Family Dynamics and Inheritance Theme Analysis

In an interview about the novel, author Jamie Ford stated: “As the saying goes, everyone has two chances at a parent/child relationship, once as a child and once as a parent.” Ford examines that dynamic by contrasting the relationship the protagonist, Henry, has to his father with the relationship between Henry and his son, Marty. These dual stories of fathers and sons show that toxic family dynamics are not doomed to be repeated across generations. Rather than growing up to emulate his father’s judgmental and insular attitude, Henry proves to be much more accepting toward Marty’s white girlfriend, Samantha, than his own father was of Keiko and other Japanese Americans. However, the novel also emphasizes that such familial toxicity can easily reverberate across time. Stopping negative family relationship patterns is possible, the novel suggests, but it takes conscious and concerted effort.

The novel argues that negative family patterns are perpetuated almost inevitably when one does not exert conscious effort to undo them. Henry’s relationship with his adult son, Marty, helps him realize that he has inadvertently embodied his father’s rigid parenting style. When Marty confesses to his father that he is engaged to a white woman named Samantha, Henry is alarmed to realize that his son’s hesitance to share this news springs from a fear that his father will be disappointed in him. Marty stammers out his explanation: “It’s just that, well, I know how crazy your own folks were. I mean they weren’t just Chinese, they were super-Chinese […] And, you know, you married Mom and did the whole traditional wedding thing. And you sent me to Chinese school, like your own old man did—and you always talk about me finding a nice Chinese girl to settle down with, like Mom.” Henry feels “stunned to be categorized in the same breath as his own father.” Things are clarified for Henry when he and Samantha finally meet, and Samantha shares that she’s heard from Marty that Henry is “the best fisherman” he knows. Henry catches himself “wondering why [Marty] never said these things to him. Then he [thinks] about the communications gaps, more like chasms really, between him and his own father and [knows] the answer.” Even though Henry wasn’t trying to recreate these gaps—he didn’t, for example, hand down his father’s rules by insisting Marty only speak English—because he wasn’t actively trying to undo these negative patterns, he ended up replicating them unconsciously.

There is hope, however: the novel is clear that, while it is easy to fall into repetition of toxic family dynamics, individuals do have the power to establish new family norms. Part of the creation of these new patterns is a function of time; societal norms shift and, as a result, affect families like Henry’s. For example, Henry catches himself thinking “about his Chinese son, engaged to his Caucasian girlfriend, driving around in a Japanese car” and realizes that “his own father must [be] spinning in his grave.” But for his part, Henry isn’t bothered by Marty’s engagement to Samantha, an attitude that shows that he has grown up to be much more tolerant and accepting of other races than his own father was. Whereas Henry’s father was hostile toward those outside of their Chinese American community and vehemently anti-Japanese, Henry only cares that Marty is happy.

But the novel is clear that the creation of healthier family dynamics can’t be left only to time—or to other people. When Henry’s wife, Ethel, was alive, she acted as the “bridge” between Henry and his son, and Henry gladly allowed her to do the work of forging meaningful connection with their child. As a widower, however, Henry is presented with a choice: he can either allow himself to perpetuate the non-communicative dynamic he had with his own father, or he can create a new kind of normal with his son. Henry chooses the latter when he invites Marty (and Samantha) to help him search for Keiko’s belongings amongst the items left in the Panama Hotel by Japanese American families during internment. Henry has never shared this part of his past with his son and though it is awkward and even frustrating to do so (Henry feels annoyed, for example, that Marty and Samantha spend time marveling over every object when all he wants to do is locate the Okabes’ things), Henry’s efforts to be more open with his son provide Henry a sense of healing he didn’t know he needed. It is as though Henry “ha[s] stumbled into some unseen room in the house he had grown up in, revealing a part of his past Marty never knew existed.” Henry’s story shows that family patterns can be shifted for the better, but it takes a willingness to endure this “stumbling” in pursuit of the healthier relationships waiting on the other side.