Picture Us in the Light

Moving is a major transition in anyone’s life. It’s a change that requires making final amends and asking lingering questions before leaving. Kelly Loy Gilbert uses place and setting as a collective symbol of comfort and belonging. While many teenagers feel resentful of their high schools, Danny loves his school in Cupertino. It’s a setting in which he feels he belongs, where he has friends he loves, teachers he works well with, and an understanding of how things work. The school in Cupertino is reflective of the Cupertino community itself—diverse, hard-working, respectful. When Danny moves to San Jose and enters the school there, he experiences a sense of fear and otherness. The school in San Jose is characterized by a bland building and bullying. In the main office, the office administrator doesn’t even look up to greet Danny. This lack of positivity is evident to Danny, who is already looking for things to dislike. Therefore, his family’s move is not just about losing their house and the affluence his parents fought so hard for through immigration and hard work. This move also emphasizes the symbolic importance of Danny’s school as a setting representative of his values. In breaking with this setting and these values, Danny is driven into a panic. It is a character and plot development that he rejects.

Needless to say, Danny has unfinished business in Cupertino. With Danny’s other impending move to college, he knows he has to figure out what’s going on between him and Regina soon. But he has a difficult time asking the questions he needs answers to. He doesn’t confront his family about their secrets, and he doesn’t confront Regina about their fragile friendship. Danny is also hung up on Harry’s relationship with Regina even though it doesn’t directly affect him. He asks Harry if he’s truly in love with Regina, but Harry can sense that the question doesn’t come from a place of friendly curiosity or relationship-building. Seeing it as a challenge to his character, Harry and Danny have an awkward moment. Again, Danny’s suppressed feelings for Harry make him overprotective of him. Danny thinks Harry and Regina are too different to be happy together but ultimately, nothing about their relationship indicates this. This also highlights Danny’s fear that his feelings for Harry might be deeper than Harry’s feelings for him.

Both external and internal conflicts of new settings and unresolved issues with friends make Danny act in reckless ways, a new layer of his characterization that juxtaposes with his responsible nature. The risks of faking where you go to high school are high. In public school systems, attending a school outside of the district in which you live and pay taxes can get parents arrested. For Danny’s parents, this issue is heightened by their status as green card holders. It is a green card requirement to track one’s moves and new addresses, but Danny is willing to risk the security of his parents’ green cards for his own desire to stay with his friends. This marks the start of Danny’s selfish behavior, as he doesn’t understand how his family’s interests are for his own good. When Danny discovers that his parents are wanted for assault against the Ballards, having changed their names and addresses to avoid arrest, he doubles down on his desire to stay in Cupertino. For him, the betrayal of his family’s fugitive status is an excuse to keep his own secrets. The stress of dealing with his family’s secrets is so intense that he avoids it by focusing on his own lies. However, this foreshadows further conflict, as focusing on himself over his family will put all of them in danger.

Danny’s selfishness is highlighted again when the spread on Sandra reveals that he has been attending his school in Cupertino. His parents are called in and are desperate to get away from Cupertino after meeting with Danny’s principal, but Danny is more concerned about Regina. While this isn’t selfish in itself as Danny knows Regina is in a difficult situation, prioritizing her is detrimental to the family’s safety. Danny doesn’t understand what his parents have done or gone through, so he assumes they are no longer worthy of trust—even though he operates on assumptions alone. Fighting with his father in the car illustrates a shift in power, a change in hierarchy. Danny refuses to follow his father’s orders, attempting to assert his own power in the face of the sudden lack of control in his life. This fight leads to a car accident, the consequence of fighting for control without proper understanding.

Another important moment in this section is Danny’s reconnection with his art. He finally draws Mr. X (the racist white man who harassed him as a child) as he truly was, not the cartoon version he used to make him less threatening. In acknowledging that his art should reflect reality over his attempt to control reality, Danny is finally freed from Mr. X’s authority. Danny has long believed that art is his way of understanding the world but discovers that it’s important to revisit these understandings. He applies this same level of realism and truth to his portrait of Sandra, finally drawing her in all her complexities rather than framing her as a beacon or a martyr. This is an important step in his character development; it also highlights Gilbert’s message that confronting the reality of the world is more important than nurturing flawed desires. In removing his desire for control, Danny removes the ego from his artistic process and produces meaningful art once more.