Picture Us in the Light

“Anyway. Lately I’m a reverse Midas, everything I touch turning to crap, and so good old Mr. X has been louder lately: You’re a fraud, you peaked, it’s all downhill from here. The world doesn’t need your art. Get a real job.”

In this quote, Kelly Loy Gilbert alludes to the Greek mythological figure Midas, who is granted his wish to turn everything he touches to gold. However, Midas’s new gift is a curse. In referring to himself as a “reverse Midas”, Danny reveals a desperation to reclaim his former creative output. This quote reveals that he has low self-esteem regarding his art and is anxious about proving himself in art school. This quote also references Mr. X, the ominous reimagining of a racist man Danny encountered in his childhood. The voice of Mr. X appears when Danny is feeling at his lowest, thereby symbolizing his dark internal voice.

“I shouldn’t have assumed it was a guy. And I definitely did not expect her to be Asian. I know most of the prominent Asian artists these days because I collect the knowledge of them, imagine myself among them, and I’ve never heard of her.”

This quote reveals that American communities of color can internalize their lack of representation so much that they mimic the racist assumptions of predominately white America. In not imagining that the artist on display could be an Asian woman, Danny’s lack of role models in the art world is revealed. Despite actively seeking out Asian artists, he isn’t exposed to many who look like him. Representation is important because it allows Danny to imagine himself in the art world.

“It’s both the best thing that can happen to you and the most dangerous, because what do you have except the people you belong to and who belong to you? But then you can also lose yourself to it; you can do things in service of those that end up haunting you.”

Danny is an extremely empathetic character who craves the same level of affection and sympathy that he offers others. He loves being included in intimate relationships; friendships make him feel seen and loved. Danny takes his relationships seriously, and would do anything for his family and friends, but sometimes being willing to do anything can end up hurting you.

“Also, this: at home with us he never uses English on the things that come naturally or from his heart.”

In this quote, Gilbert captures one of the conflicts of the immigrant experience. While Danny has his art to use as a mode of self-expression, his father struggles to make his feelings known. Language barriers prevent Danny’s father from speaking his truth. It is natural to revert to one’s native language to express one’s deepest feelings—but Danny’s father struggles to let his feelings be known in a way that Danny can understand, building a wall between them.

“The truth, of course, is that he knows me, that he understands the greed I see the world with. I think he’s the only one who does, because he feels it, too. Is that why he went back to that experiment, why he did something risky and possibly incredibly stupid, something I’m sure he has to regret—because he couldn’t let go? Because it would’ve been like telling me to give up art?”

Danny tries to put himself in his father’s shoes, a demonstration of his empathy. In seeking to understand his father, Danny reflects on how he makes his own space. Danny doesn’t grasp the full scale or stakes of his father’s experiment, but he can deduce that they’re similar in passion to his own relationship with art. This demonstrates his emotional intelligence and desire to get to know people for who they are and by their passions. Here, Gilbert also implies that Danny’s father’s current unemployment and commitment to his experiment are uncharacteristic for a man who can’t afford to take risks and hasn’t done so in the past. This implies future conflict. The phrase “the greed I see the world with” characterizes Danny’s art as a desire to consume and know the world—not referring to financial greed but an ambitious one.

“We all have those things, I think—those things we want too badly to speak about aloud for fear someone’ll swoop in and tell us we’re just dreaming, those things we hold close and fantasize about at night and swear to the world we don’t care that much about, the way I feel about art, the way I want to believe my parents are grateful I was the child who survived. What Harry wants above everything else is to know the world is behind him.”

In this quote, Gilbert addresses the way humans cherish certain people or dreams. Identifying what you hold dear is important to character development. Having someone or something to cherish leaves one open for heartbreak and disappointment—and ultimately, growth. This quote reiterates the importance of art in Danny’s life. Having art helps him understand the world. This quote also highlights a difference between Danny and Harry. While Danny is happy to create and reflect on his art, Harry cherishes approval, which foreshadows future disappointment.

“We all know how to rebel in standard, practiced ways: how to take Pepcid to hide Asian glow when we drink and how to lie to parents about having a boyfriend, who to ask to take the SAT for us or Photoshop a report card. But that’s a different thing than blatant, public rebellion.”

This quote refers to the small, insignificant ways Danny and his peers rebel against authority—cementing them as rule followers. They don’t necessarily have anything to rebel against and want to do their part in maintaining a good reputation among their families and school. This quote also emphasizes how controversial discussions of Sandra’s death are: Honoring Sandra’s death in the school newspaper without a teacher’s permission is framed as worse than cheating on the SATs. In other words, the students don’t wish to make a scene.

“On the night of your birth in Wuhan the moon is a sliver in the sky, and you slip into the world beneath a fraction of moon. It’s an omen, perhaps, a banner unfurled over you to declare that your life, too, will be marked by fractions, divided into pieces of a whole.”

In this quote, Danny imagines his deceased sister’s life. He imagines the moon as a symbol of her future, ripe with conflict. Because Danny never met her and receives no information about her from his parents, he can only understand her brief life through storytelling.

“Because you never see the whole picture, maybe—you just sculpt the world around you so it fits into the box you’ve made for it, so it matches everything you already know. Or maybe that’s not true, either—maybe you just see what you choose to.”

Due to a lack of experience, teenagers like Danny aren’t always able to understand the consequences or risks of everything around them. Life as a teenager is but one part of the human experience, and often requires young people to make sense of the world by forcing it to fit into their perceptions. Called “niche picking” in modern psychology, selective processing of the world can be helpful in keeping things “safe” and manageable, but it also leads to blind spots. Danny, for example, has blind spots when it comes to his family and friends.

“I’m out of breath. What am I supposed to make of that? He looks unruffled. Why did it feel like a lightning bolt to me, then? My whole body is still tingling.”

This quote marks a major turning point in Danny’s character development. Here, Gilbert implies that Danny feels a romantic or sexual attraction to Harry that he himself has not yet realized. While his own body tingles during a playful wrestle with Harry, Harry remains “unruffled”. This quote foreshadows future internal conflict as Danny explores the truth behind his feelings for Harry, as well as the divide in attraction between the two.

“ And everything you take in from the world becomes a part of you that flows back through you into whatever you draw, I know that. There won’t be a better time than now.”

In this quote, Gilbert again notes the symbiotic relationship between Danny and his art. Because Danny uses art to understand the world, his art naturally propels his version of it. Furthermore, he dictates the integrity of his perceptions of the world. This quote also emphasizes Danny’s depth of awareness: He considers art a symbiosis in which the world influences him and he in turn influences the world.

“When you draw something it matters every time that you’re the one who drew it. I’ve always believed that. Like, what did you glimpse in a person’s expression? What do you have to say about them? Why is your perspective, yours of all the billions of people on earth, worth trapping on a piece of paper and showing to everyone?”

This quote emphasizes the responsibility of the artist in the production of art. Because art is the artist’s interpretation of the world around them, their being true (or untrue) to the image of their subject is crucial to the dignity of their art. Such a decision challenges the value of artistry and explains how some artists end up skewing the world with their own interpretations. This quote highlights two of Danny’s anxieties: The first is his inferiority complex as an artist, in which he struggles to believe he has anything unique or real to say about the world. The second is the problem he runs into when making a portrait of Sandra. Because his relationship with Sandra was so fraught, and his guilt regarding her death so deep, he questions the reliability of his interpretation of her image.

“You felt it sometimes at away games if you went to go watch and you could feel all the ways you wouldn’t belong there, that hyperawareness of how to an outside eye you’d look exactly the same as everyone you were there with, that same feeling I remember getting sometimes when my family would take road trips and we’d drive through Podunk middle-of-nowhere towns and I’d feel that same mix of superiority and self-consciousness, that simultaneous need to prove my separateness from my family and also my belonging to it, that sense it’s the group of you versus the world.”

This quote identifies the importance of setting to characterization. Danny has long been in a bubble of privilege and happiness in Cupertino, even recognizing that in other places he feels superior. Now that he is forced out of this bubble, he is desperate to find himself back in it. Danny’s upbringing was stable, but this also makes him less adaptable. Though Gilbert demonstrates how setting is responsible for character development, she also challenges Danny’s reliance on setting as a major part of his identity.

“The world owes us nothing, maybe; you could look at it that way. Or you could look at the world like you love it and you expect something from it because of that, because that’s the only reason you can ever expect anything from anyone.”

This quote emphasizes a major moment of character development for Danny, as he acknowledges that he can’t control the world and therefore should try to understand the world as it is, not how he wants it to be. Recent disappointments over moving as well as the aftermath of Sandra’s death have taught Danny to understand that he doesn’t have as much control over the world as he would have liked, even as reflected in his art. Danny’s secondary thought here, about expecting something from the world because he loves it so much, is indicative of the way he regards his family and friends. Because he loves with great empathy, he expects those he loves to give him something in return. But just as the world doesn’t always meet our expectations, so too are people too complicated to neatly fit our wishes.

“The worst things you fear aren’t the rare or distant ones. The worst things you fear are the ones so close they take up residence inside your head and whisper to you in the background all the time; the worst things you fear are that there’s so much darkness lurking inside the nicest people and the safest places that you know.”

Here, fear is characterized as an internal conflict, one that deals more with how external challenges make you feel about yourself than the conflict itself. This is an important moment of character development for Danny. It helps him come to terms with prioritizing his anxieties and fears. In acknowledging that fear comes from within rather than externally, Danny can attempt to tackle his feelings instead of the world. This makes fear more manageable in some ways.

“But I also know you can try to rope off that idea that somehow you’d be better off gone and set your compass to some shore beyond it. I know it can be done.”

This quote highlights an important message of hope and resilience through dark times. Sandra’s death by suicide was traumatic for the people she left behind, in part because they think she could have survived with help. Though death by suicide is complicated, Gilbert notes that it’s always possible to find a way to happiness.

“ Maybe it takes everything you have, every last atom, to sail past that dark idea, and then on arrival all you have to offer the world is your exhausted, battered self. But that’s everything. You know? It’s enough.”

This quote acknowledges the difficulty of navigating dark times. It emphasizes that dealing with depression or suicidal ideation is not easy and has no simple solution; doing so can lead to people feeling depleted of their energy. But ultimately, it’s better for people to deplete their energy than to stop fighting for survival, for happier days. This quote notes that feeling tired or defeated is a natural part of life, reminding Gilbert’s young readers that they are not alone if they feel such a way.

“Art doesn’t change the ending. It doesn’t let you lose yourself that way—the opposite, really; it calls you from the darkness, into the glaring, unforgiving light. But at least—this is why it will always feel like a calling to me—it lets you not be so alone.”

This novel is about Danny’s character development, but it is also about art’s power to transform and express our internal conflicts and joys. In this quote, Danny discovers that art isn’t a solution. Rather, art is a natural extension of the process of being human. In letting go of his desire to control his art and see something reflected in it that makes him feel accomplished, Danny raises the bar and engages in deeper thinking.

“This is why illegal is a shitty thing to call people, because it shifts the goalposts on you—suddenly the things about yourself that you want to matter don’t anymore; nothing matters.”

This quote highlights Gilbert’s criticism of the term “illegal immigrant”. The term takes away the many layers that make a person human, stripping them of their complexities. Danny recognizes that his parents, undocumented Americans, are perceived as invisible bar their label as illegal. All that the Cheng family has worked for and sacrificed becomes irrelevant in the face of this term. This criticism challenges how America treats immigrant families and emphasizes the importance of using language that is inclusive. The term “illegal” ultimately dehumanizes Danny’s parents and robs them of their feelings and futures.

“That’s the thing that makes life bearable sometimes, I think: that you can feel more than one thing at a time, that it floods into you from so many directions at once.”

Gilbert’s novel dives into the darkest conflicts people face, but she also ensures that her narrative emphasizes hope and resilience. In this quote, Danny recognizes that there’s hope in the way other people rally for him. Just when life seems too difficult to bear, a helping hand reaches out to him. Notably, this quote also emphasizes that there is beauty in the many layers of life, that darkness and hope exist simultaneously within the human experience.

“This is what I like best about drawing, that you can retreat to a space where the moments are infinite and you don’t have just the one shot to get it right. You can say what you need to, with your whole self, in the way you want.”

In Danny’s darkest times, he turns to art to help him process the world around him. Here, he notes that the process of drawing is one of infinite possibilities. Danny often struggles to voice his feelings or confront other people. In drawing, he doesn’t have to say the right thing at the right time because he is able to revise his message as often as he needs to until he gets it right. This quote is notable because it emphasizes Gilbert’s celebration of art as a mode of deep expression, deeper even than speech. It also highlights the difficulties of communication, juxtaposing speech with the quiet power of art. This quote further characterizes Danny and challenges popular notions that saying instead of doing is what matters.

“Of course I don’t think it’s better. But you don’t always get better—sometimes you just get less bad. Sometimes you just get right.”

The novel traces Danny’s character development to demonstrate how life isn’t about perfection—in fact, the process of “getting better” is life-long. Danny learns to let go of his obsessive desire to be better and instead find ways to make things right. This mirrors Danny’s understanding of art as revision. In life as in art, becoming better is not always as valuable as correcting a wrong or focusing on one right thing to accomplish. This message also mirrors Gilbert’s talk of mental health. Rather than digest and internalize society’s messages about “getting better”, she subverts this language and encourages her readers to think about right over wrong instead of striving for better—particularly because people will continue to make mistakes no matter how much they strive to be better.

“Some people never show up. Or they start to and then they’re gone, or they want something bigger or flashier and less steady than the work of putting yourself there even when it’s not comfortable. I don’t want that to be true about me.”

Because Danny is a person who cherishes his relationships, he is constantly worried that he will lose the people he puts enormous emotional and mental effort into. He is anxious that graduating from high school means his friendships with Harry and Regina will end. He worries that in leaving for art school, something might happen to his parents and he won’t be there for him. Danny’s complex around abandonment makes sense after revelations about his sister and Sandra’s death by suicide. Ultimately, he learns that he can’t control how other people will involve themselves in his life. He can only control how he stands up for others. In deciding not to be a person who leaves when things get difficult, Danny makes a commitment to nurture steadfast relationships instead of temporary or useful connections.