Identity stand a main part in human being, what we do the things, how do we think about ourselves all cannot make any sense without the exist of identity. In Xuan Juliana Wang’s novel “Home Remedies” she gives us several stories which show us home love and relationship between children and their parents. The variety of characters she gives to us showed different identities in different lives and how did they struggle with it in their their own life.
Be confused of one’s own identity is a trouble. Because that will affect one’s life and facing failure. People hope being another identity can fill the insufficient they had but who they really are might be antithetical to what they hope for. The reason that makes them be like this are because they confused about their self. Also, they are not satisfied to their life, their past or just eager to become to another but themselves. The narrator of “Algorithmic problem solving for father-daughter relationships” is a father who can not recognize himself for huge half of his life, rely on his own algorithmic way solving every problem he faces in his life. He deeply believes the algorithm can help him solve every problem he faced. “However, algorithms aren’t just for machines. In designing an algorithm, a person can execute a complex task through observation and analysis. To be a good father, it would be a logical assumption that these same acquired skills should apply.” (Wang 155) Unintentionally, he was confused by himself. By using this way, this think formula like a cold blood machine, makes him lost the identity he also a father should have. “Everything makes logical sense in computer science. Computers know not to get sentimental; they can rise above it and work in symbols and codes.” (Wang 168) We can tell that the narrator believes in computer so much even try to make himself to a highly efficient machine. “So, while I sleep, my mind will be calculating. The subconscious part of my brain will continue working on a problem previously met without success.” (168) At this time, he makes himself a computer, and do not have any identity of himself anymore. One night when he remembers the time when he was young. Then he finds out, he become to someone, someone who is not the one who have hope and passion to the future and life before. “Why did everything that I worked for turn into what I despised? How did I become an old man? How did I end up with no one? (Wang 170)” With the washing of the years by a twisted identity he assisted and choose to be, made him fall into an end like this. Different from him, in second story “Echo of the moment” The protagonist Echo almost lost herself in a different identity but when she realized the only thing she got from the identity that not belongs to her, is infinite pressure. She gives up being someone and find her own identity back. Echo was a girl who live in a normal apartment in the city. One day her friend leads her to a dead girl’s room and steal the clothes from her after Echo wearing on the fancy clothes that the girl has, her life changed. She gains the frame wealth and people’s respect. These are the thing she never had and experienced before. “Wearing the dead girl’s clothes also gave Echo a new language. This allowed her to transcend social barriers. Vogue named her one of the ‘7 Must follow it-Girls of a nature.’” (Wang 185) Echo get the identity that can feed her vanity. She was enjoyed in that atmosphere and the activities she joined are so luxurious and attractive. She wants to be the one who can instead of the owner of her clothes. “That night, on the slow crawling internet that she stole from the Tunisian bistro downstairs, Echo exhumed any information she could find on the previous owner of her new wardrobe, piecing together bits of interviews and blogs posts about her life”(Wang 183) However, by the time what she got is unfamiliar and uncomfortable. What she got are far more than she expected. “Echo came into moods and desires she was unfamiliar with, and whenever it got too confusing, she just drank more champagne.(Wang 186)” She felt tired, the identity that dead girl gives to her are heavier than she expected. Different from the narrator in “Algorithmic Problem solving for father-daughter relationships” Echo had an ideological struggle and gives up the identity that she got from that dead girl. The life brings by the identity of dead girl did makes Echo have a good time and experience she never had before. However, being the one who she truly is were lighter and easier. “Her lost and found jacket would be waiting over her and she pictured herself pulling it over her bare shoulders with a deep sense of relief. (Wang 190)”
The identity can also be a cage for someone. Sometimes because of the identity that people have, they will feel limited and uncomfortable. The identity one person has does not mean everything should be as same as how others even their parents think. Also misunderstand or over read your own identity can also affect your entire life negatively. In Xuan Juliana Wang’s story “Fuerdai to the Max” we can see the main characters faced the conflicts cause by the identity they have and the bad relationship with their parents. Being an Fuerdai, the narrator growth in an environment that no worried of money and can solve almost every problem by money. His parents barely accompany with him even each time some bad things happened on him there is no one take care of him and give him the warm from parents because by using money can solve most of the problems. This makes him lack of love being abandonment and have some anger to being a second generation of rich man “Fuerdai” “Maybe my dad is just tired of getting mad, he's tried of me in general”(Wang 83) He start do the thing other Fuerdai do with his friend Kenny. And be misunderstanding by others. He felt numb each time hang with Kenny and girls and being a Fuerdai become a pressure also an obstacle to have a normal life for him. “But she did not have the same feelings for me, because she just saw what everyone else saw, that I could be mean, and I liked fighting. There was really nothing I could do about that.” (Wang 95) He was confused, he doesn’t know what he really should do to have a normal life except being a Fuerdai with a messy life grow up in a family that no one care about and extraordinary friend like Kenny. “I wonder what’s wrong with me, what makes me keep going further and further into fucking up my relationships with people until they give up on me.” (Wang 95)
Bravely face our own identity are much more important than being a person that full of frame and wealthy. Being jealous or easily change who you really are will only push ourselves to an endless abyss of vanity and regret. In each of three stories, we can see that only accept, face up one’s own identity correctly can have a brightness future in the end.
Works cited:
Wang, Xuan Juliana. Home Remedies. Hogarth, 2019. Book.