Joan Is Okay

Fang is Joan’s brother, and Tami is his wife. Fang is eight years Joan’s senior, went to Yale, and works as a successful hedge fund manager. He and his wife live with their three children on a large compound in Connecticut. Tami, who originally immigrated in order to obtain a graduate degree, disappointed her family by choosing marriage and children over her career. Joan observes that their marriage works because they share similar goals and have the same expectations for their lives.

Within the context of The Difficulties of Immigration, Fang provides a foil to Joan, presenting an approach to overcoming integration challenges that is more in line with social expectations. Fang is initially characterized by his close relationship with their mother and by the extent to which, in sharp contrast to Joan, he embraces his Chinese heritage and identity. Joan remarks that “Fang had stronger ties to China” and this is why he and her mother remain so close and why he chooses to spend more time in China following their father’s death (12). Fang and Tami throw elaborate holiday parties each year, many of which have Chinese themes and decorating schemes. He is deeply grateful for the sacrifices made by his parents and by all first-generation Chinese immigrants to the United States. He is also acutely aware of the history of discrimination against Chinese American individuals and their communities. He is deeply committed to his family, including his mother as well as his wife and children, and he criticizes Joan frequently for what he perceives as her aloofness and lack of interest in their family unit.

Fang’s primary motivator in life is money, which he connects directly with his family’s welfare. Unlike Joan, he views career success through a financial lens. He also sees the role of the second-generation immigrant as one of wealth accumulation: He wants to pass on financial security to his children, viewing this gift as an extension of the sacrifice his parents made for him. Their parents worked menial jobs so that he could have an education. Now, Fang plans to provide his children with a financial safety net, and their children, in turn, will enjoy the same success and stability that other (affluent) Americans do. Fang disapproves of Joan’s work ethic as a result. In his eyes, she should be focused more on salary. Speaking of the opportunities afforded to them by their parents having immigrated and by their education, he urges Joan to define herself in the same manner that he does: “This is our chance. Don’t throw it away” (81).

Fang is also highly controlling, both in terms of the way that he orders his own life and the many directions he gives to Joan, but she observes that this is a trait shared by Fang, Joan, and their father, although it manifests differently in each. Joan wants to control her career, and in her choice to be an ICU rather than an ER physician, she understands that she selected a setting where she would have more control. She controls her interpersonal relationships and the amount of connectivity she has with other people. Fang controls his financial outcomes and his family. Both, Joan thinks, are reflections of the lack of control experienced by first-generation immigrants, who cede their agency and “start over” in a new country.

Mark is Joan’s neighbor. He is characterized by his extreme extraversion and his lack of boundaries. His clueless, quasi-arrogant nature makes him ignorant of the truth about Joan and her life, even as he is sure that he has her “figured out.” Of Mark, Joan initially observes that “Everything about him was average” (28). He is of average height, weight, and looks. Mark’s “average” appearance foreshadows his “average” emotional intelligence and powers of perception: Joan will also come to characterize him as “clueless” for the way that he, like so many other “average” Americans, misunderstands her.

Mark’s character provides insights into how Joan struggles with Gender, Societal Expectations, and Interpersonal Relationships, illuminating by way of contrast how someone’s easy conformity to norms, as well as the comfort that natural conformity provides, can undermine a person’s capacity for understanding others. In contrast to Joan, Mark immediately begins making friends in the building and reaching out to his neighbors. He gives his possessions away, starts conversations, and tells Joan more than she would like to know about his life and his history. Joan is fundamentally uninterested in most of her peers, but Mark, unable to read or accept Joan’s silence for what it is, makes repeated overtures of friendship. The final straw for Joan is that Mark hosts a party in Joan’s apartment without first obtaining her permission, an action that embodies not only his extraversion but also his lack of boundaries. When he and Joan discuss the party, Joan realizes that the two have fundamentally oppositional understandings of both boundaries and consent. As a result, it dawns on Joan that it would have never occurred to Mark that he needed to get Joan’s consent before doing something like using her apartment to host a party. She also realizes that in spite of Mark’s avowed interest in race and racism, he does not understand that Joan is the product not only of American, but also of Chinese culture; Mark therefore never would have considered that there are cultural differences between the two about consent, boundaries, and friendship. Mark’s interest in race is solely grounded in his desire to see her as the victim of workplace discrimination, and that hyperfocus causes him to ignore the ways that race and racism truly shape his life and Joan’s life differently. Joan chooses not to explain the bulk of this realization to Mark, however, because she knows that there is no point in trying to “explain yourself to someone who had no capacity to listen” (160).

Joan’s mother is a Chinese woman who, after immigrating to China with her husband, chose to move back to her homeland once Joan finished school. She is referred to as “Joan’s mom” except for the one time that the narrative identifies “Sue” as the English name that she once chose for herself (Weike Wang often chooses not to name her characters). Joan’s mother is characterized almost entirely by her emotionally distant parenting, the importance that she places on Chinese culture, and her strength and determination.

Joan’s mother and her husband struggled in the United States and never fully adapted to American culture and American ways of living. Although both were interested in trying to make life in America work, they were happy to return home and did not see their time in the United States as a failure. Joan’s mother remains very close to her Chinese family, exchanging texts with them frequently while visiting her children in Connecticut after her husband dies, and she also remains connected to her Chinese heritage and traditions. Like her husband, she parented her children with a focus on career and success rather than on emotional connectivity; accordingly, Joan has to remind herself that for her parents and many other Chinese men and women of their generation, that kind of parenting was love: They worked toward the goal of their children’s success, and that success was more important than emotional connection to Joan and Fang. In the wake of her husband’s death, Joan’s mother, although she loses weight and looks pale, remains strong and forges a new path for herself as a widow. She is fiercely determined to remain in control of her own life and makes it clear that once she returns to China after her visit, she will not travel back to the United States. Although they are markedly different, Joan shares with her mother this spirit of self-determination, and Joan ultimately sees the strength of her mother’s character and her parenting tactics.