May 8 2007. English 3377 Final Paper Dr. Sun Hee Teresa Lee Home Away from Home, Away from Home? Lan Samantha Changs title story of Hunger presents the reader with the concept of the true home. The true home is the world that the characters comfortably inhabit within themselves that they truly identify with apart from the world around them. The domestic sphere serves as an independent, isolated world where Tian and Min can live their own lives undisturbed. Min and Tian essentially create an entirely new world for their family within their home. Tian and Min feel strong ties to their native home in China while their daughters, Ruth and Anna step outside of the domestic influence of the house and into the world outside. The home is a realm that Tian and Min can control; it is their own separate world that represents their family. It is a transient existence as the home eventually will pass and so will the peoples lives within it. The purpose of the domestic sphere within Tian and Mins family is to provide a safe, sheltered world to raise their own family. Tian and Min both emigrated from their home in China. This emigration represents the departure from the first world they are accustomed to and entering an entirely new and unknown world into America. Emigration from one country to another leaves an individual with a torn sense of identity and without a specific home or center of domestication. Tian and Min encountered their second world in America. This world forced them to deviate from their learned and understood customs from China and assimilate with an entirely new culture. In this transition, Tian and Min created the third world in their own
domestic space that belonged solely to them for the purposes of creating an entirely independent space. Their independent space can be controlled apart from the other two worlds they know. When Tian and Min moved into their home they felt, It seemed that nothing in the world could disturb us on this neglected street, in these softly falling houses(p.15). The house seems as a shelter and a place of isolation from the rest of the world that would protect the family and ensure a space where the family could grow and mature in its own sovereign state apart from the rest of the world. And it seemed to me that all the safety in the world had been tucked into this space, that my children would look out at the world and know that all was well(p.15). In this respect, Min tried to create a space that the children could feel safe within while they experienced the world around them. Because the family is not accustomed to the cultural norms in America, they are susceptible to receive ridicule and prejudices towards them and their ways of living. This prejudice comes from other individuals ignorance and misunderstanding of another culture, but remains a common theme with individuals who immigrate to America and people that live in America. Because of this misunderstanding, Min sought to create a safe and stable environment that the children feel comfortable without fear of ridicule or prejudice. Behind this painted wall, beneath this layer of new sheathing, hides the story of our lives together(p.14). The home is the place where the family can comfortably live without disturbance. Each member of the family lives within the constraints of their own understanding of a true home where they comfortably can live within the world. Min still remains at home in the Chinese language that she left behind. She said, Before I came to this country, I felt at home in the Chinese language, the way a fish feels at home in the sea (p.19). Min felt security and comfort within the confines of her native language when she moves to America. She seeks
solace in the familiarity of Chinese literature. She pours over novels, creating an entirely separate world from the present one in America. Her experiences with her literature give her the reminiscent feeling of her home in China and the language gives her comfort. Tian tells her, Youre only comfortable with a piece of the world that you can hold in your hand (p.23). Tians remark reflects the safety that Min finds in her reading and how it separates her from the external world. Min did not have a command over English and felt that it was not part of her, the words did not belong to her. When she wishes to express herself in English she said, I did not own those words(p.75). This language barrier leaves Min more at home speaking Chinese. She speaks Chinese within the confines of her home and reads her novels within the home too, providing the security that she seeks to shelter herself and her family from the outside world. Tians loyalty remains in the home he left in China. Tian feels torn from his home in China as he recalls his departure to Min, On the evening I left home, my father would only say one thing. You forget about us(p.28). Tian forces himself to forget his home in China and his family, yet he still stays extremely faithful to the customs of his old house. I began to see that all of Tians specifications-the chopsticks, the breakfast food, the placement of lamps- were slips of willpower, of signs a forbidden loyalty to his other house that he had been barred forever from entering(p.29). All of Tians specifications lie in his familiarity with his old life. The life he left in China still remains deep in his thoughts and his lifestyle. This is a reflection of Tians place of comfort that he inhabits and understands. It is Tians true home. Min sees this too, and comments, I knew that I was seeing Tians true home. Some parts of him would always be there(p.30). Tian and Mins daughters, Ruth and Anna, find different places within the boundaries of the domestic sphere. Ruth is a more independent person who feels comfortable in the world
outside of the home. Anna is more restricted and feels more of a dedication to the house and the family. Ruth constantly looked for escape from the world that Tian and Min created. The window that Ruth tries to escape out of is representative of Ruths rebellion and independence. Ruths search for an escape route represents her longing to leave the domestic realm that she was brought up in and seek out the world around her. Tian does not like his daughters rebellion and tries to keep her inside of her room by putting a chair in front of the door. He said, I want to know where my daughters are. I want to make sure that my daughter stays in bed at night, as I have told her to(p.79). Ruths comfort with the world outside of the home threatens the familys threshold as a place of safety and isolation. Ruth wishes to leave and go to her true home away from the home of her family. Anna stays within the home until college when she learns Chinese history and more about the place that her parents chose to leave. Anna later inherits the house and remodels it to her own standards. She wanted to start fresh, release her punishing ties to our old place, its floorboards warped from decades of unhappiness(p.107). But she still decides to stay within the house that she grew accustomed to growing up and where the story of her family and its security within the home lies. Ruths leaving of the home is an extremely significant part of the story. It represents the escape from the family and the security that Tian and Min tried to establish in the home. The home is a separate, liminal world from the two other worlds the family knows, China and America. There are very few instances when the family steps out of the boundaries of the home and into the other world. Tian and Min attend Tians recital, they go to work, Tian at the university, and eventually both of them at the restaurant, and Ruths school recital which includes dinner and shopping for dresses for the girls. The dualistic nature of the two worlds outside and within the home support the idea that Tian and Min feel comfort within the home and the
daughters seek what is beyond the house. Tian and Min go to Tians recital on the first incident of leaving the home. Tian is overwhelmed by his social role among his peers, while Min wishes to escape back to her novels in Brooklyn. They both feel out of place when they step out of their domestic roles and comfort within the home. The second instance when the entire family steps outside of the home, Min bought them both dresses and as they returned, Anna miserable, Ruth exhilarated(p.68). Ruth enjoys the outside world away from her home and this threatens the family as a domestic unit and Tian as the patriarch of the family. He does not understand his daughters willingness to leave the world that he created. Min feels separated from her daughters too, Somehow I had lost both of my daughters. If I had learned English, I wondered, would I have been able to follow them? I will never know(p.101). Min feels disconnected from her daughters because she is not able to communicate with them and feels that she remains within her true home in her native language and feels her daughters are distanced from the language barrier as well. Min is the only one who remains throughout the story in the domestic sphere. The story later reveals that Min haunted the home and that she was afraid of losing the home, as it was what represented her family and the space that Tian and Min created. The home belonged to them and was under their control. While she haunts the house that only Anna remains in, she wonders, Perhaps she has been dreaming of her greatest hope and fear-that the house is gone, that it is destroyed, and nothing more remains of it. This is an echo of my own fear: that there might come a time when no one on earth will remember our lives(p.114). Min is trapped within the world that she helped create, separate from the other worlds of America and China, but she remains trapped in the domestic sphere. The domestic sphere in the title story of Changs Hunger is representative of a third
world created by Tian and Min for their family. The world of the domestic sphere is sheltered from the outside world and can be easily controlled. The home is an isolated and transient place that does not necessarily represent a true home for any of the characters as they all have their own places that they comfortably inhabit away from the domestic sphere.