STEER TOWARD ROCK
by FAE MYENNE NG

Author . Discussion Questions . Reviews

But it is the free-spirited, American-born Joice Qwan with whom Jack falls in love. A woman whose life is guided by more than simple pain, Joice hands out towels at the Underground Bathhouse and sells tickets at the Great Star Theatre; her mother cleans corpses. Joice wants romance and she wants to escape Chinatown, but Jack knows that she is his ghost of love, better chased than caught.

It is the 1960s and while the world is on the edge of an exciting future, Jack has not one grain of choice in his life. When his paper wife arrives from China he is forced to fulfill the last part of his contract and to stand before the law with the woman who is to serve as mistress to his fake father. Jack has inherited a cruel cultural legacy. A man with no claim to the past, his only hope is to make a new story for himself, one that includes both Joice and America.

Not since Bone, Fae Myenne Ng’s highly praised debut novel, has a work so eloquently revealed the complex loyalties of Chinese America. Steer Toward Rock is the story of a man who chooses love over the law, illuminating a part of U.S. history few are aware of, but one that has had echoing effects for generations.

2. Talk about the different kinds of love in the book. Discuss sexual, familial and romantic love. Discuss your various expectations, disappointments and surprises in these kinds of love.

SEX

3. Talk about sexuality. Why do the women favor sex in storage rooms, alleys, stairways, is sex a stolen pleasure? Discuss the goals of procreation and recreation in sex.

4. The Chinese Exclusion Law of 1882 created a bachelor society. Women were scarce and held a particular sexual power. The Old Bachelors craved sexual happiness, the grass widows in China yearned for their husbands. Talk about the effects of this sexual imbalance on the Chinese American family.

MARRIAGE

5. What do Gold Szeto, Jack and Zhenren hope to attain through marriage? Why do Joice and Veda resist marriage?

Discuss and compare your parents and your own goals in marriage.

6. Discuss the different views of sex, love and marriage between men and women.

MOTHERING

7. Boy or girl, Joice decides to keep her baby but will abandon Veda. Ilin becomes fulfilled as a Stand in Mother. Veda has a tubal ligation and will never be a mother. Discuss Veda’s relationship to Joice, her mother, to Old Lady Qwan, her Grandmother, to Ilin, her Stand-in mother.

Discuss Jack’s mothers in China: the Birth Mother and the Barren Mother. On pg 208, the Ancient One’s speaks about her birthing and then selling of Jack, “…the first was not my glory and the last was not my doom.” Discuss her feeling. Discuss other ways we give away, give up the people we love.

8. On pg 215, Veda encounters a man and his adapted Chinese daughter.

“Though I was glad for the child, glad for the family now made complete, I was most glad I wasn’t the blood mother who gave her up, or the de facto mother who would sacrifice as much only to stand second.”

Discuss Veda’s complex feelings about adoption. Discuss your views on surrogate motherhood, adoption, and today’s many forms of integrated families.

FATHERING

9. How does Veda’s knowledge of her father’s story prevent her moving forward in her own life? How does her father try to release her from this bind?

10. Discuss Jack’s thoughts on pg 18: “This is a story I’m afraid to tell and afraid to keep. This is a story I will never tell my daughter. This story should only be told to a lover.” Compare this with Veda’s decision not to tell Jack that she met his blood mother in China, pg 230: “I buried the story in China. Telling would make it a dead end.” How is Jack and Veda’s relationship centered on telling and not telling?

TELLING

11. Discuss the safety of stories. Are there stories better left untold?

12. Before leaving, Joice tells Veda the story of Jack’s childhood (p 195). Veda never tells Jack about meeting his blood mother or about the cop incident. Which stories are safe to tell, which are not? Discuss Jack’s belief: The details are not important, it’s where the story leads you.

13. Ng has said, “We become Americans when we tell our story.” Compare the stories that are told and those that are not told in the novel. Discuss stories you have ‘held back’. Have you ever ‘withheld’ a story out of love?

LAWS

14. Before 1882, America’s open door policy admitted everyone except “lepers, prostitutes and morons.” With the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, the Chinese were added to that list. By the time the Exclusion Act was repealed in 1942, the anti-miscegenation law overturned in 1967, a society of Old Bachelors was created, with devastating effect on the community. Discuss the power and perversion of this legislation on the Chinese American family.

Are there laws today that control your intimate life?

15. The Chinese Confession Program (1956-65) and McCarthyism challenged trust and loyalty within the community. Discuss the effects of collective secrecy on the individual. Are there truths in your community and family that can’t be told? What would the damage be? How has this secret impacted your ability to feel free, to feel safe and able to move with confidence in the world?

15. The Anti-Miscegenation Laws prohibited marriage with non-whites, which included Asians and Mexicans and Filipinos. This wasn’t ruled unconstitutional until Loving vs Virginia in 1967.

Discuss today’s issues regarding the legal right to marriage.

FRIENDSHIP

16. Discuss loyalty and obligation in the friendship. Louie and Jack, MiMi and Veda, Ilin and Joice practice a complex balance of obligation and emotional debt in social relationships. Discuss how you maintain social harmony in your social, professional, communal and familial relationships. What role does emotional debt play in your relationships?

NAMING

17. The Immigration Official tells Jack he must choose between two names. Why does Jack want both names? Discuss how Jack gives permission and why Veda chooses the name she does.

18. We are named by our parents. Many of us grow into new names as our lives change. Have you outgrown your name? Have you renamed yourself? Discuss the significance of naming in your culture, is naming a form of possession? How did you name your children, your home, your pet, what secret names do you give your lover, your enemy? What names have you rejected?

CONFESSING and TRANSLATING

19. Discuss the power dynamics of language in the Naturalization Interview. Consider the Officer’s official English, Veda’s translation and discuss how Jack receives the ‘true’ question from observing his daughter’s discomfort and the Officer’s demeanor.

20. Have you been in situations when you were questioned by authority and required to answer yes or no when your answer is much more complex? Discuss.

"Combining elements of gangster noir, romance, grumpy-old-man comedy, and family drama, Ng finds a fresh and exciting way to tell a familiar story."
—Elle

"A searing portrait of another immigrant struggling to get by. . . . Ng brings to this moving story both a sensuous, poetic style and an understated tone that only serves to underline the immigrant struggle.
—Booklist

"This eagerly awaited follow-up to Fae Myenne Ng's first novel, Bone, again addresses the issues of Chinese-American identity in this moving, unflinching yet sometimes witty story. . . . A nuanced portrayal of two generations and the many challenges they face in their quest for security and fulfillment."
—Publishers Weekly

"Ng's second novel (Bone, 1993) depicts the tensions and affections of a complex Chinese-American family in San Francisco. . . . Her true subject [is] the cultural gulf between immigrants and their children, between aliens and citizens, the naturalized and the native."
—Kirkus Reviews

“This is an always gorgeous and often terrifying love story. It’s a poetic study of loyalty, love, loneliness, hard work, identity, immigration and political paranoia. I sing an honor song for Fae Myenne Ng’s return with her new novel. It has already claimed a special place on my bookshelf alongside those few books that I read and read again.” --Sherman Alexie, author of The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

“Fae Myenne Ng writes like a bebop jazzer, a Miles Davis trumpet solo, tough and trenchant; moody and poetic; erratic and explosive, with surprising lines leading to beauty and to truth. Steer Toward Rock draws you into a family and pulls you into Chinatown, behind the glittery facades; beneath the gritty surfaces. Here’s how the people there talk, work, think, fight and love. I feel as though I’ve just read a future classic.” --Ben Fong Torres, author of The Rice Room, award-winning (former) editor of Rolling Stone

“Here is a tale about illegal aliens from China, told with their own images, idioms, and axioms—and charming humor. Theirs are rich, complex lives, traversing the worlds and interrupted by immigration laws, ‘laws by men that collided with laws or our ancestors.’ An intriguing book most relevant now, Steer Toward Rock is a truly poetic novel.” --Maxine Hong Kingston, author of The Woman Warrior and I Love a Broad Margin to My Life.

“In Steer Toward Rock, Fae Myenne Ng confirms the extraordinary talent she displayed in Bone. She makes brilliant use of economy; her characterizations are flawless, never overdone. She creates a world of people whose lives are centered in bonds and promises, who live without great expectation but with hope and strength of will. Steer Toward Rock is richly and beautifully crafted by virtue of the author’s skill. It is a fine, rewarding novel.” --Robert Stone, author of Dog Soldiers

“Fae Myenne Ng has written a luminous love story . . . her protagonist Jack Szeto, beset on all sides, a stranger in a strange land, must choose between the love of his life and the only family he has ever known. Set in a San Francisco as strange as it is quixotic and peopled with a host of heart-break characters Steer Toward Rock is a joy of a novel.” --Junot Díaz, author of Drown and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao