Where the Gods fly by Jean Kwok

When you are coming from a different culture, adaption can be very difficult. The things you have been taught, the things you know, your beliefs, qualities, preferences and religion will make the journey to adapting to this new culture very arduous, as your country of origin is so fundamentally different from your new one. Settling down in a country, not knowing the language or having any familiar faces around can be both overwhelming and frightening. If you decide to bring up a child in this new culture, but you still cling on to the values and beliefs from your former life, and wanting your child to share the same beliefs, rules and norms as you and your country of origin, you might find yourself in great trouble, as the culture will have a greater influence on your child than you will, and what will you do about it?. These issues are displayed in the short story “Where the Gods fly” by author Jean Kwok.
The short story deals with a family who has emigrated from China to America. The mother struggles as she tries to give her daughter a greater life than she had. The mother and father work at a factory in Chinatown to provide for the family, while their daughter Pearl goes to school. Pearl is given a scholarship to a ballet school, but as time progresses, Pearl becomes disconnected from her parents, as ballet becomes a bigger part of her life, and soon becomes the only thing that she wants to do. This leaves the mother feeling distraught, as it was only her intention to allow Pearl to dance, so that she would not have to be at the factory after school. The mother does not have an understanding of the American culture and therefore refuses to integrate into the society, but Pearl is becoming popular and becomes embedded in the Western culture which is almost completely incomprehensible to the mother. The mother wants to reunite with her daughter again and she wants her to get an education instead of focusing on dancing, so she decides that Pearl has to quite dancing.
The short story opens with in medias res “I kneel here before the gods and the thought of what I am about to do stings my eyes like incense”, this is really the ending of the story as this is the mother’s final decision. From there on the story is a flashback of Pearl’s dancing carrier and their lives in America, basically the flashbacks help us focus on how it got to that point, and why. In the end, the storyline returns to where it left off in the beginning, where the mother is asking for forgiveness and understanding from the gods. We can also see that it is a flashback, as the beginning and end of the story is told in present tense, whereas the body of the story is told in past tense.
In the beginning of the story we are introduced to the mother, a woman that is described in the story as being uneducated, as she was not allowed to study in China when she was young. A woman who is a dedicated Buddhist, who lives her life based on her religious values and beliefs “… I think, and then, ashamed, immediately touch my forehead to the ground before the triple Buddhas”. As we have come to learn, the story revolves around flashbacks, now these flashbacks are actually the mother reminiscing about the family’s life in America. They arrived to America when Pearl was just five years old. The mother and father had to work at an industrial factory in Chinatown. The long working hours meant that Pearl was home alone after school, and the mother felt that this abandonment was the cause for the change that she later on sees in her daughter “I suppose I left Pearl too much alone in those early years. She had nothing to hold on to… so she never learned the value of such things”. The mother is unable to speak English, so her young daughter has to translate for her. She does not allow Pearl to visit her friends after school, one reason could be that she does not trust these people, but another is because the mother does not understand the Americans “I understand nothing of these people who did not bow to our gods and ate with sharp knives at the table”. She feels as if she does not need to integrate into the American society, she only needs to focus on raising a daughter, make sure that she becomes successful and to make sure that there is food on the table. The mother distances herself from the Western culture, which creates a lack of understanding of the American culture from the mother’s side, and a contrast between the Western and Chinese culture.
The mother is very determined on Pearl getting an education, so that she can support herself when her parents are gone, which can be seen as a stereotypical “Asian parent” thing, as we often see families with Asian heritage wanting their children to become successful lawyers or doctors, even though the parents themselves, merely are factory workers or farmers. Pearl becomes so into her dancing, that her mother feels as if she is slipping away from the mother, she feels as if she does not recognize her own child “but then Pearl stepped onto the floor and I no longer recognized my daughter”. Later on, the father passes away, and she feels that she needs to put an end to Pearl’s dancing, but she knows that if she does, it “will be the blow that finally servers the already tenuous bonds between us”, as she will take away her dream, popularity and friends. This shows that the mother is so deeply focused on the Chinese culture that she is willing to separate with her daughter in order for her to have something to fall back on, and in the mother’s eyes, she is just doing Pearl a favor and asks the gods to “allow my daughter to understand some day why I take her greatest love away”. Here again we see a contrast between the Western and Chinese culture, as the mother forces her to turn down a full scholarship before she even turns seventeen, which is something that you would not do as an American, but even though the mother is fully aware of the fact that Pearl is talented and that “she is gifted and she is stunning on stage”, she does not care. In Asian cultures, education is a top priority, which in this case collides with a young girl’s dream of becoming a dancer, which is unfortunate. If the mother gave this new culture a chance and actually tried to integrate into the society, she might develop an understanding of her daughter which will give them a chance for a greater bond. This would also develop the mother as a person, and learning a new culture will give her a better understanding of life, and this will not mean that she has to give up on her religion.
The daughter is being deprived from her scholarship and dreams because of old Chinese principles, but we learn from the mother, that the Chinese are not supposed to be extraordinary, but just fit in, so even though she takes her daughter’s dream away, she hopes that Pearl one day has enough strength so that she can withstand the winds of fate, and reach to Where the Gods fly.