questioned her place in the world; as a child, she
worried that she might be “exchanged for a better
girl” (23) if she misbehaved. As an adult, she went
to Korea and lived with her birth mother, trying to
put the disaggregated pieces of her life into place.
In addition to telling the story of the author’s
life, The Language of Blood questions the practice
of transnational adoption. As a child, Trenka asked,
“But why would anyone give away her children?
Don’t all mommies love their babies?” (22) Later,
as an adult, her questions became more complex:
“How can I weigh the loss of my language and
culture against the freedom that America has to
offer, the opportunity to have the same rights as
a man?... How many educational opportunities
must I mark on my tally sheet before I can say it
was worth losing my mother?” (200–201).
Trenka employs screenplays, narrative, letters,
and transcripts of telephone conversations to tell
the story of her birth, adoption, and search for
identity and family, reflecting the multiple layers
and complexity of her experiences and relation-
ships. Throughout the novel, she moves between
the past and the present and includes her birth
mother’s letters and her own memories to recon-
struct the fragmented versions and periods of her
life. The nonlinear progression and multiple meth-
ods of her storytelling destabilize the reader, who
is led into the complicated web of Trenka’s life.
Trenka’s memoir joins other Korean-American
adoptee autobiographies, such as Katy Robinson’s
A Single Square Picture and Elizabeth Kim’s Te n
Thousand Sorrows. However, Trenka’s memoir is
different in that it more aggressively analyzes the
romanticized view of transnational adoption, es-
pecially as she presents her relationship with her
adoptive parents. Also, unlike most other adoptees,
she received some communication from her birth
mother early in her youth and was able to meet
and spend time with her birth mother and siblings
as an adult.
Bibliography
Trenka, Jane Jeong. The Language of Blood: A Memoir.
St. Paul, Minn.: Borealis Books, 2003.
Sarah Park
Tripmaster Monkey
Maxine Hong Kingston (1989)
Tripmaster Monkey: His Fake Book is MAXINE HONG
KINGSTON’s only novel to date, and it is at once her
most challenging and most unabashedly comedic
book. Presenting several frantic days and nights in
the life of Wittman Ah Sing, a University of Cali-
fornia, Berkeley, graduate and aspiring playwright
in the late 1960s, Tripmaster Monkey draws from
sources as disparate as Western movies, Commu-
nist history, jazz, Shakespeare, Superman com-
ics, Chinese folklore and opera, European poetry,
and the Vietnam War. It tells the story of the be-
leaguered Wittman’s attempts to mount an epic
drama, starring all of his friends and fellow artists.
This drama, he hopes, will bring a true knowledge
of Chinese culture, beyond “sweet and sour pork
and Charlie Chan movies,” to American theater
audiences and from thence to the entire nation.
Like the Monkey King, whose ancient Chinese
legend gives the book its title, Wittman has a knack
for getting into trouble. But his talent for quick
invention keeps him from being captured by the
forces that attempt to confine him, such as govern-
ment offices, his draft board, and even his own fam-
ily. Frustrated by the stereotypes of Asian people
that stress humility, inscrutability, exotic cuisine,
and mangled English, Wittman wanders through
San Francisco over a long weekend, sketching out
plans for his massive theatrical production.
Tripmaster Monkey’s narrative style is episodic,
recalling the performance style of oral folktales
and “cliffhanger” serials; for example, the narra-
tor says, “To see how he does it, go on to the next
chapter.” During the course of four frenzied days,
which span roughly two-thirds of the book, Wit-
tman crashes drunken parties, gets married to a
Caucasian girl named Taña, searches for missing
relatives in the Bay Area, and bluffs the San Fran-
cisco Unemployment Office into giving him finan-
cial assistance for six months while he writes his
epic. The latter portion of the book presents that
colossal stage production, capped by a final chap-
ter in which Wittman speaks directly to his audi-
ence, cataloguing his frustrations and making clear
his reasons for writing this play.Tripmaster Monkey 287