Reader Response to Loh’s “My Father’s Chinese Wives”

           One thing that stood out to me was how consistent the voice is in this story. We have to get filled in on a lot of information that leads up to the point of a 70 year old man wanting to take up a new wife. This information was incorporated with the narrator’s humor so that it was more conversational. An example of this is in the beginning when she says: “Question: At this point, is my father even what one would consider marriageable?” (896). Not only does this peak my curiosity to learn about the dad, but it’s also a playful way of saying “are you serious?” I couldn’t help but picture this daughter about ready to bang her head into a wall several times throughout. I felt equally as irritated at the father throughout because of how close she brings us in just by the diction.

            At one point she repeats the fact that her father uses a “Frosted Flakes box” for everything, which I found hilarious. It’s funny, but because she repeats it I can tell how irritated she is as if she’s sitting right in front of me. Something else I appreciated that goes along with the cereal are all the little details the narrator includes to give us a better sense of the father, herself, and the sister. She tells us he does push-ups several times a day on the beach in a speedo, that Kaitlin hasn’t called her father in years, and that Jenna’s clients include “Kraft Foods and Motorola” (900). I found these to be enlightening to me personally because you can tell a lot about a character by what they do. We don’t get a lot of dialogue from each character, which usually would be a problem for me, but in this case it works because we have enough details to compensate.

            When Kaitlin and Jenna go home for dinner and the father makes the crude comment “This meat…is very greasy” (904), I thought the suspense built up to Zhou’s reaction was done well in such a short amount of time. This scene in particular stuck out to me because I normally wouldn’t expect much of someone making a mean comment, especially considering the father isn’t the nicest person. Yet, the narrator shows that “both sides of his mouth deepen,”  “Zhou Ping’s face goes blank,” and we get this paragraph of the narrator guessing what might happen. My heart started beating a little faster at this moment because I thought Zhou might hit him or something. And the suspense increases with Zhou titling her head back, ambiguously leading up to her tremendous laughter. Suspense is difficult to achieve, at least for me, because it’s hard to write something that’ll make the reader feel that anxiety/edge-of-seat sensation because your perspective might be different. But I think this is accomplished well because Jenna has built the entire story up to this particular moment effectively so that we find ourselves right there with her, scared of what the 70 year old man is going to do.