The Jade Peony

Jook-Liang, also called Liang, is the narrator of Part 1, which covers her life roughly between the ages of 5 and 8. She is the biological daughter of Stepmother and Father. She is a spirited and strong-willed child who lives caught between many different forces and realities. Endlessly berated by her grandmother, Poh-Poh, for being a girl, and palpably lonely, she takes solace in her own imagination, as well as her yearning to look like Shirley Temple. This yearning is, essentially, a desire to be white, which is in turn a product of cultural white supremacy and the pressure to assimilate into Anglo-dominated Canadian culture. Jook-Liang’s serendipitous friendship with the ancient and disfigured Wong Bak becomes an outlet through which Jook-Liang attempts to make sense of her own existence. On the more fantastical side, her Monkey Prince represents the folklore, wisdom, and tradition of Old China, which is an undeniable part of Jook-Liang’s identity. Through Wong Bak, Jook-Liang is allowed to access and nurture both a sense of cultural history and her attraction to the spiritual and divine. On the more earthbound side, Wong Bak relieves the girl’s loneliness and sense of isolation. An older Liang pops in and out of the other parts of the book, most notably as a voracious reader fond of oversized sweaters who wears her hair in curls.