Tripmaster Monkey: His Fake Book 663point out “the sacred ignorance” (212) of Christian
Americans who want to impose their ways of believ-
ing in a foreign land. The workings of her mind are
never limited by the cultural prison in which Nathan
(and to a certain extent Rachel) is content to dwell
throughout his life, a prison filled with prejudices
and ready-made answers to the problems of the
world. His self-proclaimed messianic mission can-
not suffer to stray from the Christian path he has
envisioned and imposed upon his surroundings since
his return from World War II: There, he was the
only soldier in his regiment to survive the Bataan
Death March. To redeem himself, he dedicates his
life to saving the souls of his family and congrega-
tions in order to please God, which takes him to
the brink of madness, drives him to endanger his
congregation, and makes him lose his humanity. He
feels guilty toward God, but never toward the human
beings he hurts in his quest to please God. His older
daughter Rachel follows the path of inhumanity as
she spends her life, after leaving the Congo, trying to
make a profit in Africa by using and abusing Africa’s
economic opportunities and people. She will, among
other things, acknowledge and participate in the
South African apartheid system.
Sophie Croisy
kingSTon, maxinE Hong
Tripmaster Monkey: His Fake Book (1987)
The central character in Tripmaster Monkey is Witt-
man Ah Sing, a recent college graduate and fifth-
generation Chinese American living in 1960s San
Francisco. Like his namesake, poet Walt Whitman,
he is a creative and free thinker. He also embodies
the title character, the Monkey King, from tradi-
tional Chinese myth, as both are rebellious and mis-
chievous and both bring truths to the people. The
Monkey King aids in bringing the Buddhist sutras
to China from India, and Wittman brings the truth
about Caucasian perceptions of Chinese Americans
and the necessary actions Chinese Americans need
to take. Wittman finds himself disillusioned with
the modern world: capitalism, the Vietnam War,
and especially contemporary views of Chinese
Americans. The bulk of the novel follows Wittman
as he tries to come to terms with the opposition
between what he wants out of life and what is
expected and/or available to him.
Wanting more than anything to be a poet and
playwright, he feels trapped in his dead end job.
Wittman comes to realize that he must push for-
ward with his play if he ever wants to escape the
rote business world. Securing a location to stage
the play, he calls upon his friends and family, who
swarm together to help flesh it out over the next
several months and to enact the characters. The
end production is a seven-night event, each night a
continuation of the previous, wherein his cast enacts
traditional Chinese and Chinese-American myths,
stories, and history. Wittman’s play also creates and
enlarges these stories and histories, commenting
on Caucasian perceptions of Chinese Americans.
Following the play’s conclusion, Wittman speaks
to the crowd about perceptions and stereotypes of
Asian Americans, challenging his audience to make
changes. Through his play and speech, he encour-
ages Asian Americans to claim their place in Ameri-
can society and whites to reevaluate their views.
Lisa WengercommodiFication/commercialization
in Tripmaster Monkey
There is nothing Wittman Ah Sing likes about
commercialism. In fact, Wittman sees the entire
corporate world as a complete waste of his time.
He is miserable in his job as a sales clerk in the toy
department, despite the fact that it earns him a liv-
ing and that he has to work only three days a week.
The work is rote and mundane, which is captured
in his wife Taña’s diatribe about her own job, where
at 8 a.m. “ ‘this chime goes off. . . . We have to be
at our desks. It goes off again at ten-fifteen, coffee
break, and ten-twenty-five, end of coffee break, and
at twelve noon and twelve-forty, and at two-fifteen,
second coffee break, and two-twenty, end of coffee
break, and five o’clock—commute hour.” The corpo-
rate/commercial world turns them into unthinking
machines, performing repetitive actions that leave
no room for creative or intelligent thought. Taña’s
only salvation during the day is the short unpaid
coffee and lunch breaks she receives. For Wittman,
the customers, mothers who continually dump their
children on him while they run other errands, also