Saving Face

“Saving Face” illustrates how expectations within close-knit ethnic communities can lead to stigmatization. Although Wil has assimilated in some aspects of her life as a successful doctor, she is still discriminated against for being homosexual. Jana Monji illuminates homophobia in “Kim.” Two white men think that the narrator and Kim are exotic, Asian girls; however, when they follow them to their apartment, they find out that Kim is a man. He tells them, “you don’t know real man when you see one,” and the two men left “puzzled and angry. Afraid to touch Kim or look at me” (218). Similarly, until the end of the movie, Wil cannot kiss Vivian in public. She is afraid of being an outcast and her fear is not without reason. When she first tells her mom I love you and I am gay, her mom says, “How can you tell me those two things at once? I am not a bad mother. My daughter is not gay.” In both stories, people are homophobic because it is different, and what is different is often uncomfortable or even scary. Perhaps, just like race, being gay is a social, not a biological construction.

Like in “Eat of Bowl of Tea,” “Saving Face” shows the central role that fongs play in Chinese-American community. In “Eat of Bowl of Tea,” everyone is concerned with the couple’s lack of childbearing, which affects the father’s honor. In “Saving Face” there is also “family associations [that] maintain clubhouses, functioning as residences and social centers” (Takaki 119). In “Saving Face,” the community lives in Flushing and regularly goes to dances at China Planet. However, when Ma gets pregnant outside of wedlock, her father banishes her from Flushing and says that she is no longer a part of the family. He says that people will laugh at him and that her pregnancy comes back to harm his reputation. Her father is intent on finding her a man that will give both her and the baby a decent name. This shows how connected family and honor were to most Chinese-Americans and how important reputation was in their culture. However, in the end, Ma recognizes that people have complex identities and she values love over her father’s reputation by not marrying Cho and by accepting that her daughter loves her and is gay.