There are perhaps no works in English translation as beloved as those from Russian literature. It’s in this light that Lan Samantha Chang was inspired to write her new novel, The Family Chao, loosely based on The Brothers Karamazov and transposed to a Chinese-American family in smalltown Wisconsin.
Family patriarch, Leo Chao, runs a tight ship not just at home, but also at the family restaurant, Fine Chao. The story begins at Christmastime when two of Leo’s three sons are on their way home for the holidays. James, the youngest and in university, has a chance encounter with an older Chinese man at a Chicago train station that will forever alter the lives of the Chao family.
As in The Brothers Karamazov, each Chao brother has a distinct personality: Dagou is the oldest and most reckless, while Ming is financially successful in New York and James is a young and naïve university student. The Chinese community in fictional Haven, Wisconsin is small and close-knit, but it has Asian groceries and restaurants and even a Buddhist center where Leo’s wife Winnie left the family to live some years back. To impress his father, Dagou plans a blowout Christmas Eve party at Fine Chao, inviting everyone in town for Chinese delicacies not on the Chinese American menu, as well as copious amounts of liquor. Leo Chao will be found dead in the restaurant’s freezer room the following day.
Chang’s debt to the original Dostoevsky story is largely limited to the characterization of the brothers and their overbearing father. She uses the Wisconsin backdrop—the state where she was born and raised—to discuss race and identity in America, all while balancing her story with humorous and absurd scenes, including the play on words with the family name, as in Fine Chao, the name of their restaurant. In another scene, James thinks about his birth order as the youngest and how he may not understand the family dynamics as well as his brothers.
James had the crushing sense that he was born too late to understand the real story of the Chaos—that the great passions, the bedrock promises and betrayals that formed the basis of whatever lies among the members of his family, have long since taken place.
Chaos certainly surrounds the Chao family at every point in the story, especially after Leo’s death and the trial that ensues. Chang uses the trial to further show prejudices in America (eg, an all-white jury), but also to poke fun at some animal rights activists. When the Chao family dog disappears, wild rumors fly around town and a large section of people in the courtroom show more concern for the lost pet than the death of a pillar of the community.
Nor are Chang’s riffs on other works of literature limited to Dostoevsky. In an apparent reference to Pearl Buck, Chang names a kitchen worker O-Lan. In The Good Earth, O-Lan is the nondescript, docile wife of the main character. In Chang’s story, O-Lan is a kitchen worker at Fine Chao who works tirelessly without complaint.
Chang also appears to insert herself, albeit obliquely. In one of the more humorous moments, before Leo’s death the family drives to the Spiritual House, the Buddhist center where Winnie Chao lives as a nun. Other members of the Chinese community have also gathered to have their fortune told. Chang has been the director of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop for more than fifteen years, so the following scene is especially comical:
The first people to come forward are Mr. and Mrs. Chin, mechanical engineers. Everyone knows the reason for their consultation. Their middle daughter, Lynn Chin, a college sophomore, has changed her major to journalism. She has been seduced by words in a language they don’t like to speak. She’s refusing to apply to law school. If not for their resistance, she might be majoring in English.
Despite the morbid plot that drives the story, The Family Chao is an entertaining novel that pays homage to a Russian classic. It’s certainly not necessary to be familiar with Dostoevsky’s novel to enjoy this one. Chang shows that it’s really all right to major in English.