Rhetoric & Technical Communication
Rhetoric & Technical Communication
Toscano, Aaron, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Dept. of English

Resources and Daily Activities

  • Conference Presentations
    • PCA/ACA Conference Presentation 2022
    • PCAS/ACAS Presentation 2021
    • SEACS 2021 Presentation
    • South Atlantic MLA Conference 2022
  • Dr. Toscano’s Homepage
  • ENGL 2116-014: Introduction to Technical Communication
    • February 1st: Reflection on Workplace Messages
    • January 11th: More Introduction to Class
    • January 18th: Audience & Purpose
    • January 23rd: Résumés and Cover Letters
      • Duty Format for Résumés
      • Peter Profit’s Cover Letter
    • January 25th: More on Résumés and Cover Letters
    • January 30th: Achieving a Readable Style
      • Euphemisms
      • Prose Practice for Next Class
      • Prose Revision Assignment
      • Revising Prose: Efficiency, Accuracy, and Good
      • Sentence Clarity
    • January 9th: Introduction to the Class
    • Major Assignments
  • ENGL 4182/5182: Information Design & Digital Publishing
    • August 21st: Introduction to the Course
      • Rhetorical Principles of Information Design
    • August 28th: Introduction to Information Design
      • Prejudice and Rhetoric
      • Robin Williams’s Principles of Design
    • Classmates Webpages (Fall 2017)
    • December 4th: Presentations
    • Major Assignments for ENGL 4182/5182 (Fall 2017)
    • November 13th: More on Color
      • Designing with Color
      • Important Images
    • November 20th: Extra-Textual Elements
    • November 27th: Presentation/Portfolio Workshop
    • November 6th: In Living Color
    • October 16th: Type Fever
      • Typography
    • October 23rd: More on Type
    • October 2nd: MIDTERM FUN!!!
    • October 30th: Working with Graphics
      • Beerknurd Calendar 2018
    • September 11th: Talking about Design without Using “Thingy”
      • Theory, theory, practice
    • September 18th: The Whole Document
    • September 25th: Page Design
  • ENGL 4183/5183: Editing with Digital Technologies
    • August 24th: Introduction to the Class
    • August 31st: Rhetoric, Words, and Composing
    • Major Assignments for ENGL 4183/5183 (Fall 2022)
      • Rhetoric of Fear
    • November 16th: Voice and Other Nebulous Writing Terms
      • Finding Dominant Rhetorical Appeals
    • November 2nd: Rhetorical Effects of Punctuation
    • November 30th: Words and Word Classes
    • November 9th: Cohesive Rhythm
    • October 12th: Choosing Adjectivals
    • October 19th: Choosing Nominals
    • October 26th: Stylistic Variations
    • October 5th: Midterm Exam
    • September 14th: Verb is the Word!
    • September 21st: Coordination and Subordination
    • September 28th: Form and Function
    • September 7th: Sentence Patterns
  • ENGL 4275: Rhetoric of Technology
    • April 13th: Authorities in Science and Technology
    • April 15th: Articles on Violence in Video Games
    • April 20th: Presentations
    • April 6th: Technology in the home
    • April 8th: Writing Discussion
    • Assignments for ENGL 4275
    • February 10th: Religion of Technology Part 3 of 3
    • February 12th: Is Love a Technology?
    • February 17th: Technology and Gender
    • February 19th: Technology and Expediency
    • February 24th: Semester Review
    • February 3rd: Religion of Technology Part 1 of 3
    • February 5th: Religion of Technology Part 2 of 3
    • January 13th: Technology and Meaning, a Humanist perspective
    • January 15th: Technology and Democracy
    • January 22nd: The Politics of Technology
    • January 27th: Discussion on Writing as Thinking
    • January 29th: Technology and Postmodernism
    • January 8th: Introduction to the Course
    • March 11th: Writing and Other Fun
    • March 16th: Neuromancer (1984) Day 1 of 2
    • March 18th: Neuromancer (1984) Day 2 of 2
    • March 23rd: Inception (2010)
    • March 25th: Writing and Reflecting Discussion
    • March 30th & April 1st: Count Zero
    • March 9th: William Gibson’s Neuromancer (1984)
  • ENGL 6166: Rhetorical Theory
    • April 12th: Knoblauch. Ch. 4 and Ch. 5
    • April 19th: Jacques Derrida’s Positions
    • April 26th:  Feminisms and Rhetorics
    • April 5th: Knoblauch. Ch. 3 and More Constitutive Rhetoric
    • February 15th: Isocrates (Part 2)
    • February 1st: Aristotle’s On Rhetoric Books 2 & 3
      • Aristotle’s On Rhetoric, Book 2
      • Aristotle’s On Rhetoric, Book 3
    • February 22nd: St. Augustine’s On Christian Doctrine [Rhetoric]
    • February 8th: Isocrates (Part 1)-2nd Half of Class
    • January 11th: Introduction to Class
    • January 18th: Plato’s Phaedrus
    • January 25th: Aristotle’s On Rhetoric Book 1
    • March 15th: Descartes, Rene, Discourse on Method
    • March 1st: Knoblauch. Ch. 1 and 2
    • March 22nd: Mary Wollstonecraft
    • March 29th: Second Wave Feminist Rhetoric
    • May 3rd: Knoblauch. Ch. 6, 7, and “Afterword”
    • Rhetorical Theory Assignments
  • ENGL/COMM/WRDS: The Rhetoric of Fear
    • January 10th: Introduction to the Class
    • January 17th: Scapegoats & Conspiracies
    • January 24th: The Rhetoric of Fear and Fallacies Part 1
    • January 31st: Fallacies Part 2 and American Politics Part 1
    • Major Assignments
  • LBST 2212-124, 125, 126, & 127
    • August 21st: Introduction to Class
    • August 23rd: Humanistic Approach to Science Fiction
    • August 26th: Robots and Zombies
    • August 28th: Futurism, an Introduction
    • August 30th: R. A. Lafferty “Slow Tuesday Night” (1965)
    • December 2nd: Technological Augmentation
    • December 4th: Posthumanism
    • November 11th: Salt Fish Girl (Week 2)
    • November 13th: Salt Fish Girl (Week 2 con’t)
    • November 18th: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Part 1)
      • More Questions than Answers
    • November 1st: Games Reality Plays (part II)
    • November 20th: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Part 2)
    • November 6th: Salt Fish Girl (Week 1)
    • October 14th: More Autonomous Fun
    • October 16th: Autonomous Conclusion
    • October 21st: Sci Fi in the Domestic Sphere
    • October 23rd: Social Aphasia
    • October 25th: Dust in the Wind
    • October 28th: Gender Liminality and Roles
    • October 2nd: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
    • October 30th: Games Reality Plays (part I)
    • October 9th: Approaching Autonomous
      • Analyzing Prose in Autonomous
    • September 11th: The Time Machine
    • September 16th: The Alien Other
    • September 18th: Post-apocalyptic Worlds
    • September 20th: Dystopian Visions
    • September 23rd: World’s Beyond
    • September 25th: Gender Studies and Science Fiction
    • September 30th: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
    • September 4th: Science Fiction and Social Breakdown
      • More on Ellison
      • More on Forster
    • September 9th: The Time Machine
  • LBST 2213-110: Science, Technology, and Society
    • August 22nd: Science and Technology from a Humanistic Perspective
    • August 24th: Science and Technology, a Humanistic Approach
    • August 29th: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem (Science), Ch. 2
    • August 31st: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem (Science), Ch. 3 and 4
    • December 5th: Video Games and Violence, a more nuanced view
    • November 14th: Boulle, Pierre. Planet of the Apes. (1964) Ch. 27-end
    • November 16th: Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. 1818. Preface-Ch. 8
    • November 21st: Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. 1818. Ch. 9-Ch. 16
    • November 28th: Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. Ch. 17-Ch. 24
    • November 30th: Violence in Video Games
    • November 7th: Boulle, Pierre. Planet of the Apes Ch. 1-17
    • November 9th: Boulle, Pierre. Planet of the Apes, Ch. 18-26
    • October 12th: Lies Economics Tells
    • October 17th: Brief Histories of Medicine, Salerno, and Galen
    • October 19th: Politicizing Science and Medicine
    • October 24th: COVID-19 Facial Covering Rhetoric
    • October 26th: Wells, H. G. Time Machine. Ch. 1-5
    • October 31st: Wells, H. G. The Time Machine Ch. 6-The End
    • October 3rd: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem at Large (Technology), Ch. 7 and Conclusion
    • September 12th: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem (Science), Ch. 7 and Conclusion
    • September 19th: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem at Large (Technology), Prefaces and Ch. 1
    • September 26th: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem at Large (Technology), Ch. 2
    • September 28th: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem at Large (Technology), Ch. 5 and 6
    • September 7th: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem (Science), Ch. 5 and 6
  • New Media: Gender, Culture, Technology (Spring 2021)
    • April 13th: Virtually ‘Real’ Environments
    • April 20th: Rhetoric/Composition Defines New Media
    • April 27th: Sub/Cultural Politics, Hegemony, and Agency
    • April 6th: Capitalist Realism
    • February 16: Misunderstanding the Internet
    • February 23rd: Our Public Sphere and the Media
    • February 2nd: Introduction to Cultural Studies
    • January 26th: Introduction to New Media
    • Major Assignments for New Media (Spring 2021)
    • March 16th: Identity Politics
    • March 23rd: Social Construction of Gender and Sexuality
    • March 2nd: Foundational Thinkers in Cultural Studies
    • March 30th: Hyperreality
    • March 9th: Globalization & Postmodernism
    • May 4th: Wrapping Up The Semester
      • Jodi Dean “The The Illusion of Democracy” & “Communicative Capitalism”
      • Social Construction of Sexuality
  • Science Fiction in American Culture (Summer I–2020)
    • Assignments for Science Fiction in American Culture
    • Cultural Studies and Science Fiction Films
    • June 10th: Interstellar and Exploration themes
    • June 11th: Bicentennial Man
    • June 15th: I’m Only Human…Or am I?
    • June 16th: Wall-E and Environment
    • June 17th: Wall-E (2008) and Technology
    • June 18th: Interactivity in Video Games
    • June 1st: Firefly (2002) and Myth
    • June 2nd: “Johnny Mnemonic”
    • June 3rd: “New Rose Hotel”
    • June 4th: “Burning Chrome”
    • June 8th: Conformity and Monotony
    • June 9th: Cultural Constructions of Beauty
    • May 18th: Introduction to Class
    • May 19th: American Culture, an Introduction
    • May 20th: The Matrix
    • May 21st: Gender and Science Fiction
    • May 25th: Goals for I, Robot
    • May 26th: Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot
    • May 27th: Hackers and Slackers
    • May 30th: Inception
  • Teaching Portfolio
  • Topics for Analysis
    • A Practical Editing Situation
    • American Culture, an Introduction
    • Efficiency in Writing Reviews
    • Feminism, An Introduction
    • Fordism/Taylorism
    • Frankenstein Part I
    • Frankenstein Part II
    • Futurism Introduction
    • Isaac Asimov’s “A Cult of Ignorance”
    • Langdon Winner Summary: The Politics of Technology
    • Marxist Theory (cultural analysis)
    • Oral Presentations
    • Oratory and Argument Analysis
    • Our Public Sphere
    • Postmodernism Introduction
    • Protesting Confederate Place
    • Punctuation Refresher
    • QT, the Existential Robot
    • Religion of Technology Discussion
    • Rhetoric, an Introduction
      • Analyzing the Culture of Technical Writer Ads
      • Rhetoric of Technology
      • Visual Culture
      • Visual Perception
      • Visual Perception, Culture, and Rhetoric
      • Visual Rhetoric
      • Visuals for Technical Communication
      • World War I Propaganda
    • The Great I, Robot Discussion
      • I, Robot Short Essay Topics
    • The Rhetoric of Video Games: A Cultural Perspective
      • Civilization, an Analysis
    • The Sopranos
    • Why Science Fiction?
    • Zombies and Consumption Satire
  • Video Games & American Culture
    • April 14th: Phallocentrism
    • April 21st: Video Games and Neoliberalism
    • April 7th: Video Games and Conquest
    • Assignments for Video Games & American Culture
    • February 10th: Aesthetics and Culture
    • February 17th: Narrative and Catharsis
    • February 24th: Serious Games
    • February 3rd: More History of Video Games
    • January 13th: Introduction to the course
    • January 20th: Introduction to Video Game Studies
    • January 27th: Games & Culture
      • Marxism for Video Game Analysis
      • Postmodernism for Video Game Analysis
    • March 24th: Realism, Interpretation(s), and Meaning Making
    • March 31st: Feminist Perspectives and Politics
    • March 3rd: Risky Business?

Contact Me

Office: Fretwell 255F
Email: atoscano@uncc.edu
LBST 2212-124, 125, 126, & 127 » November 6th: Salt Fish Girl (Week 1)

November 6th: Salt Fish Girl (Week 1)

Plan for the Day

  • Let’s get to Salt Fish Girl!
  • A note or two on Myth
    • myth: 1. a. “a usually traditional story of ostensibly historical events that serves to unfold part of the world view of a people or explain a practice, belief, or natural phenomenon; creation myths.”
    • myth: 2. a. “a popular belief or tradition that has grown up around something or someone; especially: one embodying the ideals and institutions of a society or segment of society” (Merriam-Webster online…check out March 15th’s word of the day)

Remember, as members of a culture, you share and reproduce dominant ideology. That doesn’t mean you “buy into” EVERYTHING. We are herd animals and our institutions wouldn’t exist without social cohesion. The goal of a class like this is to get you to recognize the ways you privilege knowledge. We all have biases, but college-educated citizens in a (pseudo-)democracy should be able to think critically and recognize how and why they believe what they believe instead of assuming they believe what they believe because it’s absolute truth. Scrutinize your assumptions.

Pause on that definition of myth for a moment. What makes what is essentially a lie (or maybe a partial truth…distorted to fit an agenda) a “popular belief or tradition”? Consider the following myths about American culture:

  • The American Dream
  • “All men are created equal…” 1776
  • “Land of the free…” 1812
  • Paul Bailey, one white male’s perspective on slavery…2016
    Referring to slavery: “We need to get over this, folks. All of us do,” he said. “We need to get over it. It’s done, it’s over, it was 200 years ago. We made mistakes. We’ve done stupid things.”

Approaching Salt Fish Girl

“This is a story about stink, after all,a story about rot, about how life grows out of the most fetid-smelling places” (p. 268)


Although we’ve discussed that there’s no single interpretation of a novel or short story (or any text), it’s difficult to have a free-for-all, anything goes position on interpretations. In order to help explain what’s going on, there need to be guidelines to keep us on track. I’d like to focus on themes as we did with Autonomous. Our goal isn’t to dissect the entire novel, but we do need to hit the main topics. I chose Salt Fish Girl because it’s very different from anything else we’ve read. It definitely falls under “speculative fiction,” mostly acts like a science fiction novel, and seems to connect to fantasy. Another genre we could argue for is magic(al) realism. This genre is characterized by having the natural and supernatural worlds blend seamlessly together: These stories don’t invent worlds; instead, they show readers the magic of their familiar world. As with any definition, we have to qualify why this novel fits into the genre, but please note that there isn’t a special litmus test that can define ALL magic realism texts. Salt Fish Girl is a very good candidate for the genre.

Literary Devices to Remember

  • Foreshadow—to hint or present a situation that will be clarified or expanded upon later in a story.
  • Irony—(although there are various definitions) actively working against one’s stated or assumed goals; to destabilize oneself by actions contrary to one’s professed worldview.

Major Themes

  • Evolution
  • Gender and Sexuality
  • Neo/colonialism
  • Bioengineering
  • Food and Smells
  • Dreams

About the Author

Larissa Lai is an American-Canadian writer of Chinese descent (however, Wikipedia claims she’s “Chinese-Canadian,” but she was born in La Jolla, CA and grew up in Canada). All her grown up life seems to be spent in Canada, and she’s currently an Assistant Professor of English at The University of British Columbia Vancouver. Didn’t we read a story set near there?

Main Characters

  • Miranda: Our main protagonist, born from an interesting fruit.
  • Nu Wa: Creates humans from mud and eventually lives among them.
  • Salt Fish Girl: The focus of Nu Wa’s affection in late-19th Century China. Guess what she smells like?
  • Evie Xin: Possibly the reincarnation of the Salt Fish Girl (p. 224)*; she’s technically a clone, but we know that just means she’s in the novel to represent a subaltern view of humanity.
    *My speculation…
  • Stewart Ching: Miranda’s dad, the tax collector turned grocery store proprietor, doesn’t keep too close an eye on his daughter.
  • Aimee Ching: Miranda’s mom, a former cabaret singer at the New Kubla Khan; she replays videos of herself singing in her younger days; she bequeaths her song rights to Miranda.
  • Aaron Ching: Miranda’s brother who really doesn’t seem to have ever gotten any drive to leave and build a life for himself. He does help out in the grocery store and fixes old cars.
  • Edwina: The witch of the Island of Mists and Forgetfulness, who also smuggles heroin…
  • Dr. Flowers: A geneticist who clones humans for manual labor; he studies the dreaming disease, but it isn’t clear if he cares to “cure” it or just observe it’s progress in order to clone better.
  • Dr. Seto: Miranda’s immediate supervisor at Dr. Flowers’s office of weirdo medicine; she was cloned to be Dr. Flowers’s wife…nothing creepy about that!
  • Ian Chestnut: Evangelist without an audience and son of well-to-do parents. He’s Miranda’s only school friend from her days living in Serendipity, but he doesn’t figure much in the story.
  • The Sonias: Clones Dr. Flowers made for Pallas shoes; they plan a worker uprising and cultivate an important fruit. XXXXXX* is one of the Sonias. *You’ll need to have read to know who this is.
  • The Doras: If you know who they are, you’ll get one or two Test 5 questions right.

Evolution

As usual, I like to focus on non-controversial topics. Evolution is both fact and theory, and I’m happy to explain what I mean. Even if you choose to ignore evolution’s validity—and I’m not going to discuss it the way biologists and most scientists would—you need to understand some of the scientific basis for Miranda’s durian hybridity and Evie’s carp hybridity.

Evolution is a fact. The scientific community doesn’t debate whether or not evolution exists but debates aspects of evolution. Therefore, it is also a theory and an established one. Your conviction that evolution is wrong is just that, a conviction and a baseless one. Do not think your conviction holds the same weight as the evidence accumulated by experts over a century and a half.

  • Briefly sum up Darwin’s process of establishing evolution. Consider the finches of the Galapagos Islands. Here’s a clip from The Origins of the Species (time should be 14:27).

Going from Sea to Land

All this swimming around by early organisms was probably exhausting, so, naturally, some fishes wanted to move onto the land. In order to do so, they had to live out of water. Lungs help, and that’s what evolved in rhipidistans, bony fishes about 400 MYA. According to Berra’s account, “[t]hese fishes had muscular limbs built around bony skeletons that resembled those of four-footed animals,” which “enabled them to move about on the bottom of swamps” (Berra, p. 84). The theory goes that these fishes could breath (“gulp”) oxygen and move short distances across land. As droughts occurred, the ones best adapted to land living were able to reproduce.

Question: How might these animals have been trapped on land? What happened to their passage back to the ocean? (Dolphins-Whales-Deer)

Consider this move for a bit. I realize there are many variables that have to be aligned well enough to go from sea creatures to land creatures, but, remember, it took 40-80 Million years for amphibians to appear. That’s a long time. From amphibians, reptiles evolved, and, yes, there are transitional fossils (Berra, pp. 85-86). Seymouria is such a likely transitional species between amphibians and reptiles that scientists aren’t sure if it’s amphibian or reptilian–which category should it go? A big difference between amphibians and reptiles is birth. Reptiles developed amniotic eggs that “could be laid on land” (Berra, p. 86).

Consider this adaptation—a hard shell egg—as advantageous. It might not be perfect (but what is?), but it is said to have helped reptiles flourish. Dinosaurs are reptiles. Some are huge reptiles! As Berra mentions earlier in his book, birds evolved from reptiles. The massive extinction event 65 million years ago wiped out the dinosaurs, but other reptiles and mammals survived and continued evolving.

Species as Percentages of Other Species

Evie mentions that she is “point zero three percent” carp (p. 261). Of course, in the novel, she’s been genetically engineered, and, as far as I know, scientists can’t create human-fish hybrids; however, you’ve probably heard someone claim that humans share 99% of genes with chimpanzees and Bonobos. Ever since the genomes of most mammals were mapped in the early 2000s, scientists directly compare the DNA gene sequences of different species to find what genes they share (more discussion on this). Prior to genome mapping comparisons, there were two additional ways scientists could determine when a species split. (All citations in this section come from Berra)

  • Albumin: water-soluble blood proteins found in plasma, often referred to as blood serum.
  • Index of dissimilarity: measures evenness of distribution of characteristics; units of albumin based on different amino acid sequences.
  • Molecular clock: “[T]he amount of molecular differentiation between related species reflects the time since their divergence” (p. 94). The more serum proteins different species share, the more closely related the different species are (pp. 19-20).
    • Assumption—the species being compared shared a common ancestor.
    • Assumption—neutral changes in proteins, codon mutations (p. 10, 153) that don’t change the common amino acid, accumulate at a constant rate and that that rate is known. If the rate isn’t known or is off, the calculation will be off.
  • DNA-DNA Hybridization: Berra claims using protein clocks can be sloppy and give different readings (p. 97). This method requires complementary strands of DNA from different species to bond into a double helix structure as all DNA does. Of course, being from different species, they aren’t the tightest bond. “The hybrid DNA is then heated, and the temperature at which the strands separate is recorded. The more closely related the two species are, the more bonds they share and therefore the higher the temperature necessary to separate the strands” (p. 98).
    • Assumption—Secure fossil dates have been calibrated. Scientists need two known ancestor fossils of the species they’re comparing (pp. 98-99).

We can be sure of the dating accuracy because, as Berra tells readers, “[s]cientists routinely check the findings of their colleagues, by repeating their studies” (p. 100). These techniques show a history of refining the ways scientists determine how closely related species are. Evolution isn’t a done science; instead, it is continually refined as new evidence and techniques come about. If ever evidence contradicted the theory of evolution, scientists would scrutinize those results and determine whether or not evolution was wrong. Over the past 150 years, scientists have built up tons of evidence

Then again, there are Phoebes in the world who can’t have their worldviews challenged by the plethora of evidence scientists have established. (See Asimov’s article from earlier this semester)

Creation Myths

Western cultures aren’t the only ones with creation myths. Salt Fish Girl begins with a retelling and, perhaps, reinterpretation of an ancient Chinese creation story. Nüwa and Fuxi are figures in Chinese mythology who created humanity from mud. Nu Wa of Salt Fish Girl is most likely continually reincarnated. Who does she become after drowning, or does she die?

Gender/Sexuality

Important note: Salt Fish Girl was nominated for the James Tiptree, Jr. Literary Award. That name sounds familiar, doesn’t it? The “award encourage[es] the exploration & expansion of gender” according to its homepage.

In ways similar to Autonomous, sexuality isn’t dwelled upon in Salt Fish Girl. Lai takes a matter-of-fact approach to lesbian sexuality and doesn’t create characters that condemn others who don’t conform to heteronormative behaviors (with one exception being the Salt Fish Girl’s father…and look what happened to him—yes, Test 5 question). Throughout the novel, Nu Wa and Miranda pursue lesbian experiences with the Salt Fish Girl and Evie, respectively. And what happens in the final relationship?

What I find particularly interesting are the stories Lai “drops.” What I mean is that there are threads of the narrative that seem incomplete and aren’t tied together or resolved. This is a criticism of the novel, but, as with most criticism, it’s shortsighted and probably reflects the critic’s tastes and pet peeves as opposed to intellectual acumen: Quill & Quire’s Review and Some Random Blogger’s Review. As we’ve discussed plenty of times, although readers do make meaning based on their filtering of the text and their experiences, privileging one’s tastes in a review is the same as giving a “book report” in elementary school. College students should have an appreciation of literature that elevates beyond like/dislike, which is for children or those comfortable with surface approaches to texts…and life.

To return to the discussion of sexuality and story lines dropped, Nu Wa’s husband is most likely in the closet, unable to pursue his real desire for her brother (or other men) in early 20th Century China (and Toronto, Canada where he lived briefly). Nu Wa returns home after her 50 year “trip,” and her brother is in a partnership with the Salt Fish Girl’s family’s tobacco business. Her brother (possibly named Ba [p. 174]), is the main partner in the business and (for reasons you need to know for the Test 5) wants her to marry his partner, Hap.

  • p. 177: Hap “looked up to my brother who bossed him and bullied him with impunity.”
  • p. 179: Hap wasn’t interested in marrying Nu Wa, but he couldn’t say no to her brother

This may seem like it’s just about honor—honoring a debt one family owes to another; however, why didn’t Hap marry? Sure, just because someone doesn’t marry doesn’t mean they’re gay. Consider the homophobia of contemporary North Carolina; then, go back 100+ years to a time where the concept of homosexuality was criminal. Let’s see if there’s more evidence…

  • p. 179: “The arranged marriage of such an old man to such a young woman was considered very old-fashioned. These days, people married for love.”
  • p. 180: Hap has a rather businesslike approach: “I am happy to keep you in my house more as a sister than a wife.”

Ok, it’s still not obvious, but you need to consider the book’s context: Both Nu Wa and Hap have an unspoken understanding that this relationship is for convenience, and Hap only makes one attempt to have sex with her after being goaded into it by Nu Wa’s brother. He offers to pay her to pay someone to have sex with her in order to get pregnant…

  • p. 182: Nu Wa and Hap seem to have switched gender roles when it comes to household chores.
  • Speaking of pregnancy, what happens at the end of the novel? Maybe we should discuss that on Monday, 11/11…or wait till Test 5.

Hap’s character isn’t fully developed, but it’s not a strike against this story. Using the broader context of the story, readers can fill in the possible meanings. Please note that this interpretation isn’t out of nowhere. Larissa Lai’s work is considered very open about gender/sexuality. Remember, interpretations are likely or unlikely, but you need to argue why.

Next Class

If you haven’t started Salt Fish Girl, you’re behind. There won’t be too many questions on this Friday’s Test 4, but you need to get with the program! I’ve noticed grades are a lot lower (10% lower) on novels than short stories and class discussions.


Work Cited

Berra, Tim M. Evolution and the Myth of Creationism: A Basic Guide to the Facts in the Evolution Debate. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1990.

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