Simple Recipes

The unnamed father in this story embodies the mental and emotional trauma of immigration. He is a complex character because on the one hand, he is careful, even artistic about how he cooks, how she teaches his daughter to make the rice, and in the close, intimate moment with his wife. At the same time, however, he brutally beats his son who, similar to the father, embodies his own experience of immigration.

The father represents a first-generation immigrant, and his complexity mirrors the hardships and difficulties that immigrants face when leaving their homes, often under duress, and attempting to adopt a new culture. This is evident in the contrast between the worshipful way he cooks (which represents his home country) and the bitterness with which he beats his son, who represents a first-generation immigrant who rejects the old ways. This character is notable for his divisions and models the idea that immigration divides people into many different parts.

The six-year-old narrator of this story looks back on the day her mother and her mother’s boyfriend took her and her two sisters from their house, leaving their father behind. The narrator (unnamed) is the one who documents the history of their journey as they move away from their home to a seaside village on the coast of Oregon and start a new life.

She, along with her sisters, are horrified that her mother has taken them from their home. This is the only home they know with a father they love. By the time the story ends, the narrator is the only one who stays with her mother and her mother’s husband, Tom. She is 30 years old by then and gives walking tours of their seaside village. She is the one character, besides Tom and her mother, who embodies the theme of home.

As the only one left behind, the narrator’s character suggests a woman unable to let go of the past. In so far as she can’t let go of her history, she is also unable to move forward. The character is stuck between the loss of her father and the founding of her new family.

The mother, Irene, is described as having mental issues. Sometimes she seems to be in love with her husband and other times it appears that she can’t be near him and doesn’t like him. Irene is prone to violent outbursts before she and her lover, Tom, leave the house with Irene’s three girls.

As Irene and Tom get further and further away from home, Irene’s mental issues seemingly abate. When she does have emotions, they are less dramatic, and this stands in stark contrast to the way she was with her husband. This contrast and the mother’s transformation indicate how much a loveless marriage can destroy the spirit of an individual.

The only thing the mother won’t ever compromise is the love she has for her children. In fleeing for a better life, she becomes more traditionally mothering, and must make decisions that might hurt them but latches on to them, promising to make their lives better.

As another important figure in this story, the father stands in for the country from which he came and represents the strangeness of being an immigrant. His desire to stay put in the house he shares with his wife and three daughters represents his desire for home, and for keeping family and home the way they are, even if they’re broken. He is also, like so many characters in the collection, a representational figure who has to deal with the damaging trauma that comes with immigration.

In a pivotal scene, the father looks at a photograph and remembers his childhood in another country. He can see it when he stares at his own backyard. He had aspirations in his own country, but he came to Canada and married his wife instead. Though it appears he has some regret, he is a man of fidelity. He is a character who is attached to the symbols of home; his wife, the yard of his house, and the memory of his old home. Like the narrator who can’t move on with her life, he stays behind, giving everything up because he is paralyzed by memories and obligations.

In “Alchemy,” the unnamed narrator faces problems at home. Her parents sleep in separate rooms and, at first, she prefers to stay with her friend, Paula, rather than sleep at her own house. This suggests that the narrator experiences some kind of unnamed trauma at her home.

But she is also hopeful that she will heal over time. The best evidence for this hope is twofold. First, after Paula disappears, the narrator summons the courage to tell the truth about her friend’s sexual abuse. In doing so, she rejects the idea of trauma as something that must be kept secret. Then, at the end of the story, she reflects on the way Paula was always one to change her hair color. She understands that you can’t change who you are simply by altering your outside appearances. This shows wisdom and wellness beyond her years.

Paula, a tragic character, deals with her father’s sexual abuse. Even as her friend, the narrator, understands the truth about what is going on in her house, Paula realizes that the narrator can only be a witness, not the one to save her.

Paula’s anorexia, bulimia, and drinking are responses to child sexual abuse. Symbolically, they underscore attributes and qualities that make her three dimensional. The anorexia/bulimia is a metaphor for disappearing, which is Paula’s main motivation, as her obsession with the rabbits shows the reader. Getting drunk obliterates her memories and sense of presence, which indicates Paula’s need to disappear. When Paula tries to make the rabbits run away from home, and they don’t go, they become a metaphor for her own feelings of entrapment. Paula ultimately breaks out of her “cage,” but the reader doesn’t know where she ends up. This character arc, ending in an unknown place, demonstrates the terrible fallout from child sexual abuse. The character is gone. She leaves nothing behind.

Paula is given a name, while the narrator who tells the story is unnamed, indicating perhaps that Paula is in some ways a stronger character than the narrator, as her name is a known quantity.

The narrator of “Dispatch, also unnamed, references the author’s intentions regarding her female characters. In having no names, they are inhabitants of their circumstances. Not having a name often shows that the narrator is experiencing a crisis of identity. This is especially true for the narrator in this story who, in addition to not having a name, refers to herself in the second person. These distancing techniques represent a character who is changing, and who is unknowable to herself. The second-person narrator is even more distant, providing the context for a story about learning of her husband’s love for another woman.

Moreover, in terms of authorial technique, the author ups the distancing factor by having the narrator refer to the object of her husband’s love and her friends as “they.” This further enhances the idea that the narrator (and main character of the story) is on the outside of the events that are taking over her life.

The tragic aspect of this story, and the basis for its theme of marriage and infidelity, is that while the husband suffers from the death of his beloved, the narrator, his wife, suffers over the possible death of her marriage.

The arc of the story is embodied in the narrator who, though she knows that her marriage is over in one sense, she and her husband walk back together into their house, suggesting that they have tacitly agreed to stay together.

Kathleen is the older sister of the two sisters who return to the house where they grew up before alcoholism and abandonment changed their lives. Kathleen is the sister who takes care of things. She is the one who makes sure they arrive at the house safely. She has a fiery streak and appears to be indifferent to the ways of adults, like when she tells a woman, who is curious about why Kathleen and her sister, Lorraine, are lying on the grass, “It’s none of your business” (109). But this outward toughness is a façade.

After her mother leaves, Kathleen is hysterical. Her sister notes how “out of character” (114) it is for Kathleen to display such emotion. Later Kathleen wonders if she is even real. This event demonstrates two aspects to Kathleen’s character. The first is that Kathleen is not as tough as she appears. But more importantly, the feeling of not being real symbolizes what happens when she loses her mother; her identity becomes shattered.

This other self is repeated in another section of the story in a flashback when Kathleen wakes up unable to breathe. And later, her face is buried in her knees. Each of these moments indicates Kathleen’s fragility behind her hard exterior. They also speak to the fallout of alcoholism and abandonment.

The younger sister, Lorraine, is stronger than Kathleen. She is the sister who wakes up to find Kathleen in her bottom bunk, arms wrapped around each other. Lorraine rejects Kathleen’s reasoning for being there; that she, Lorraine, was crying and dreaming. Readers know it probably isn’t true because, as the story continues, it becomes clear that Kathleen is the one whose trauma is most often outwardly expressed. At one point Lorraine is the one who sits with her sister’s head cradled in her lap. She is the stronger, more mothering figure between the two girls, even though it appears that Kathleen makes the decisions.

Lorraine is also the most pragmatic of the two. She believes her mother is dead and says so without preamble. This also symbolizes Lorraine’s ability to excise her mother from her life and move on. She doesn’t argue when things don’t go her way, as seen when her father regrets his decision to take the girls up to the logging camp. Likewise, when her mom is drinking, Lorraine has learned not to trust her. All of these moments pieced together create a character that is more aligned with reality; a smart and perceptive character who can’t argue with the truth. And one who is also compassionate.

Though Harold is a main character in this story of family trauma, loss, and love, he is also the character who fades most into the background. Harold is shaped by trauma. His mother dies and his father is abusive. Harold even says he feels like he lives his life on his “tiptoes” (131).

As Harold’s father punishes him for not doing chores or not doing them correctly, Harold becomes increasingly more invisible. He finds places to sit where his father can’t find him. The bullying by his father makes it hard for him to establish relationships until he meets Thea. Thea’s connection to Harold and vice versa lies in the shared idea that both of them have experienced abandonment and hostility. Harold chooses to be with Thea because she represents, in some ways, what he has also experienced.

Harold is also a complicated character. His memories are fragmented and confusing. His concept of home doesn’t include a sense of laying down roots and belonging. He speaks about wandering from room to room as if he has no place to settle. Thea becomes a home to him and satisfies his loneliness and waywardness.

Thea is a character who experiences two periods of painful abandonment; first in the context of her family life and later when she waits for the father of her child to show up for the ultrasound. He never does. At home with her mother and father, she believes she comes from a “good family” (141). Yet, her voice must be modulated in order to be heard. She has to shout at her father, and whisper to her mother. She calls herself schizophrenic, a metaphor for rapidly and unexpectedly having to switch from one person to another. She is not integrated. Only one part of her is present at a time and this is dependent upon the person to whom she is speaking. The symbolic meaning is of a character who is embattled with herself. She is a child who must therefore fight for relevance.

When her lover, the pilot, doesn’t show up for the ultrasound, she tries to make excuses for him. Maybe he is rescuing someone from a mountain. When she finds a note and a gift left behind for her, she tells herself she will remember all the words he ever said to her. This period of abandonment and fracture is the reason she later looks at her life with her daughter and Harold and fears it. She is afraid of what she could lose. At the same time, outwardly she appears attached. She is able to acknowledge one point of self-esteem as she looks at her daughter. She believes that having raised Josephine, she had done at least one thing perfect.

Josephine is the character who ends up alone. In spite of her new family, she internalizes her mother’s feelings for Harold as abandonment. She and her mother used to sleep in the same bed, but now that Harold sleeps with her mother, she is the third wheel, the one left behind.

She represents a girl who grows up as a woman afraid of attachments. In the end, Josephine is a world traveler, a symbolic characteristic of her personality signifying her inability to form meaningful and long-lasting connections. She often asks herself what she’s running away from and why, and her answer is because she can. This answer indicates a character who doesn’t have very deep insight into her own maladjustment. She admits that her favorite country is the one she hasn’t been to yet, which further emphasizes her inability to attach or fall in love.

This story revisits an immigrant family’s life, where trauma is at the forefront of the first-generation immigrants. The burden to sort it all out, however, falls on the second-generation children, of which Miriam is one.

When she is a child, Miriam loves her father and dotes on him. But she is also a child who wants to assert her identity. She writes her name in crayon on one of the couches her father sells. At the same time, she sleeps in the bed with her parents, the one in the middle. This symbolic arrangement demonstrates the way Miriam is pulled between both parents, as well as her role as the first-generation child.

When she meets Will, she discovers how much she loves to ride on the back of his motorcycle. It is an escape for Miriam, a time when she doesn’t have to manage her feelings for her parents.

As a watchful child, she keeps tabs on both her parents. After she moves out of her house, she thinks she sees her parents everywhere. As the child in the middle and the only Canadian, she feels she must manage and control her immigrant parents. In the end, when Miriam searches for the furniture store—itself a metaphor for the interior of a family’s life—she knows finally that she won’t find it. This is the moment in her life that she understands that even though she has a Canadian identity, her parents’ fractured identity as immigrants confuses her ability to know herself. She will never find home or herself in relation to it.