53 pages • 1 hour read
Lan Samantha ChangThe Family Chao
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2022A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 2, Chapters 7-8Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 2: “The World Sees Them”
Part 2, Chapter 7 Summary: “The People V. William Chao”
The first sections of the chapter are blog posts written by Lynn Chin for her journalism class covering Dagou’s trial. Lynn reports that a large audience attends the trial, including at least two dozen members of the Chinese American community, several nuns from the Spiritual House, and around 120 other people. Several are wearing buttons that read “Justice for Alf.” Fang predicts that if Dagou is found guilty, it will impact Haven’s attitude toward all Asians.
The prosecuting attorney claims the case is a “story of familial resentment and the violent end of an American dream” (205). Cecilia Chang testifies that her grandfather was coming to visit them, though she admits she has no proof there was money in his bag. A white night nurse at the hospital testifies that she heard Dagou threatening to kill Leo, but under cross-examination she can’t identify Dagou and admits all Asians look alike to her. The prosecuting attorney emphasizes that the Chinese community is “insular” and an “enclave” (209). Lynn detects that he is trying to play up their “Chineseness,” and once or twice he uses the word “inhuman” (214).
When O-Lan testifies, the court brings in a Mandarin interpreter from Chicago. Lynn thinks he is Malaysian. Lynn notes O-Lan’s contempt for Americans. O-Lan confirms that she is an undocumented immigrant. Fang sums up the argument for James: that Leo was a model minority, hard-working, invested in his children, and Dagou is a “bad minority. He doesn’t appreciate the opportunities he’s been given in this country. He’s lazy and ungrateful, dishonest, a thief, and sexually enamored of a woman not appropriate for him, a white woman” (215). James feels guilty and complicit in Leo’s death because he didn’t pay attention to the thumping he heard that night.
James suggests to Dagou that he can say he can’t remember seeing the freezer key on the shelf, but Dagou tells him not to lie. James is questioned about the old man’s carpetbag. He confirms that he saw the key on the shelf when he went to get ice. When he is asked if anyone was with him the night of the murder, James admits he was with Alice Wa. When Alice is called to the stand, she agrees she was with James and heard banging, but told him not to investigate because she thought it was a ghost.
Ming, returning from a trip to Phoenix for work, visits O-Lan for the third time. He learns she can speak and understand English. He realizes O-Lan killed Leo. She doesn’t deny it but instead makes him Chinese food. Ming finds it delicious. O-Lan says again that Ming killed Leo because he knew what would happen and he permitted it by leaving. Ming sees a blue carpetbag by her bed.
In his old bedroom in the family home, Ming believes he hears Leo’s voice speaking to him from the radio. Leo claims Ming is his true heir but is ashamed of his family. He says O-Lan came for money, for Leo’s life, and the ring. Distressed, Ming looks in the mirror and sees the face of a beast staring back. He remembers being chased and attacked in school by what he calls villagers.
Katherine testifies. She is doing what she can for Dagou out of loyalty to Winnie. Katherine admits she loaned Dagou money.
Brenda identifies herself as Dagou’s fiancée, saying he proposed to her Christmas Eve. Dagou told her he did not carry out his plan that night. Jerry asks if Dagou knew that after Leo’s death all his property went to Winnie, and Winnie left everything to the leader of the Spiritual House. The prosecution tries to portray Brenda as “promiscuous” and a “gold-digger” after the Chao money.
Dagou speaks on his own behalf and becomes emotional. He says he knows he wasn’t the son Leo wanted. He imagined that a world without Leo would be like the “real America,” everything clean and bright, a “fresh start” (262). He says he didn’t kill his father because he was a coward, and he weeps. Ming hurtles into the courtroom and calls out that he is responsible for Leo’s death. He calls himself Ergou, the second dog. To stop him, Katherine produces the freezer key and claims she found it in Dagou’s jacket pocket.
James visits Ming at the hospital, and Ming tells James to stop O-Lan from fleeing town. James finds O-Lan at her place. She is wearing the jade ring. James doesn’t stop her from leaving.
Alice, too, feels complicit in Leo’s death. She breaks up with James and tells him she plans to move to New York.
Lynn reports in her blog that the jury found Dagou guilty of murder.
Part 2, Chapter 8 Summary: “December 24”
James holds a video visit with Dagou, who is now in prison. The lawyers and Katherine are preparing an appeal. Lynn, who has decided to continue with journalism, reports that Alf is alive and well; the dog was adopted by the Skaer family.
All three brothers continue to feel guilty. Dagou believes he belongs in prison. He clings to his relationship with Brenda.
Ming gets medication for his hallucinations and stays in Haven with James as he recovers. They’ve bought the restaurant from Gu Ling Zhu Chi and run it in hopes that Dagou can take it over when he is released. Ming speculates that O-Lan watched for an opportunity to steal the old man’s carpetbag and the ring. Ming wonders where Leo stashed his life savings. James guesses it is in the freezer room. They hold a quiet Christmas party at the restaurant. James misses Alice. Ming wonders if he and Katherine will ever get together. They continue to look for O-Lan.
O-Lan is staying at the New World Hotel on the edge of a desert. She wears a jade ring and goes by her real name: Chao Ru. She likes thinking that she has three brothers out in the world, “living their own flawed, desirous lives. That her blood is shared. The blood of the thief, the pioneer and the marauder, the yearner and the usurper” (296). She feels tranquil.
Part 2, Chapters 7-8 Analysis
Structurally, this section carries the most dramatic action of the book, as the tension and suspense of Dagou’s trial unfolds. Ming’s discovery that O-Lan is the person who locked Leo in the freezer creates further tension and irony since the jury has not even considered her a suspect. O-Lan plays on the prejudice against her that she is not only “illiterate” in English but also an “ignorant outsider,” considered nearly a servant by the Chaos, to protect her from suspicion. Her lesser station, her perceived foreignness, and her vulnerable status as an undocumented worker become her defense as she uses the white community’s own prejudice against foreigners and non-white people against the all-white lawyers and jury.
The device of Lynn Chin’s blog breaks away from the conventional narrative techniques to introduce a larger perspective on the action, one that encompasses the familial drama but also comments on the Chinese American community of Haven and, as crystallized in the concerns about the fate of Alf, documents the anti-Asian bias more broadly. Lynn notes that she is treated rudely by a “Justice for Alf” supporter, highlighting the irony of the pony-tailed woman’s deep concern for Alf’s well-being in contrast to her refusal to show common courtesy to Lynn as a fellow human being.
In keeping with this prejudice, the prosecution attempts to cast Leo as other, a foreigner who conforms to the white stereotypes about hard-working, law-abiding Asian minorities. The “model minority” label commonly attributed to East Asians by white people, separating them from other marginalized groups on the assumption that they more readily assimilate to white culture and adopt white American ethics in order to advance within systems that privilege whiteness. Fang believes that not only is Dagou on trial, but also his community and his culture as an American of Chinese descent. Chang suggests that Dagou’s guilty verdict results from the jury subscribing to the same anti-Asian bias and investment in racial stereotypes that the woman in the bathroom showed to Lynn and the Skaer family showed earlier to Ming and James. Dagou’s emotions are not persuasive to the jury because he does not conform to their implicit stereotypical perspective, marking him a “bad minority” (215).
The Chao sons each wrestle with feelings of guilt and complicity in Leo’s death, highlight the theme of Loyalty, Filial Piety and Sacrifice for Family. Chang provides an irony characterization of Katherine as the character who demonstrates the purest loyalty to the family because of what she feels she owes Winnie for accepting her, suggesting that Katherine’s lack of blood relationship to Leo allows her to feel a less fraught connection and emphasizing the longing that Katherine feels for a deeper connection with her Chinese identity as the motivator for her actions. In contrast, O-Lan expresses no guilt that she killed Leo or set Dagou up to be blamed. With the loss of both their parents, the Chao brothers feel a closer bond to one another; both James and Ming step away from their lives in California and New York to stay close to Haven and help Dagou.
Chang continues the dog motif in this section, conflating the image of the dog with Leo haunting his sons even after his death. Ming fears that he is transforming into a dog, his inheritance from Leo—a connection he abhors the more because of his attempt to detach from his Chinese heritage, the reason for his occasional hostility toward Katherine. In a duplicate of the scene where Ming cooks for Katherine, O-Lan cooks for Ming, and he finds he is suddenly ravenous for the Chinese food he hasn’t eaten since he was a child, suggesting that having been freed from Leo, he finally begins to disentangle his relationship with his father from his connection to his Chinese culture. That he eats O-Lan’s food underscores the bond between them as Chao descendants and the novel’s thematic interest in The Power of Food. The moment also precedes the scene where he hallucinates that Leo is talking to him, suggesting that Ming’s healing has only just begun. O-Lan, who thinks of her brothers in her final scene despite leaving them in Haven, confirms the attachment they share by blood.
Structurally, the novel completes its circle with the conclusion coming a year after the earlier Christmas, alluded to in the first Prologue. The future of all the characters remains unfixed and uncertain. Losing their parents has left the Chao brothers orphaned, but it has also left them feeling more firmly American, cutting their ties to the land of their parents’ birth. All four of Leo’s children, including O-Lan, are left to carve out their own futures—the very opportunity Leo made his sacrifices to give them. Leo’s creation, Fine Chao—a name which presents another irony, in that no one ever accused Leo of being “fine” in either manner or morals—continues as an institution in Haven, with all three brothers invested in its success. Leo’s death has brought the Chao brothers together in a way their family life never could.
