Homebase by Shawn Hsu Wong

First published: 1979

Type of plot:Bildungsroman

Time of work: The 1950’s and the 1960’s

Locale: Guam and the Western United States

Principal Characters:

• Rainsford Chan, a young fourth-generation Chinese American
• Bobby Chan, Rainsford’s father, an engineer who dies when Rainsford is seven
• Rainsford’s mother, the owner of a flower shop, who dies when Rainsford is fifteen
• Rainsford’s grandfather, the man after whom Rainsford is named
• Rainsford’s great-grandfather, the first immigrant in the family, a man who helped build railroads in the American West
• Rainsford’s uncle, a medical doctor with whom Rainsford lives after his mother’s death
• Rainsford’s aunt, manager and owner of a children’s shop
• Rainsford’s “dream-bride,”, an important creation of Rainsford’s mind

The Novel

Homebase is a novel about fifteen-year-old Rainsford Chan, a fourth-generation Chinese American struggling to establish his identity both as a person and as an American. The central events of his life, and the ones with which the narrative is most concerned, are the deaths of his father (when Rainsford is seven years old) and of his mother (when he is fifteen).

The novel is divided into five chapters, each of which has a generous number of what might be called “speculative flashbacks.” Rainsford never knew his grandfather or great-grandfather, and he knew his father only slightly before his death. These “speculative flashbacks,” which actually make up most of the work, are founded both in reality and in imagination; Rainsford does have some factual information about his grandfather and great-grandfather in the form of letters, documents, and a few family stories and legends that have come down to him. He enlarges upon these to discover and define meaning for his own existence.

Wong begins the novel by giving the basic facts of Rainsford’s present circumstances and family history. The reader learns immediately of several important events in the young narrator’s life: Rainsford is fifteen years old, and both of his parents are dead. The narrator is pursuing the lives of his family members, especially those of his grandfather and great-grandfather. He tells us that he cannot speak Chinese, but he remembers his own father teaching him “Home on the Range,” buying him Superman T-shirts, and taking him to see World War II films. Although his grandfather and great-grandfather are never given names, they become central to the story, and it is through them and through Rainsford’s imagined history of their lives that he comes to terms with his own identity. Much of the opening section is a history, mostly contrived by Rainsford, of his great-grandfather’s life while helping to build railroads in Nevada and Wyoming.

In the second chapter, Rainsford writes a letter to his father, who has been dead some eight years. The letter is an attempt by the young teenager to establish a relation with someone not present so that he can go on with his life as a complete individual, with a heritage and self-understanding. The other major event of this chapter is Rainsford’s recollection of his father’s death; a poignant story is told of the young boy ironing his father’s shirts on the night his mother comes home to report his father’s death. Readers also learn that two years after his father’s death, his mother had taken a lover in order to try to escape some of her own pain from the loss; the attempt is not successful, but it has no negative effects on Rainsford himself.

Rainsford’s mother dies when he is fifteen, and the youth goes to live with his uncle, a medical doctor, and his aunt, who runs a children’s store. It is important in the third chapter that his relatives treat him well, basically by leaving him alone and providing for him. Rainsford assumes many characteristics of his uncle, such as a taste in clothes and personal habits, and has good experiences in high school. He lives with these relatives for three years.

In the fourth chapter, Rainsford’s main activity is to drive around in his car, thinking about himself, his past, and his family members—all now dead except for his aunt and uncle, who function successfully as parents primarily by leaving him alone. On one of these night trips, he sees a passing train and begins to speculate about and to recall his great-grandfather’s experiences while working on the railroads in the 1860’s. Just as important, however, is his creation of a “dream-bride,” a fifteen-year-old girl who will, so he thinks, help him to firmly find himself and become, at last, an American by identity as well as residence.

The grandfather is the main character in the last chapter. Rainsford meets a Navajo Indian who has Chinese blood and is able to inform him of his own name—and, therefore, of his own identity. Rainsford Chan had been named, so he always knew, after a place in California (“Chan” is the Chinese word for California). Rainsford has never been able to find a Rainsford, California, and so has felt that his own identity is incomplete; he has had no knowledge of who or what he actually is. In the last pages of the novel, his search for self is successfully concluded: Rainsford learns that the land itself (that is, America) is his ancestry.

The Characters

Rainsford Chan, the narrator and main character of the novel, reveals the process of his struggle for identity as he lets the reader know his thoughts. His development occurs rather quickly as readers realize, rather instantly, that he is “American” in every way. Only Rainsford himself is unaware of this. Moreover, as he tells of events and episodes in his family history, it is clear that other family members before him have already made the transition. Rainsford’s struggle and characterization is understood by the reader not so much through his actions (he does little more than drive around in his car at night, and he seldom engages in conversation) as through his thoughts about the past.

Rainsford’s father is dead, and they never knew each other as adults. Fixed only and eternally in memory, the father nevertheless exerts tremendous influence on the youth. “Bobby,” which is a mispronunciation of “Daddy” by Rainsford as a toddler, is the only character in the work to have a name (except Rainsford himself). Bobby, it is recalled, had spent much time with Rainsford when he was young; the things the child remembers all reflect the father’s overt intention to Americanize his son. Through teaching him American games, songs, and traditions, the father effectually denies the Chinese heritage of the family.

Of all these unnamed, dead characters, Rainsford’s grandfather is perhaps of most importance. Again, the reader, like the narrator himself, knows little of the grandfather’s actual life. Perhaps the most significant fact is that the grandfather had once returned to China but then returned to the United States. At the end of the work, Rainsford’s discovery that he had been named after Angel Island in San Francisco Bay—the place where his grandfather had been processed by immigration officials upon his return to the United States—fixes permanently Rainsford’s identity as a person and as an American.

The characterization of Rainsford’s great-grandfather, who could not speak English and was subjected to prejudice and discrimination of which Rainsford knows nothing, at least by experience, stands in contrast to Rainsford’s own life. Even though the fourth-generation American can speculate about his great-grandfather’s life, he has nothing in common with him. Rainsford is a stranger in Chinatown, going there out of curiosity like Americans of other racial groups. Rainsford had grown up drinking milkshakes and eating french fries.

Rainsford’s aunt and uncle, childless themselves, become his parents after his mother’s death. Like other characters in the novel, they are stationary; however, they are different in that they are alive. Primarily, they serve as role models for young Rainsford, who evidently is on his way to acquiring the usual prerequisites of the American Dream after he comes to peace with himself. As successful Americans themselves, the aunt and uncle, though never denying their Chinese heritage, race, and ancestry, live lives in which these things are functionally not important. They live in an upper-middle-class neighborhood near the beach, drive sports cars, and go jogging, for example.

Rainsford’s mother is similarly characterized. She, too, is dead from the beginning of the work, and so never changes. Readers learn that she is very proud of her son and favors him with an extreme amount of attention both at home and at the flower shop she owns and manages after her husband’s death. Rainsford takes great delight that when “American” customers order “Oriental” bouquets, it is he, Rainsford, who designs them—and does so with absolutely no knowledge of what they are or might look like.

The final character of any consequence is not only dead but also nonexistent. Rainsford imagines a “dream-bride,” a girl of some fifteen years of age who could somehow make his life complete. He envisions a trip with her in the American Midwest, knowing only that somehow such a creature would establish his own worth as an individual. The “dream-bride,” of course, turns out to be America herself.

Critical Context

Homebase, written at the end of the 1970’s, is an important statement about the role of Asian Americans in the United States at the time. The author explains minority “mainstreaming” for such Chinese immigrants, but his message applies just as meaningfully to immigrants of other races and nationalities. Such minority fiction was coming into vogue for the first time during this period, following some rather huge publication successes of the 1960’s in which books by minority authors became truly important for the first time. Wong writes of a time when newly arrived immigrants could not survive in America without first giving up their history, heritage, and past. He emphasizes this most centrally in the novel by distinguishing between “Chinese” and “Chinaman.” Rainsford Chan is by birth “Chinese”—he becomes a “Chinaman” (and therefore an object of discrimination and prejudice) only when he goes to Chinatown. As ethnic fiction, Homebase makes its statement clearly through its title: America, not China, is Rainsford Chan’s home base. China can never be more to him than other homelands can be to other Americans, virtually all of whom are descended from immigrants.

Bibliography

Gong, Ted. “Approaching Cultural Change Through Literature: From Chinese to Chinese American.” Amerasia Journal 7 (Spring, 1980): 73-86. Gong delineates the processes of acculturation common to all Chinese immigrants. A reading of Gong’s study validates the credibility of Rainsford Chan’s experiences.

Hom, Marlon K. “A Case of Mutual Exclusion: Portrayals by Immigrant and American-Born Chinese of Each Other in Literature.” Amerasia Journal 10 (Fall/Winter, 1984): 29-45. Hom’s article, while discussing works written both in English and in Chinese, elucidates various problems between Chinese and American cultures. Helpful in understanding Rainsford Chan’s entrapment in middle territory between the two cultures.

Kazin, Alfred. A Writer’s America: Landscape in Literature. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1988. Two chapters of this book discuss the landscape of the American West, which is central to Rainsford Chan’s discovery of self and identity. These include chapter 3, which has information about the lands where Chan’s forefathers worked on the American railroad, and chapter 6, which explains the role of California in the American identity, something learned by the main character.

Monaghan, Peter. “Writing Novels, Winning Races.” The Chronicle of Higher Education 42 (January 26, 1996): A5. A brief profile of Wong covering his career as a writer, college instructor, and part-time drag-race driver for the Chrysler Corporation. Offers interesting insight into Wong’s background and motivation for writing.

Spencer, Benjamin T. Patterns of Nationality. New York: Burt Franklin, 1981. Part 1 of this text, entitled “The Nature of Nationality,” spells out particular changes experienced by various ethnic groups arriving in the United States. The author addresses problems that occur when “continuity” and “change” confront various groups of new arrivals.

Yu, Connie Young. “Rediscovered Voices: Chinese Immigrants and Angel Island.” Amerasia Journal 4, no. 2 (1977): 123-139. Yu discusses in some length the experiences of Chinese immigrants arriving in the United States to be processed for residency through government officials at Angel Island. Such experiences were lived through by both Rainsford Chan’s great-grandfather and grandfather.