to fail to please him, but they share a moment of
peace after Young’s death. For the first time, the
father comes to watch his son play football at the
state championship game.
In a narrative as cleverly strategic as a football
play, Lee steadily builds Chan’s frustration with
his bigoted teammates and narrow-minded father,
investigating the issues of racial tolerance and in-
tergenerational miscommunication and expecta-
tions. Lee uses Coach Thorson to contrast with
Chan’s father’s inability to be the father that Chan
desires, and this is most evident in the way Chan
reacts whenever the coach puts his hand on Chan’s
shoulder and calls him “son.” However, Chan’s fa-
ther regains his rightful place when they reconcile
and he shows up for his son’s state championship
game.
It is ironic that so much violence befalls the
Kim family after they leave Los Angeles for a safer
life. However, all the events of the novel seem to
lead to the ultimate reconciliation and mutual re-
spect between Chan and his father. The novel sug-
gests that perhaps the pervasive roughness that has
infiltrated so many aspects of Chan’s life is not so
unnecessary after all.
Bibliography
Lee, Marie G. Necessary Roughness. New York: Harp-
erCollins, 1996.
Sarah Park
Ng, Fae Myenne (1957– )
Born to Chinese immigrant parents, Ng grew up in
San Francisco’s Chinatown, spoke Cantonese, and
attended the Cumberland Presbyterian Chinese
school, the University of California, Berkeley, and
the Columbia University School of Arts. It took
Ng a decade to write her debut novel, Bone (1993),
which won her the Pushcart Prize and a National
Endowment for the Arts Award.
Bone tells the story of a family trying to find rea-
sons for the suicide of the middle daughter, Ona.
The search for answers reveals many secrets to the
family’s identity as both Chinese immigrants and
Chinese Americans. Leila, the oldest daughter, is
the product of the mother’s first marriage. Aban-
doned by her first husband before her daughter’s
birth, the mother marries Leon Leong, a merchant
seaman, with whom she has two more daughters,
Ona and Nina.
The narrator is the oldest daughter, who works
as a community relations officer at a Chinese-
American school. As Leila narrates the story, we
view the events that lead up to, and follow, the
suicide of Ona. Though none of the family mem-
bers understands Ona’s reason to kill herself, they
all accept blame for her death. Her mother worries
that she has brought destruction upon the family
because of her poor decisions in choosing men:
her first husband, who abandoned her, and her
boss Tommie Hong, with whom she had an illicit
affair. Leong, who immigrated with false papers
pretending to be a son to an old Chinese immi-
grant already in the U.S., believes that his failure
to return his “paper” father’s bones to China has
resulted in Ona’s suicide. Leila blames herself for
failing to notice her half-sister Ona’s pain. Nina,
the only daughter to have left Chinatown to make
a life for herself, blames everyone.
Intertwined with the search for the meaning
behind Ona’s suicide is the search for meaning in
the family members’ own lives. Born in America,
attending American schools, absorbing American
culture, Leila embraces individualism but wants
to preserve the Chinatown culture in which she
grew up. She dismisses those who are “too Chi-
nese” or “too American.” She rejects her parents’
values when she perceives them as being too ste-
reotypically Chinese; yet she also rejects her sis-
ter, Nina, who has moved to New York and is too
quick to embrace American culture. Throughout
Bone, Leila also relates the family’s pursuit of the
American dream, a dream that is altered beyond
recognition as the Leong household faces harsh
realities of immigrant life and tries to negotiate
between American and Chinese cultures. In her
family, Buddhism is merged with Christianity, and
the capitalism of the entrepreneurial Leon is con-
trasted with the working class realties of his mini-
mum-wage jobs.Patricia Kennedy BostianNg, Fae Myenne 213