The Bridegroom

The story starts out with some background information. Beina’s father deid and the narrator promised him he would take care of his daughter. “He left his only child with me because my wife and I had no children of our own.” He expresses his concerns and says, “As she grew older, it became more difficult, not because she was willful or troublesome, but because no man was interested in her, a short, homely girl. When she turned twenty-three and still had no boyfriend, I began to worry. Where could I find her a husband?” I think it is a interesting part of their culture that although Beina is only twenty three, they are worried that she will never find a husband. It is also interesting that the father figure feels the need to find one for her! He says, “I was afraid she’d end up an old maid.”

There is then a turn of events when, “out of the blue, Huang Baowen proposed to her.” Then two months later they got married. Many young women in the sewing factory were shocked at their marriage and saw it as a slap in the face. This is because, “Baowen had been one of the most handsome unmarried men in the factory, and nobody had expected that Beina, stocky and stout, would win him.” After hearing this, it seems as if there is something we don’t know about why they got married. Even her adoptive parents are suspicious to the union. They say, “Although we had or doubts, my wife and I couldn’t say anything negative about the marriage. Our only concern was that Baowen might be too good for our adopted daughter.” When I read this for the first time, I had to go back and read it again to make sure I had read it correctly. I have never heard parents worry that a man was “too good” for their daughter! This seemed very strange to me. Normally, the father figure is extremely protective of their daughters and don’t think that any men are good enough for their daughters. This is quite a turn of the tables.

Later in the story Beina came to her stepfather’s office in tears and informed him, “Uncle, Baowen didn’t come home last night.” This was his worst nightmare come true. He had these doubts and nervous feelings towards the marriage and this confirmed his worst fears. He later receives a phone call from, “the city’s Public Security Bureau. The man on the phone said they’d detained a worker of ours, named Huang Baowen. He couldn’t tell me what had happened. He just said, indecent activity, come as soon as you can.” He immediately jumps to conclusions and, “figured Baowen must have been involved in a major crime—either an orgy or gang rape.”

He finally meets with Chief Miao of the Investigation Department. What he was told next was shocking. “Without any opening remarks he declared that we have a case of homosexuality on our hands. At that, the room turned noisy. We’d heard that term before but didn’t know what it meant exactly.” Chief Miao then explains, “It’s social disease, like gambling, or prostitution, or syphilis.” This shows the culture’s ignorance towards homosexuality. The fact that they consider it to be a “social disease” is astounding to me. Chief Miao then goes on to inform him that homosexuality is considered to be a crime and, “according to our law it’s dealt with as a kind of hooliganism. Therefore, every one of the men we arrested will serve a sentence, from six months to five years, depending on the severity of his crime and his attitude towards it.” This shows another drastic difference between American culture and theirs. If we were to discriminate against homosexuality, it would be considered to be discrimination.

They were caught because a group of men had formed a club called “Men’s World”, a salon of sorts. They met every Thursday evening. Since the club was strictly men, the police suspected that it might be a “secret association with a leaning toward violence”, so they assigned two detectives to pose as members of the group. When the men were caught they said, “At least we men have a place for ourselves. Now I feel alive! Only in here can I stop living in hypocrisy.” I feel bad for these men, who are forced to live in secret and cannot live openly, and then are considered to be “criminals” because of their sexual orientation.

When he finally gets a chance to talk with Baowen, he asks him if he realizes that he committed a crime. Baowen responds by saying, “I didn’t do anything. I just went there to listen to them talk.” He then asks him if he had done anything with a man. Baowen tells him, “I’d thought about doing something, but to be honest, I didn’t. I liked a man in the club, a lot. If he’d asked me, I might’ve agreed.” This outrages the stepfather. He then asks Baowen why he married Beina to begin with, “To make fun of her? To throw mud in my face?” We are then told that he had informed that Beina had known all along, and that before they got married he told her that he didn’t like women and might not give her a baby. She told him that, “She didn’t mind. She just wanted a husband, a home.”

After Cowboy Chicken Came to Town

This story starts out with a man asking for a refund on his chicken. He says, “This Cowboy Chicken only sounds good and looks tasty. In fact it’s just a name—it’s more batter than eman. After two pieces I still don’t feel a thing in here. (slapping his flabby belly) I don’t want to eat this fluffy stuff anymore. Give me my money back.” This was definitely an attention getter at the beginning of the story. The manager ends up refunding him half of his money. The employee’s are outraged and believe that he shouldn’t have let him take advantage of them. The manager responds by saying they should follow the American way of doing business which means pleasing the customer and believing that, “The customer is always right.” It seems as if there are some harsh feelings between the boss and the employees. One of the employees says, “I hated Mr. Shapiro’s hypocrisy. He always appeared good-hearted and considerate to customers, but was cruel to us, his employees.”

We later find out more about Mr. Shapiro who was, “an old fox and good at sweet-talking.” He also says that he chose to do business in Muji City because he “wanted to help the Chinese people, because in the late thirties his parents had fled Red Russia and lived here for three years before moving in to Australia; they had been treated decently, though they were Jews. The Jews and the Chinese had a similar fate, so I feel close to you. We all have dark hair.” It seems as if he has a compassionate side, and then rounds his compassion off with a joke.

The employees seem to have an alliance against their boss. They nicknamed Mr. Shapiro, “Party Secretary, because just like a Party boss anywhere he did little work. The only difference was that he didn’t organize political studies or demand we report to him our inner thoughts.” It seems as if they hold great hostility towards Mr. Shapiro. They clearly don’t think very highly of him, and are under the impression that he does little to no work. They tell us that Peter Jiao, his manager, “ran the business for him.”

From the way they describe it, it seems that Cowboy Chicken is a big deal in China. We are told that, “On the day Cowboy Chicken opened, about forty officials from the City Hall came to celebrate. At the opening ceremony, a vice mayor cut the red silk ribbon with a pair of scissors two feet long. He then presented Mr. Shapiro with a brass key the size of a small poker.” It caused quite the stir in town and, “the next day the city’s newspaper, the Muji Herald, published a lengthy article about breakthrough in the city’s campaign to attract foreign investors.”

We later find out that Mr. Shapiro has been taking a few of his employee’s out for dinner. Although the men that work in the restaurant think that he has bad intentions, the girls inform them that they paid their own way and that Mr. Shapiro considered it to be a “working dinner.” At one point, they decide to make the restaurant “buffet style.” This proved to be very popular, but unfortunately due to it’s popularity, “they lost seven hundred yuan, exclusive of our wages.” After they stopped doing the buffet style of serving food, the employees were happy that their wages hadn’t been withheld, despite the loss in revenue. We are told that, ‘This was the beauty of working for Cowboy Chicken—it was never late in paying us, unlike many Chinese companies, especially those owned by the state which simply didn’t have enough cash to pay employees their full wages.” It is hard to believe that a company can actually withhold wages from their employee’s when their employees have worked for that money, and have every right to a full salary.

The son of the president of Muji Teachers College called Peter and informed him that he had now decided to get married and, “He wanted something exotic for their wedding dinner, so he picked Cowboy Chicken.” This sounds funny to me, considering Cowboy Chicken is a fast food restaurant. It would be like having KFC at a wedding reception. This just shows another difference in their culture and the American culture. Despite the fact that Mr. Shapiro was hesitant about being able to cater an entire wedding, Manyou tells him, “Mr. Shapiro, Peter is right. Men of China use all moneys for wedding, big money.” So they decide to cater the wedding. At the wedding the groom said, “We thank our American friend, Mr. Ken Shapiro, for providing us with such a clean, beautiful place and delicious food. This is a perfect example of adapting foreign things to Chinese needs.” This statement directly reflects what the goal of Cowboy Chicken’s presence in China is. After the wedding reception Mr. Shapiro and Peter, “Knew we had opened a new page in Cowboy Chicken’s history; our boss said he was going to report our success to the headquarters in Dallas.”

The next morning Cowboy Chicken was flooded with complaints about the food from last night. One caller was a woman, “Complaining about the previous evening’s food. She claimed she had been poisoned.” After receiving loads of complaining phone calls Mr. Shapiro was shaken and said, “Jesus, they’re going to sue us!” The employee’s were confused and didn’t know what that meant. Mr. Shapiro informs them, “In America that’s a way to make a living for some people.” This is another interesting comparison to the American way of life. It turned out that, “A third of the wedding guests had suffered from food poisoning, and that more than a dozen faculty members were unable to teach that day.” They are able to get out of trouble when Mr. Shapiro writes a article in the local newspaper explaining that these people’s Chinese stomachs weren’t accustomed to the dairy in the food and that’s why they were sick.

Orbiting

This story starts out on Thanksgiving morning. She starts talking about someone rolling joints and then describes cranberry sauce. Her dad came to drop off a turkey for her. When he drops the turkey off he says, “your mama took care of the thawing, she said you wouldn’t have room in your Frigidaire.” She responds with, “you mean Mom said Rindy shouldn’t be living in a dump, right?” We are then told more background info on her mother. She has the, “simple, immigrant faith that children should do better than their perents.” This shows a bit of pressure that may be put on her to succeed. We also find out that her father was a minor league catcher, until his knees went out.

Renata is from Italian descent and her father seems to be into his old northern Italian way. He believes that, “Sicilians and Calabrians are emotional; we’re contained.” Her Mom is a Calabrian and her dad’s American, so Italy is “a safe source of pride for him.” Her brother dropped out of Montclair State and joined the marines.

Her dad tells her that her mother wanted him out of the house and says, “Your mama must have told you girls I’ve been acting funny since I retired.” I can understand how the dad feels. My own dad is a work-o-haulic so I cannot even imagine what he is going to do with himself when he ends up retiring. I’m sure my mom is going to have to find something to keep him occupied. The mother clearly has strong feelings about retirement and we are told, “Your mama thinks a man should have an office to drive to every day. I sat at a desk for thirty-eight years and what did I get? “ This shows that her father clearly has resentment towards his retirement and his old job.

Renata seems to want to keep her boyfriend, Vic, a secret from her father. She first refers to him as “a friend.” Then she is talking about her new lover named Ro, and how he was very different from Vic. He was more direct and forward. It seems as if the reason they broke up was because Vic wanted better things for himself he says, “You know RIndy, there are places. You don’t fall off the earth when you leave New Jersey, you know. “

A Wife's Story- By, Bharati Mukherjee

The opening scene is in a theatre and begins with a man telling jokes and making comparisons to Glen Gary Glenn Ross, while also clearly making a joke. He is with a group of people that seem to find his jokes funny. An actor playing a salesman is described in great detail. We are introduced to a man named Imre, from Budapest, who isn’t very good with his English. The woman with Irme clearly feels insulted by something said in the play and says, “I didn’t pay eighteen dollars to be insulted.” She says that she doesn’t hate Mamet, but that, “It’s the tyranny of the American dream that scares me.”

She raises an interesting point when she says, “Insult, my American friends will tell me, is a kind of acceptance. No instant dignity here. A play like this, back home, would cause riots. Communal, racist, and antisocial. The actors wouldn’t make it off stage. This play, and all these awful feelings, would be safely locked up.” I though that this was a very interesting comparison and point of view. It seems like Imre doesn’t understand why she is upset and says, “Panna, what is Patel? Why are you taking it all so personally?”

We are shown a personal side to Panna when she says, “My manners are exquisite, my feelings are delicate, my gestures refined, my moods undetectable. They have seen me through riots, separation and my son’s death.” This is a very powerful quote and gives a unique view into the person that Panna is. We are told more about the character’s lives and that, “Imre’s been here over two years, but he’s stayed very old-world, very courtly, openly protective of women.” This shows an insight to the kind of person that Imre is. He has a wife who is a nurse somewhere on the Hungarian Countryside and two sons. Panna’s husband manages and mill, and they do not have any children.

We are given an interesting look into her life when Panna tells us, “I’ve made it. I’m making something of my life. I’ve left home, my husband, to get a Ph.D. in special ed. I have a multiple entry visa and a small scholarship for two years.” This shows Panna’s ambition to make something of herself and to continue her education.

Charity, Panna’s roommate, seems to be an interesting character. We are told that, “She had her eyes fixed eight or nine months ago and out of gratitude sleeps with her plastic surgeon every third Wednesday.” She is a hand model and believes that Asians should have a monopoly in the hand-modeling business. She mentions that she has an estranged husband named Eric. Apparently she still loves Eric, and Eric is smart enough to know it. Panna then quotes Mamet and says, “Love is a commodity, hoarded like any other.”

Panna on the other hand has a, “traditional Hindu marriage.” Her parents picked a groom for her. I found it interesting when she says, “Affection, love. Who can tell the difference in a traditional marriage in which a wife still doesn’t call her husband by his first name?” This shows how extremely traditional Panna and her husband are. They clearly abide by old customs and are not like most modern day couples.

Panna’s husband decides to come visit her in NYC. She feels as if she has to put on all of her jewelry and sari in order to greet him. We are also told that this is one of the few times in their marriage that they have actually been alone. She says, “So for two weeks we are to have the apartment to ourselves. This is more privacy than we ever had in India. No parents, no servants, to keep us modest.” It think it’s crazy that as a married couple this will be more privacy than they’ve ever had where they live. For couples, privacy is normally a big part of a relationship; a time when they can get away from the kids if they have them and catch up with one another. The fact that they never have time alone is another strange aspect to their unusual relationship. Later when they are shopping Panna says, “I feel I am just getting to know him.” This also shows the distance between them in their marriage.

We see a change in the dynamic of their relationship when Panna’s husband’s attitude changes. He becomes very positive and excited about the city. Panna says, “My heart speeds watching him this happy.” And later says, “This has to be love, I think.” Things change when a tour guide hits on Panna and her husband is less than pleased. He says, “I told you not to wear pants. He thinks you are Puerto Rican. He thinks he can treat you with disrespect.” This shows how he is slowly reverting to his old way of thinking. He resorted to making a rash judgement and says, “You’re too innocent. I’ve come to take you back. I have seen how men watch you.” This shows his jealousy and how uncomfortable he is when he feels like Panna is not in his complete control. He then justifies his actions by saying, “I can’t live without you.”

Stone Reader-Movie Part 2

The second part of the movie opens with a pan of the Arizona terrain. It is a beautiful landscape, and an extremely scenic spot. They are describing Vietnam to the narrator’s son.

Later, the narrator describes the book as having two main themes, both of which are timeless. They are: someone finding themselves, and rebellion. These two themes seem to be at the center of most teen angst books, and even in a great deal of movies. They provide a storyline in which they can show a person growing up and turning into an adult while, “finding themselves.” As far as the rebellion, I can’t tell you how many times there is a teen “rebel” in a book or movie, causing drama and acting out. I believe this is one of the most overdone and boring theme a character or book can have.

In this part of the movie, we are also told that the book has been out of print for 20 years. This is an extremely long time, and it is unbelievable that the narrator has been able to find out as much as he has giving how long ago the book stopped being printed. In this part of the movie we are shown a lot of interaction between the author, Dow, and the narrator. He finally tracks him down and goes to visit him. His goal of the trip is to try to get “The Stones of Summer” back into print. He even meets with an agent in order to get his professional opinion and help.

When Dow and the narrator are discussing the book, Dow says that each page of the book was a poem, and that the novel in its entirety is a poem. Not necessarily that it has rhyming or anything of that nature, but because of it’s language and overall essence. We are told that as a child Dow read Sherlock Holmes and the bible. He loves Shakespeare, because he really enjoys genre tragedies. When talking about Shakespeare, it is clear that he is very passionate about it. He also tells us that he believes that, “books are sacred objects.”

Towards the end of the movie, we are told that the narrator’s father dies of diabetes. He also tells us that after this, he considers stopping the movie all together, but decides not to because then no one would find out about the “stones of summer”. In the very end of the movie, we are told that Barnes and Noble agrees to sell the book and have it in print again. Therefore, overall, the narrator’s goal was a success and all of his hard work and persistence paid off.

Stone Reader-Movie

From what we have seen so far, this movie is much different than I had imagined it would be. It is more of a documentary style, and seems to have more of a home video feel than a major motion picture feel. It involves several aspects of this man’s life, more than just his mission. It shows how many different friends he has, and their different connections to possible helping him along his venture.

His mission is to find the book entitled, “The Stones of Summer” and to possibly get in touch with the author. There were not traces of it online or in the reader’s digest in the library. It wasn’t until he went to the library and tracked down a review written on the book, that he was given something to go off of. The man who wrote the review is named John Sealy.

This film involves several members of his family. He went to his mom’s house to ask her what he was like when he bought and read “The Stones of Summer”. She told him that it was in late May of ’72 when he was sick in bed, that he read the book. Another member of the family that is involved is his wife, although she refuses to be filmed on camera from the knee up. Her name is Clare, and she designed the house that they live in and created a place for her husband to be able to work from the home.

Later, he finds out that the publisher of the book is dead. He found a lady on an airplane to carries the book around with her encase she finds someone who has read it. This shows how the book has impacted someone other than himself. At one point in the movie he says, “reading is the only thing that keeps me sane”. We are told that in general, it is more common for authors to write one book and stop than to write several books. This seems to be the case with the author of “The Stones of Summer”.

He finally decides to go to visit John Sealy, the man who wrote the only review ever written on this book. He shows up to his house, and brings tons of different books to talk about with him. After meeting Sealy he says, “I felt like I’d known him my whole life.” Later, he receives a letter from the agent of the author of “The Stones of Summer”. The book was dedicated to a professor at the University of Iowa. Catch 22 was his favorite book as a child. We are also told that in general, a review that was put on the front page of the NY Times would start a book and give it the publicity it needs to really become something, but that a review on the third page would not have as great of an impact.

The fact that he is going to such great lengths to find a book really impresses upon the fact that this book had an incredible impact on him. It went beyond a “good read” and really touched something inside of him, and made his life different in some way. His diligence and hard work is really something to be admired. He goes above and beyond in order to try to find what he is looking for.

The Same River Twice p.9-53

The prologue of the novel is very detailed yet vague. It goes into great detail as far as the scenery yet doesn’t describe the exact location. The only clue we are given to Chris’ whereabouts is that we are told, “I am as alien here as in a city.” In the first chapter we are told that he is in Iowa.

When we are told, “At nineteen I left, vowing always to own my time. What began as an adherence to freedom became an inability to hold a job”, this shows a lot about Chris. This shows us that he is independent and not afraid to take a risk. He left home with no job, not knowing how he was going to survive. We are also shown his persistence when he tells us the stories of how he purposed to his wife on several occasions, before she finally said yes. The first time he asked they were drinking in a bar and after she said no he decided, “She refused, and I was grateful, needing time to examine my shocking and spontaneous request.” I thought this was funny that although he had asked her to marry him, he was relieved when she said no because he wanted to re-think the whole idea when he was sober.

When Rita tells him that she wants to have children he isn’t very keen on the idea. Chris even goes as far as to consider divorcing Rita because of it. He says, “There was a limit to Rita’s childbearing years. If I genuinely loved her, I’d have to leave her. Worse, I had to leave her soon.” It is interesting that although this seems sad, he truly has Rita’s best interest at heart. We are shown this when he uses the reasoning that, “She needed enough time to find a man who wanted a family. Considering it from this angle was like weighing options on a scale—a life alone without her, or a life with Rita and a child.”

Chris is definitely not your average person. What most people tend to make priorities in their life, such as marriage and a family, he hadn’t thought that these were things that he wanted. He says, “I never thought I’d be married, let alone mutate into a father. Such normal events had never seemed to have a place in my life.”

Finally after several months of trying, Rita became pregnant. Towards the end of her pregnancy he began to get nervous. He said, “I doubted my abilities to raise a child without ruining it. Although I trusted Rita implicitly, in my worst moments I worried that the baby might not be mine…Mainly I was afraid that Rita’s love would shift away from me.”

We are then told about Chris’ experience as a struggling actor in New York City. He encounters unfamiliar surroundings and many different situations that he has never dealt with before. At one point he is even seduced by a transvestite pretending to be a woman. This was extremely unexpected and strange. He soon meets a woman named Jahi. She acts as a form of a mentor, and teaches him about intimacy. At one point she tells Christ that he should write about her. When he asked her why he says, “Because I’m alive.” He responds, “So am I, Jahi.” And then she says, “Without me you weren’t. You were young , dumb, and full of come. Now you’re just young.” This shows the important role that Jahi feels that she has in Chris’s life. Chris makes a very interesting observation about New York. He says, “New York appeared to be a voluntary asylum where all the cranks and sociopaths escaped from their small towns; nobody I knew had been born and raised there. Half the population was crazy and the rest were therapists.

Chris is very poetic. He describes, “The twining sounds of heartbeat reminded me of the night of the storm. The baby is rain. Rita is the steady gush of river. I am alone in the dark on the bank.” I’m not quite sure what this symbolism represents, but I’m pretty sure that when he says he is alone in the dark on a bank he feels uneasy about the pregnancy.