The Many Daughters of Afong Moy

“Find me.”

This two-word command presents a paradox at the heart of Faye Moy’s story: how a man she has never met can own a photo of her with this phrase written on the back. Even after Dorothy Moy’s actions resolve the mystery, the idea of being sought and found by a lover recurs throughout the text, making this momentary paradox a major trope.

“While Annabel continued drawing, Dorothy watched the golf-club pipe-thing transform into something else. Something familiar. Something she herself drew as a toddler, almost obsessively. […] But that was years ago, and Dorothy never kept those drawings, let alone shared them with Annabel.”

Ford emphasizes the phrase “Something familiar” by using it as a sentence fragment. It points to the ci cang soeng sik (or déjà vu) Dorothy experiences as she examines her daughter’s drawings—a major trope in the novel that Ford wishes to underscore.

“For most of her childhood Afong thought she must have been born a horrible man in her previous life to have been reborn a woman. She must have been cruel, to be reborn powerless. She must have been greedy to come back as property. She must have been shiftless, to have had her feet bound in this life. She must have been vehement to have been forced to marry an old man whom she had never met, never seen, unable to forget the young man she had cared for, dreamt about.”

Contrast highlights Afong’s suffering in this passage. Drawing on the Buddhist principle of “samsara,” or rebirth, Afong concludes that being born into a life of suffering—one in which she can even be owned—must mean that she was previously a greedy, powerful, cruel man. This is not the vision of religion that the novel ultimately embraces, as it instead emphasizes that Buddhist Doctrines Bring Hope and Peace.

“That’s when she realized that all the Chinese and Black people were forced to stay. As her mother began to cry, Lai King watched small petals drop from the forget-me-knots, drifting to the filthy pavement like sing Kong can. Stardust, trampled underfoot.”

Lai King dissociates during this quote, focusing on the falling flowers instead of the incomprehensible realities of racist quarantining practices. Ford approaches this difficult moment by using the flower imagery to show Lai King’s dissociation and communicate the impossibilities of her situation.

“‘Was that me?’

Dr. Shedhorn gently put her hand on Dorothy’s arm.

‘They’re all you’.”

This is a moment of anagnorisis, or sudden recognition. Dorothy asks whether her vision of Afong was in fact a vision of Dorothy herself. In answering the question, Dr. Shedhorn helps her realize her identity: Thanks to The Power of Epigenetics, she is the embodiment of her ancestors in addition to being her own person.

“‘How much pain you can endure shows what kind of wife you will become,’ her ah-ma once said, pointing to her own lotus shoes. ‘It shows that you will be able to work hard, to cook, to give birth to many children, and take care of them. To a future husband, your ability to suffer only makes you more attractive.’

As the moon disappeared and it began to rain, Afong thought she must be the most beautiful girl in the world by now.”

“The most beautiful girl in the world” is a superlative, or description of the apex of something. Afong uses this to claim that her suffering has exceeded the norm. If beauty comes from suffering and Afong is the most beautiful, it follows that she has suffered the most as well.

“She was her yin yin, lifeless, vacant, eyelids half-open.”

The second half of this sentence employs asyndeton—Ford intentionally leaves out coordinating conjunctions. This improves the flow of the sentence, emphasizing the relationship between increasingly specific synonyms.

“The light went out of his eyes as he exhaled, a long, slow hiss, but his face remained stuck in that hideous smile, a rictus of contempt.”

The phrase “rictus of contempt” is an appositive renaming Nanchoy’s “hideous smile.” Ford uses this writing technique to make Nanchoy’s final expression more haunting: The word “rictus” evokes the rigor mortis that will soon set in, while “contempt” is among the awful characteristics that lead Afong to murder him. The technique justifies Afong’s violence as a response to violence, highlighting the theme of Agency in the Face of Racism and Misogyny.

“She limped away, soaking wet, freezing, sinking beneath the waves, drowning again, extinguishing once and for all the flickering candle of hope. She stumbled away from who she was, who she once wanted to be, disappearing into the dark night, vanishing from the newspapers, the headlines, forever.”

Lyricism involves vivid expressions of emotional state. The description, “soaking wet, freezing, sinking beneath the waves, drowning again, extinguishing once and for all the flickering candle of hope” could be seen as redundant. However, each of those descriptors serves a function, and together they prolong the moment, emphasizing Afong Moy’s pain and terror as she runs from Nanchoy and the Hanningtons.

“She vomited what seemed like buckets of her childhood, turning her inside out, but instead of bile she expelled laughter and loneliness, joyful prose and faded obituaries, spotlight moments as the center of attention, and holidays spent alone, forgotten.”

This is a key moment of characterization in Dorothy’s story. As she describes this emotional purge following an epigenetic treatment, she lists some of her hardest moments alongside “laughter” and “joyful prose” (145), indicating a complex life with much loneliness and pain.

“Dorothy smiled. ‘Great.’ She hated artichokes almost as much as the fact that Louise knew this and conveniently pretended not to remember.”

Louise is an antagonist in Dorothy’s story, threatening Dorothy’s connection to Annabel. Though seemingly minor, Louise’s choice to make a dish that she knows Dorothy hates foreshadows the more dramatic ways Louise will undermine Dorothy throughout the novel.

“Dorothy knew from painful experience that families are like a school of sharks: it’s a miracle they don’t eat each other or simply swim their separate ways. Something compels them to stay.”

The simile “like a school of sharks” expresses the key idea of this quote. Dorothy’s experiences with family have been unsafe, but she cannot refrain from connecting to her epigenetic past nor hoping for Annabel’s future. She uses the dangerous connotation of “sharks” to express her decision to keep investing in her family.

“But the ah-ma I knew had become very sad. She struggled. Always searching for what she’d lost and unfortunately never found it again. Then she finally went away […] Because she had a broken heart and needed to mend it.”

The second sentence, “She struggled,” demonstrates Ford’s use of varying sentence length. Because the surrounding sentences are longer, this simple, two-word sentence stands out and summarizes all Greta’s experiences, the details of which emerge in the surrounding sentences.

“In that moment Greta realized she had such terrible luck at dating because she’d always imagined that there was someone out there looking for her, someone who’d understand just her, someone worth waiting for.”

The end of this quote uses parallelism to emphasize Greta’s dating expectations. Repeating the word “someone” at the beginning of the last three phrases demonstrates how much higher her expectations are than those of the people using her dating app.

“‘I’d say that some people’s hearts are like the bottom of the ocean,’ Greta answered. ‘Largely unexplored’.”

Greta puts forth a new aphorism—a short, memorable statement of truth—in this quote. Though it is not a common saying, it is the type of pithy statement that could be repeated as advice or folk wisdom.

“Annabel had pruned her face and shaken her head, much to Dorothy’s relief.”

The phrase “Annabel had pruned her face” uses “pruned” as a verb in an unusual way. Used transitively, the verb typically refers to trimming trees, but here it suggests flesh “pruning,” or wrinkling. Paired with the phrase “shaken her head,” the meaning is clear.

“Be mindful of whose hands you place your fate in.”

The character Mrs. Bidwell uses the command form in these parting words to Zoe. She expresses her hopes for Zoe while simultaneously giving her advice, which could apply to many characters as they navigate whom to trust and whom to avoid.

“The words found purchase in Zoe’s mind, and she felt as though the room were spinning. She blinked and heard the hissing of a radiator.”

There are two examples of personification in this quote: “the words found purchase” and “the hissing of the radiator” (269). Finding purchase means “finding sure footing,” and hissing is something that living things, humans included, do.

“She felt unworthy of being a mother because no one of worth wanted her.”

Ford uses epanalepsis, the repetition of a keyword or phrase at the beginning and end of a sentence, to emphasize Faye’s problematic self-perception. In this instance, her self-assessment as “unworthy” is reinforced in the phrase “no one of worth,” making her view of herself more poignant.

“[Lai King] rarely talked about her childhood, but when she did she spoke in fables. How her mother was made of fire. How her father had become a ghost hero. Faye wanted to know more, but as a child she never asked. Now she felt like asking.”

Although Faye calls her mother’s descriptions of her parents “fables,” they are actually examples of synecdoche: A small part of their experiences represents the whole. Rather than recount their lives together in full, Lai King communicates the horror of seeing her mother disappear into a fire to give her a chance at survival. The choice of emphasis suggests the trauma of those experiences.

“She gave up on solving a mystery. Abandoned the idea of reconciling her past. Stopped trying to rewrite her mistakes. Instead, she closed her eyes. She focused on the moment between inhalation and exhalation. The dot on a unicorn’s horn. A liminal space—a bardo—where we go between this life and whatever comes next.”

This quote demonstrates Buddhist worship in action. Faye is meditating and looking for a space between two things; Ford makes the connection to a bardo and defines it as a resting period “between this life and whatever comes next” (286). He also compares it to “the dot on a unicorn’s horn,” something small and magical. The metaphor exemplifies the novel’s magical realism.

“She tried not to think of a certain woman, waving at her from a pier, a silhouette, swallowed by flame.”

This is an example of imagery. Ford describes Lai King’s mother as she looked during their goodbye. In creating something readers can visualize, he makes the description more lasting and underscores its traumatic impact on Lai King.

“Annabel gazed out the window as the sun was setting a cotton-candy swirl of orange and pink and red. The trees an evergreen blur.”

This passage exemplifies the author’s voice. The phrases “setting a cotton-candy swirl of orange and pink and red” and “The trees an evergreen blur” are unique in both word choice and structure. The second sentence intentionally leaves out the verb “were,” while the first includes an excessive “and,” known as polysyndeton.