Seeing Emily by Joyce Lee Wong

Lee, Wong Joyce. Seeing Emily. New York: Amulet Books, 2005. ISBN: 9780810992580

Author Joyce Wong has written an engaging and rich book in the form of prose, and weaves together the story of a Chinese-American teen, Emily, as she is coming of age in two different cultural expectations. As Emily’s memories of youth are colliding with her present teenage angst, the imagery used by Wong is often point blank, lyrical and arranged beautifully. In a passage from the free verse titled, Sleepover, the reader see’s a glimpse of Emily’s maturity as she analyzes her friends after a tear-jerking discussion about family.

Suddenly,

watching the wavering spots

dance and slowly begin

to fade away into the light,

it occurred to me

That I hadn’t

really been seeing

my friends

fully  before.

I’d always considered them

from only one perspective,

my own,

but there was so much more

to each of them

than I had realized.

Along with the typical teen issues of friends, boys and parents, Wong dives deeply into Art and Emily’s way to use art as a form of self exploration. During the course of the novel, Emily works on her own art, class art and a mural for the school. These opportunities give Emily a way to communicate her inner self to the outside world in a creative way. A trip to her parents homeland, Taiwan, allows her to explore her own mothers early art and native art, deepening her appreciation of her roots.

Metaphors are used throughout the passages and are what makes the novel radiate poetry. Often Emily compares her feelings to that of animals.

I imagined I was a cat,

her eyes shining

as she watches a goldfish

that shimmers on the floor.

Her relationship with a boy from school also plays out in metaphors.  Her relationship is often depicted through the mural she is creating where a monkey and tiger represent her and Nick.

With the rustle of leaves

And a graceful leap

To another tree,

The monkey swings herself away,

Disappearing in to the green.

Even after she’s gone

Her screams echo back

So raucous and wild

They startle

A flock of birds.

The above passages are in response to her feelings after Nick refers to her in a derogatory way- his Geisha.

To begin a lesson about immigrants and immigration to America, I would share the below excerpt. I would find a picture as close to the description to display as the poem, Sailing for America, was read.

The young woman
in the photograph
wore a rose-colored qi-pao,
a long Chinese dress
with a slit at the ankles.
Looking
at this picture
I was struck by her features and expression
and I saw how much
she looked like me…

I could almost feel the salt breeze
teasing her dark, wavy hair,
styled like Au-de-li Hepburn’s in Roman Holiday.
Perhaps that day
the ship’s captain,
a friend of my grandfather,
passed her a red-cheeked apple he’d saved…

How did that apple taste
as my mother bit through the smooth,
shiny skin and crunched into sweet,
white meat? Perhaps
she licked a stray drop of juice
from her knuckle,
tasting ocean
and in that moment
of sweetness and brine
my mother looked out
over the endlessly waving sea
scattered with diamonds of light
and imagined the shores
of America.

We then would discuss the reasons for immigration. I would then have students create a mock passport to be used as journals, to be used in research about immigration to America, Ellis Island and their own family research. Passports would be used to write responses, take notes and hopefully, develop their own poem about their own travels.