Mona In The Promised Land Analysis

A Tidy Lack of Loose End Imagine this: a group of ragtag ethnic and religious minorities fulfill every dream they have ever had, both collectively and as individuals, and succeed in all personal and professional capacities. Clearly, this is possible. We happen to live in a country where, even after systemic racism, there are an abundance of success stories to read in the papers. In Mona in the Promised Land by Gish Jen, we are told of that exact story. Not implausible, there are scores of Asian-American athletes, politicians, authors, and actors who climbed to fame in the 1960s and 1970s. Not impossible, just suspiciously convenient. The epilogue of Mona in the Promised Land is believable yet altogether unsatisfying as it doesn’t provide adequate resolution to any storyline set up in previous chapters: the Sherman debacle is glossed over, Callie follows her mother’s wishes to become a doctor, and Alfred’s lawsuit was conveniently dropped to allow the Changs to purchase another restaurant. While he appears physically for roughly only twenty pages throughout the novel, Sherman (or at least the idea of him) is a major character. He is such an …show more content…
After Mona and Seth apologize for wrongly blaming him and offering the flask as collateral, one could see why Alfred, as a common American man, would drop the lawsuit against the Changs. Despite this, Alfred is not a common American man. He makes a point to let everyone know he is a proud black man, he doesn’t shy away at the idea of moving back to Africa, he has a friend affectionately nicknamed Luther the Race Man. It is plausible, it is appropriate, it is a boring resolution to his character. He provided serious opposition to the Changs’ dream of buying another restaurant, but instead of following through he simply drops a lawsuit on racial