Gender Differences In Alena Chercover's Paper

Although the attention of Alena Chercover’s paper is on ethnic and gender differences, she enforces that “Kiam-Kim and his peers (Jenny, Meiying, and Jack) occupy a central focus of the narrative” (5), in line with the development that children in Choy’s novel are most audacious in terms of defying racial confines. Chercover provides insight to these impassible borders when she discusses “Choy’s characters [who] repeatedly try and fail (often with violent consequences) to subvert them” (9), using multiple examples of the children characters in the novel. The scenes created by Wayson Choy and discussed in Cercover’s paper are appreciated for making clear the effort of children to push racial boundaries and limitations seemingly forbidden
by their elders. She does this by dissecting the motives of each character, beginning with the tried “attempts by Chinatown elders to constrain Meiying, she appears capable of subverting boundaries. Though relegated to the home as a nanny for Sekky (the youngest Chen brother), Meiying strategically escapes this limitation, crossing not just gender but also ethnic borders” (10), opening the doors for other girls in the novel, such as Jenny. Chercover agrees that “Choy depicts Jenny flirting with the idea of border crossing throughout her youth, stepping briefly across lines and testing limits” (10-11), something elders would not do in All That Matters.

At the Ontario Writer’s Association, Wayson Choy expresses that “the sooner you start, the better you’ll get” and even though he’s sp

Works Cited
Chercover, Alena. “ ‘His Paper Family Knew Their Place’: Diasporic Space in Wayson Choy’s q All That Matters. Postcolonial Text. Web. 26 February 2014.
Choy, Wayson. All That Matters. Toronto: Anchor Canada, 2005. Print.
Choy, Wayson. “Words of Wisdom from Wayson Choy.” Ontario Writer’s Conference. Ajax, Ontario. May 2012. Speech.