Stand Up, Yumi Chung!

Several of the book’s plot lines reach a crisis point in this segment. The first emerges when the Chungs learn they may lose their lease if they can’t pay the back rent. This accelerates the pressure on everyone in the family to make the Grand Reopening successful. This crisis precipitates another when Yumi can’t reach her sister and must hunt her down at UCLA. Yuri has succeeded to some degree in overcoming the pressure of Cultural Expectations but only because she is limiting contact with her entire family, including Yumi. The latter is impacted by this communication blackout because she has no ally left to side with her against her parents. The emotional tension building up inside Yumi finally erupts, giving the reader some notion of her psychological distress over parental demands:

It’s right then that I lose it. I completely lose it. The thought of Mom and Dad finding out sends my body buckling into a sobbing fit. The little-kid kind with the snot and the red face and heaving breaths in front of all of Westwood to see. I’ve worked too hard for my plan to blow up now (180).

Fortunately, Yuri isn’t as immune to her sister’s distress as her parents are. She gives Yumi the money for comedy camp tuition and insists that she fix the mess she created.

While this turn of events seems to offer Yumi a way out of her dilemma, she still resists the idea of giving up comedy. Ginny’s advice to quit the camp comes as a surprise and illustrates the degree to which the children of immigrants internalize the importance of success too. A peer might be expected to sympathize with Yumi and encourage her aspirations, but Ginny doesn’t. She says, “‘All I’m trying to say is Jasmine Jasper isn’t Korean. She will never understand our parents.’ Ginny puts a hand on my shoulder. ‘Look at us. We can barely make sense of them, and they’re our parents’” (199).

Yumi’s Fear of Causing Disappointment once again takes precedence over her need for self-expression. She listens to Ginny’s advice and pitches her comedy notebook, apparently willing to sacrifice her dreams to fulfill those of her parents. She asks herself, “What does it mean to follow my heart, anyway? What if pleasing my parents and wanting to do comedy are both pieces of my heart?” (203). Yumi’s future course would be easier to plot if she wasn’t trying to pursue two mutually exclusive objectives.

She fails yet again when she goes to pay Jasmine and explain her deception. Yumi freezes at the thought of disappointing her mentor, and she never gives the intended explanation. Ultimately, her fear of disappointing her parents, friends, and teachers brings about the catastrophe she’s been trying to avert throughout the story. Yumi’s failure to explain herself to Jasmine seals her doom when the real Kay Nakamura shows up. Her deception is revealed in the most publicly humiliating way possible. Not only do her classmates and teacher know what she’s done, but she literally collides with her parents’ car, pulling them into the showcase drama.

As anticipated, parental expectations place Yumi in the wrong for pursuing her personal dream. Her father rebukes her for being selfish. At least inwardly, she defends her position by saying:

But just because I want to do comedy doesn’t make me selfish. Mom and Dad don’t understand that the stage is my lifeboat. The one place where I’m able to let go and make mistakes and figure it out as I go without penalty. I wish I could make them see how much it frees me. But I can’t. I’m not allowed (220-21).

This quote indicates how necessary comedy is to Yumi’s psychological well-being. As she has already demonstrated, she wants to live up to her parents’ expectations and is pathologically fearful of disappointing them. Such a stance is unhealthy and represents an emotional burden that a preteen shouldn’t have to carry. Standing up as The True Yumi would be her salvation, but she doesn’t recognize that fact yet. In fact, she concludes by saying, “And worst of all, I’m right back to who I was before. The Old Me” (222-23).