Joan Is Okay

“My twenties were spent in school, and a girl in her twenties is said to be in her prime. After that decade, all is lost. They must mean looks, because what could a female brain be worth, and how long could it last?”

This passage speaks to the theme of Gender, Societal Expectations, and Interpersonal Relationships. Many of the people in Joan’s life seem to feel as though she should be more focused on marriage, parenthood, and other life goals associated with a more traditional understanding of a woman’s role in society. Joan chafes against these ideas and feels as though her intellect and work ethic should be seen as more important than her looks or ability to bear children.

“About our country, continued my cousin, it used to be poor, but now we have caught up. We have surpassed most western countries, even yours.”

This novel is grounded in the real-life history of not only Chinese immigration to the United States but also of China itself. Many early waves of Chinese immigration were fueled by poverty and a lack of opportunity in China. In the last decades of the 20th century, though, China began to make serious economic progress. For many in China today and for Joan’s fictional relatives, China has become a land of prosperity and possibility.

“At my interview three years ago, the director asked why I chose intensive care, I said I liked the purity of it, the total sense of control. Machines can tell you things that the people attached to them can’t, I said.”

This passage illustrates Joan’s unique thinking process and way of approaching the world. Joan has been solitary, reclusive, and introverted since she was a small child, and she does not relate to others the way that most of her family members and colleagues do. At the hospital, she feels particularly comfortable around machines because they are orderly, data-driven, and impersonal. They are, in a sense, easier to read than people, for Joan.

“They were looking at me expectantly, so I said I knew nothing about Feng shui. I butchered the pronunciation on purpose and said it as I assumed that they would to make them feel more at ease.”

This passage speaks to The Difficulties of Immigration for Chinese people in particular. Joan is constantly butting up against societal expectations for what Chinese and Chinese-American individuals should be like. For some, Joan is “too Chinese,” and for others, she is not Chinese enough. In this instance, Joan tries to downplay her knowledge of Chinese culture to put her hosts at ease and help them feel that Joan is not quite so foreign.

“I said I didn’t like parties.”

This passage speaks to Joan’s characterization as well as to the theme of Gender, Societal Expectations, and Interpersonal Relationships. Although many people in Joan’s life feel as though she is not social enough, not feminine enough, and too focused on work, Joan has a set of behaviors and values that mostly work for her. She is successful in her field and feels as though she is meeting all of her goals. It is other people, not Joan, who find fault in her introversion.

“As the director had put it when he hired me, I was a gunner and a new breed of doctor, brilliant and potent, but with no interests outside of work and sleep.”

This passage speaks to the theme of Work and Identity. In part because Joan does not want to be defined by her gender or her race, she values work above all else. This approach to garnering respect and affirming her capacity for self-definition makes her successful in her demanding field and popular among her superiors at the hospital. Work is a large part of Joan’s identity, and it is from work—rather than from family or any other personal characteristics—that Joan derives her strong sense of self.

“There were times when my classmates would ask me to translate some dumb English phrase into Chinese just to prove that I could, then after hearing me speak Chinese, just to say that I sounded foreign.”

This passage speaks to the novel’s interest in multiculturalism and in the way that Joan’s Chinese background becomes a source of difficulty. Joan is both more and less Chinese than many of her peers expect, and she comes into contact with multiple people who see her as different because of her race.

“There is no real fight against death, because death will always win.”

Death lurks in the background of this text, and its many mentions serve as reminders that although Joan is more focused on work than anything else, she is still grieving the loss of her father. Joan does not so much bury her feelings as re-direct her attention in other areas, and because of this re-direction, it takes her a long time to process loss.

“I’d spent my earliest years speaking only to my parents, meaning I’d spent those years speaking only Chinese. Then on my first day of kindergarten, my teacher found it so strange that while I spoke basic English, I was not entirely fluent.”

This passage speaks to the theme of The Difficulties of Immigration. Joan grows up in two cultures, speaking two languages. Part of her parents’ struggle in the United States is not speaking the language fluently, and Joan recalls her father learning English with the aid of cassette tapes. Rather than focusing entirely on his career, he must worry about a plethora of other problems. It is Joan and Fang’s generation that is able to devote more time to their own goals and aspirations.

“My brother could speak only in catch phrases, or only in clichés.”

This passage speaks to Fang’s characterization. Unlike Joan, Fang is business-minded and ties his career motivations to his financial goals. He embraces corporate culture to the point that his speech patterns are rooted in corporate and sales lingo. Joan, who is literal and motivated entirely by her work ethic, finds Fang’s communication style slightly phony and off-putting.

“A question I used to get asked was if I had been pushed into medicine like all good Asian kids and to this I usually said nothing.”

Joan wants, above all, to be recognized for her work and not because of characteristics such as race or gender. She resents the way that so many people in the United States stereotype her based on her Asian heritage and her gender identity. In contrast, part of what she finds appealing about medicine is that once she got into medical school, she was seen as part of a group of doctors-in-training and not as a woman or an Asian American.

“But how had your son really gotten into Yale? Because Yale looks out for minorities.”

This passage speaks to Joan’s discomfort with the way that race and gender come to define so many people in the United States. Because Joan derives so much of her sense of self from her intellect and her work ethic, she appreciates true meritocracies. She resents the idea that women and people of color are judged based on the qualities that make them “different” and wants to be judged for her skills and abilities alone.

“At face value, medicine was still a meritocracy and the most straightforward path I could take.”

This passage speaks to Joan’s characterization. She has a strong work ethic and a desire to be recognized for her hard work, her intelligence, and her abilities rather than for her gender or ethnicity. Medicine appeals to her because it allows her to identify as a medical professional and nothing else. She prefers to be part of a community that recognizes its members for what they are capable of doing rather than who they are.

“You don’t have to care about people to be a doctor, but you do to be a nurse.”

This passage speaks, although obliquely, to Joan’s reasons for success in the medical field. The novel’s title implies that there is some question, among those who know Joan, about whether or not she is “okay.” This question is usually based on Joan’s inability to form meaningful connections with her friends and family members. Joan, however, is “okay,” she is just “different.” Her calm, isolationist, intellect-driven character makes her uniquely qualified to succeed in a field that requires a grueling schedule, a keen mind, and the ability to tackle difficult cases with objectivity and limited emotion.

“If I was in my apartment, the television was on. I didn’t always watch, but the sounds of people talking at low volume were nice, even if it was seemingly an hour of commercials.”

This passage speaks to Joan’s characterization and her developing friendship with her neighbor Mark. It is interesting to note that although she does try to be open to Mark’s interest in her life and she does explore the world of popular culture on television, ultimately Joan’s self-identity remains strong: She does not entirely understand the appeal of shows like Friends, and the television becomes a source of background noise rather than one of cultural connection and cohesion. Mark, similarly, is too much for Joan, and she ultimately bristles at his lack of boundaries.

“We see this a lot actually, said the woman, crossing her legs. Doctors who refuse to rest as if it were a sign of weakness, but it’s not. Stopping momentarily to reassess, re-center, release, the “three Rs” is actually a sign of strength.”

This passage speaks to the theme of Work and Identity. Joan’s work ethic is so strong and her sense of self so rooted in work that she is sometimes perceived as being too focused on work and not focused enough on her personal life. She has more than one conflict with HR because of this, and these moments of strife demonstrate how much energy Joan pours into the hospital and her work life.

“You’re a woman of color in a male-dominated field and you haven’t experienced any strife?”

This passage speaks to Mark’s characterization and foreshadows the moment in a subsequent section of the text when Joan characterizes Mark as “clueless.” Mark is not able to consider any framework for perceiving the world other than his own, and he does not understand Joan well enough to realize how little value she places on both her gender and racial identities.

“On January 23rd, Wuhan was sealed off, in the strictest meaning of the term: no one enters and no one leaves. Days before the lockdown took effect, five million people left the city without being screened.”

Though the COVID-19 pandemic begins late in the narrative, it plays an increasingly important role during the final section of the novel. Through her depiction of the pandemic’s early days, the author further explores the difficulties of immigration for Chinese Americans, Joan’s troubled relationship with her family, and Joan’s strong work ethic and commitment to the hospital.

“Mark had been meaning to get this group together for some time. He hoped to make introductions and to have us all connect.”

This passage speaks to Mark’s characterization, specifically to his extreme extraversion. Although Joan does not want to meet her neighbors, Mark does, and he does not pay attention to Joan’s personality enough to realize that she lacks his interest in socializing and friendship. Joan will ultimately come to characterize Mark as “clueless” and the way that he misreads her in situations like this one is a large part of why she comes to that conclusion.

“Was it harder to be a woman? Or an immigrant? Or a Chinese person outside of China? And why did being a good any of those things require you to edit yourself down so you could become someone else?”

This passage strikes at the crux of what Joan wonders about herself and about identity for female immigrants of color, writ large. To her, to be seen as a woman or as a Chinese American means to “pare down” her sense of self, to flatten who she is and reduce it to the identity categories that differ the most obviously from what many Americans perceive as “standard.” She would rather be seen, at least primarily, as a hardworking, skilled, intelligent physician and be judged based on merit rather than racial or gender identity.

“That I didn’t like kids was her suspicion, and that I’d remained childless not by choice, but from some horrible mental or biological glitch.”

This passage speaks to Joan’s characterization and to the theme of Gender, Societal Expectations, and Interpersonal Relationships. Joan in many ways resists the idea that she should fit into standards of behavior for both women and women of color, and one of the most observable manifestations of that resistance is her choice not to have children.

“How immigration is often described: a death, a rebirth. Or how my mother would describe it, starting back down at zero.”

This sentiment runs through much of the novel. Fang and Joan each have different responses to the “rebirth” that was immigration for their parents: Fang orients himself toward financial success so that his children can have the advantages of those born into families well enough established in the United States to have amassed generational wealth. Joan devotes herself to work in order to be seen through the lens of skill and ability rather than difference.

“My epiphany. Mark was just like Reese, well-meaning in some ways, clueless in others.”

This is an important moment of characterization for Mark. Although Mark perceives himself as an astute judge of people and situations, that confidence makes him ignorant of the very real cultural differences that have shaped him and Joan in different ways. He cannot understand why Joan’s boundaries might be different than his because he sees the world from a fundamentally male, American perspective.