you read the interview to see the answer, but clearly there are some interesting things going on in Jen’s story, lots of it introduced in the first few paragraphs. Here they are, as a taster.
“No politics, just make money,” Betty’s mother, Tina, liked to say. And when it came to China: “See nothing, hear nothing, say nothing. Do you hear me?”
“I hear nothing,” Betty had wanted to say something. Or, well, many times, really. But instead she’d said nothing and, as directed, made a lot of money. After all, she was the good daughter.
And that was how it was that when umbrellas took over Hong Kong she had a nice place in Vancouver. And that was how it was, too, that when racism took over Vancouver she could up and move to New York. It was convenient to be rich, you had to say. In New York, she didn’t even have to buy an apartment. She and her husband and the boys just moved into her sister’s old place, which they liked so much that they bought the apartment next door, and then the apartment on the other side, too. They figured they’d turn the extra kitchens into bathrooms.
Looking forward to seeing what you all think!
Warmth and thoughtfulness from an established, nuanced voice. This is…not bad. That’s not damning it with faint praise or calling it with mediocre, I just found it a tad sentimental, but I admit that others might find it more thoroughly impressive. It’s a contemporary post-Covid piece, well-observed with resonant details. There’s poignancy in the content and confidence in the writing. It’s not all that innovative or inventive, but there’s earned emotion.
Wow! Just wow. She handles the reveal so skillfully. And she paces the story so nicely. She mixes realism with humor throughout. Then the final long sequence between the mom and the adopted son which arrives at a crushing truth. It’s about the cruelty of Communism by showing how it impacts family members and you can’t get away from it even by moving to another country. “No politics. Just make money.” A wonderfully ironic motif. Also ironic — the older son always accuses her of not telling the truth. Only after he goes is she able to tell the younger son the truth.
“Earned emotion” — I agree.
I read her novel, “The Resisters”, which was excellent. .
Nice touches of humor and a portrayal of how dissidents live their lives under the Chinese Communist party system. Being Chinese, I found the disappearance of Theo and the response of his parents rather odd especially since they were recent migrants (if I understood the story correctly). It didn’t feel authentic.
I also found it odd that since Betty knew that Bobby had once written “a last letter”, her initial response upon hearing from a relative that Bobby had asked him to pass on a letter was: “Who sent real letters anymore, much less a letter via a personal family messenger?”