dry rooms most of their lives. They dream about
returning to China and joining their families, but
they have become complacently accustomed to a
life of idleness and inaction. When his wife writes
about their obligation to marry off their son, Wah
Gay happily sets out to arrange a marriage for Ben
Loy with a fellow Chinese immigrant’s daughter
living in China.
After getting married in China, Ben Loy re-
turns to New York’s Chinatown with Mei Oi, his
young wife of 17. Despite having to live in a run-
down apartment at the edge of Chinatown, they
are full of hope and love. Mei Oi had dreamed
about marrying a man from America and raising
a family in the “Beautiful Country.” What soon
becomes apparent, however, is that Ben Loy is
impotent, largely because he had regularly visited
prostitutes and suffered several bouts of venereal
disease. In many ways, Ben Loy had also lived the
reckless life that the Chinatown fathers lived in
their younger days in Chinatown, his impotence
thus representing the hypocrisy and impotence of
the bachelor society.
Ben Loy visits a doctor of Western medicine
and a doctor of traditional Chinese medicine, but
their prescriptions fail to cure his impotence. Dis-
appointed and feeling lonely, Mei Oi falls prey to
Ah Song’s seduction and has a scandalous love af-
fair. Soon, everyone in Chinatown finds out. Dev-
astated when the rumors turn out to be true, Wah
Gay turns to the Chinese community for interven-
tion. When the affair continues, Wah Gay takes
the situation into his own hands and attacks Ah
Song, cutting off one of his ears. Although the as-
sault charges are dropped and Ah Song is expelled
from New York, Wah Gay and Mei Oi’s father, Lee
Gong, decide to leave New York out of shame. Ben
Loy and Mei Oi also leave for San Francisco, where
Mei Oi gives birth to a son fathered by Ah Song.
In a departure from tradition, Ben Loy accepts the
child as his own and looks forward to “a chance
for a new beginning” (240). Ben Loy’s impotence is
also cured when he visits a Chinese herbal doctor
and drinks a bitter brew of medicinal tea.
In San Francisco, Ben Loy and Mei Oi have a
chance to save their marriage and make a fresh
start in America without the interference of their
parents or the Chinatown community. Although
the ending is optimistic, the novel questions the
extent to which the younger generation can suc-
ceed in America: Ben Loy and Mei Oi must still
depend on their Chinatown connection for their
livelihood in San Francisco. The novel is also an
indictment of the historical circumstances that
generated a stifling bachelor society of old mar-
ried men in New York’s Chinatown, who were pre-
vented from being role models for their children.Bibliography
Chu, Louis. Eat a Bowl of Tea. Seattle: University of
Washington Press, 1979.
Kim, Elaine H. Asian American Literature: An Intro-
duction to the Writings and their Social Context.
Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1982.
Lim, Shirley Geok-lin and Amy Ling, eds. Reading the
Literatures of Asian America. Philadelphia: Temple
University Press, 1992.
Peggy ChoCity in Which I Love You, The
Li-Young Lee (1990)
LI-YOUNG LEE’s second book of poetry was the
Lamont Poetry Selection for 1990. Comprising five
sections, Lee’s poems in The City in Which I Love
Yo u cycle through a physical and emotional exile
to reach a personal understanding of the self in
the world and to discover a deep connection with
his multicultural heritage, history, and the future.
Critic Zhou Xiaojing notes that “To deal with his
cross-cultural experience and to show culturally
conditioned ways of perception in his poetry, Lee
employs and develops a major technique which re-
lies on a central image as the organizing principle
for both the subject matter and structure of the
poem” (117).
The first section, which includes the seven-part
poem “Furious Versions,” celebrates the mysteri-
ous connections between father and son and like-
wise between poet and poem, attempting to trace
creation through continuity. In “Furious Versions,”City in Which I Love You, The 51