My life in books

Kim Fu’s novel, For Today I Am a Boy, is a difficult book to read, because for most of the time, the major characters appear to be living lives of quiet desperation. It tells, simply and straightforwardly, with the openness of a child - which the protagonist is, in the beginning - about growing up in a sadly dysfunctional immigrant family. The narrator, Peter Huang, is a young Chinese boy whose family lives in a small Ontario town. His father, desperate to assimilate, to be seen as a model Canadian, to become invisible as a minority, refuses to allow Cantonese to be spoken in the home, insists the only North American foods be prepared. He spends much of his life moving from one job to another, anything that gives him a managerial title, no matter how low the pay, until he finally becomes a civil servant, able to fulfill his image of the successful middle class professional man, dressed in suit and tie, a part of the Canadian dream. He is ambitious for his children, also. The oldest two daughters must assimilate, become doctors and lawyers. And for his one son, the only boy among four children, his ambitions are that he become a man, strong and in every way the perfect model minority.

But his family, which he so desperately wants to be perfect, has deep secrets. His wife pretends to work part-time, but really goes to the local Chinese Association to gamble. He himself has an affair with one of the women in the neighbourhood, who is suffering from delusions clustered around her infertility, and eventually commits suicide.

The oldest daughter Adele resists the role of scholar laid out for her, has no interest in becoming a doctor, and eventually drops out of university to run away to Amsterdam with her boyfriend. The second daughter, Helen, in contrast works very hard to be the perfect reflection of her father’s aspirations, the textbook lawyer, but is never really acknowledged. And the youngest daughter, Bonnie, is a rebel, sexually precocious, smoking, drinking, sneaking out to bars and flirting with older men.

And then there is Peter, who has the biggest secret. He wants to be a girl. Though the story is told from Peter’s perspective, the boy hiding his tryouts with his sisters’ make-up, brushing their hair, secretly cooking dinner when it’s supposed to be his sister Bonnie’s turn, still it’s clear that Peter’s father suspects that something is not quite right. He polices his son’s behaviour, praising him for ‘manly things’ - even when, forced to join in by some neighbourhood boys, he takes part in a an assault on a young girl - and withholding love and approval when he does something too ‘girly.’

For Today I Am a Boy is about Peter’s long, tormented, journey from hidden shame to self-acceptance. Growing up, he has no idea that there is anyone else like him - I use the male pronoun because Peter does not really understand that he can be someone other than a boy, albeit a weak and tormented one, for most of the book - who feels that they are not the gender they were assigned, the gender everyone believes them to be. As soon as he finishes high school, he moves to Montreal, starts working in restaurants, slowly building hs skill towards becoming a chef. And being alone. Not understanding who he is, but knowing that something is wrong, he stumbles through several painfully abusive relationships, avoiding friendships, focusing on work.

But there is a tomorrow for Peter, a time when finally there is an understanding of what has driven the fear and isolation for so long, and in that tomorrow, Peter is Audrey and she is finally whole.

This book hurt to read, for so many reasons. All four siblings have so far to go to become themselves, though arguably it is Audrey who must come the farthest. And always in the background, the pain of the father, demanding and disappointed, the mother, oppressed and enraged. The tangled issues of sexuality that all four sisters have to work through in different ways, and the racism and fetishisation that faces them as Asian-Canadians, and as Asian women.

It’s a powerful novel, and worth reading, despite the pain that so many of the characters carry, for the insights into growing up in an atmosphere that, even without overt violence, is deeply traumatic, and ultimately, just for the joy of the last paragraph: “Four grown women sit in a pub, raising their tourist steins to the camera. The waiter who holds the camera comments on how much they look alike. ‘We’re sisters,’ Bonnie says. ‘Wir sind Schwestern. This is Adele, Helen, and Audrey.’ “