Gish Jen's The Love Wife: The Mixed-Race Child
In Gish Jen’s The
Love Wife, Bailey, who is the biological child from Blondie and Carnegie,
refracts Blondie and Carnegie’s racial senses of identification. Both Carnegie
and Blondie gain their sense of identification as they see the appearance of
their son Bailey. Though Bailey is a half-breed child, he does not look
like “soup du jour” (156), suggesting the multiethnic heritage. Since Bailey,
who resembles his mother as embodied with blue eyes and blond hair, is
much more like the white, Blondie not only sees her son whose appearance is
similar to her but also takes him as a sense of belonging which she can
wholeheartedly devote herself to Bailey. As Blondie mentions that the more she
looks at Bailey, she sees more bits of the image of her white family (156),
which Bailey becomes their inheritance henceforth. Although Blondie considers
that Bailey has “Carnegie’s tilt eyes, and bridgeless nose, and perfect ears”
(156), she constantly claims her dominance by saying that Bailey is “[her]
child” who was “blond blond” and even “blonder blond” (154). Blondie
sees that Bailey positively implies the new direction toward the future because
she feels a bit superior to Carnegie’s gene. Nonetheless, what Carnegie sees
his son Bailey suggests the negative thought about the sense of inferiority for
the “disappearing past” (Jen 156; emphases original). Furthermore,
after Bailey was born, Carnegie strongly feels that he is being estranged from
Blondie who tries to attentively nurse her child as if he was being cast out
due to his Asian appearance. Carnegie thus begins to worry about Bailey if his
son would marry a white woman and his child consequently is born blond because
Carnegie will fear that he may be gradually forgotten.
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