Equality means everyone is free to have a dull life: "Omakase" by Weike Wang

This story frustrated me. It's about a woman who talks herself into being taken advantage of, talked down to, and to playing second fiddle in her relationship. Which is all fine grist for a story, except it doesn't cover any ground that hasn't been covered a thousand times already, and is rather straight-forward about bringing these elements into the story. Our--sigh--unnamed narrator, a.k.a. "The Woman," is in a relationship with a tool, but it's hard for her to see that he's a tool, because that would require her to have a sense of self-worth. She doesn't have this sense because she's a woman who's been taught to be silent and to go along and not be hysterical or imagine people mean something when they don't. Those are all normal issues women deal with in our society, but "the woman" has it worse, because she's a daughter of first-generation Chinese immigrants. They made sure to let her know how lucky she was to land a white guy like "the man." So did all her girlfriends. So it's very hard for her to trust her instincts when her instincts say the guy's acting like an ass.

While he's acting boorish and dismissive of her on their sushi date, which makes up, along with two flashbacks, the entirety of the story, she's not able to gather up the self-respect to demand he stop acting like a dick. The narrator gives us a long list of self-damaging character traits the woman has, all of which have been well covered in feminist literature, psychology, and pop psychology. Here are some of the easy-to-find passages:

-"She got nervous looking at a list of options and would second-guess herself." (Meanwhile, he "enjoyed going with the flow," because men are rewarded for seeming to be carefree. He tells her many times that she worries too much or that she's overthinking it.)
-"She felt that she was constantly in danger."
-This is too long to copy all of, but when she was moving in with him, she made an Excel list of everything she owned so they could make sure not to have two of anything, unless there was a good reason to, but it was too much work for him to look at. Basically, she puts more effort into everything than he does, and he benefits from it but also criticizes her for being high-strung.
-"She did not want to take up too much space."
-"She would frequently wonder, but never ask, if he had looked for a job as diligently as she had." (They lived in different cities when they started dating, and agreed they'd both look in each others' cities for the best place to live. She found one in New York, where he lived, and moved there.)
-"The woman, however, did not want to offend the chef and held her mug until she felt her hands go numb."
-"...it made her feel good that the man was desired."
-The man picked all the movies on their Skype dates, which were basically watching the same movie on Skype together while drinking wine. Some of them, she didn't really want to see.
-She realized that when the man was making an ass out of himself because he'd confused the chef with some other Asian person, she would have to point out his error in such as way as not to embarrass him or hurt his feelings.
-"The woman didn't want to make a big deal out of nothing. She didn't want to be one of those women who noted every teeny tiny thing and racialized it."
-"What's wrong with me? the woman thought. She was getting riled up over nothing."
-She makes more money and pays for their sushi when they go out, but tries not to make a big deal about it.
-"She didn't want to sound insane, yet she also didn't want to be a quiet little flower."

None of this is covering new ground, and the punches are all delivered through an unending series of straight jabs. The list above isn't really a story, it's just a list of well-known attributes women have that prevent them being assertive of their own rights. But that list occupies a lot of real estate in the narrative. Reading this story was fairly similar to the experience of listening to a female CEO talk about how women need to be more like men. I agree with some of the thoughts expressed, but that doesn't make them any less dull just because I agree with them.

There were a couple of apertures into a story I wish the narrator would have told. One was when the woman sees a teenage, Asian waitress with purple hair. The woman wishes she herself could have been as outgoing and confident when she was young, but she'd been prevented by her own upbringing. She thinks to herself that the young waitress doesn't know what the generation before her had to go through so that she could have purple hair. Now that's an interesting story, and one the narrator is in a unique position to tell. Instead, we have a list of problematic attributes women are coerced to acquire all the way up to the end. The small surge of anger she starts to feel near the end--"She imagined taking two toothpicks and sticking them through the man's pretty eyes to stop them from rolling"--is too little too late.

Had the story been about the woman seeing a younger version of herself and wanting to help guide the younger version, but finding the younger version actually didn't need help, and so trying to figure out what her role in life might be--that's a story I'd get into. But the story that's there could have been a flash and been just as effective: omakase means "I'll leave it up to you," and that suits both the man and woman, but for different reasons, and that's all their problems in one sentence.

I also would have been interested in the woman following the trail of anti-Japanese sentiment her older Chinese relatives felt. The narrator tells us that,"Thankfully, that history was not part of the woman's identity." That would also have been something worth exploring. Maybe feelings of guilt, like how letting go of the grudges of your ancestors feels like a betrayal, like you're forgetting about them.

Maybe there is one interesting aspect to the story, but it's a matter of serendipity. Because the story comes right after "They Told Us Not to Say This" in the BASS anthology, a story in which the only white man is a hyper-idealized white savior, it offers an interesting balance. Some white men are well aware that they are being graded on a curve by moms and girlfriends of the Asian women they are in relationships with, and they take advantage of it.

I have to admit, the most I've ever felt the existence of white privilege wasn't when I was here in the States, it was when I lived in Korea for a few years. Speak any Korean at all, and you'll get unfailing pats on the head. Speak Korean like I do--which is far from perfect, but enough to get the point across usually and even a high-fallutin' vocabulary word thrown in now and again--and you'll have ajumas fanning themselves to keep from passing out before your brilliance. I once listened to my landlord praise my intellect for five minutes in front of my real estate agent, who spoke English far better than I did Korean. But he was an ethnic Korean who grew up in L.A., while I was a white man. To my landlord, Koreans are supposed to learn English, but for a white man to learn Korean means he's a genius.

It's easy to get used to taking advantage of a system like that. It's probably good I came back here after a while and later decided to start writing stories that mostly got rejected so I could realize I'm not special. I'm sure Asian women do end up in relationships with those guys. But if that's what went on here, I would have liked to see a little bit about how the man in the relationship was beguiled by all that into maybe being a bigger jerk than he would have otherwise been. Maybe some near epiphany for him to go along with the dawning epiphany for her would have given this story a rounder flavor or taken it in a direction I haven't seen before.

Anyhow, that's BASS for 2019. I usually wrap it up with some kind of assessment of the collection as a whole, but I don't think I'll do that this year. It was a safe, standard collection. Lots of big names, which means there weren't many surprises in it. It didn't really take risks, except maybe in "Wrong Object." It was the appropriate mix of genders, ethnicities, and nationalities. All of which means it was kind of boring. I don't think I'll remember more than a handful of the stories more than a month from now. That probably showed in my analyses, which I don't think were as strong this year as last year. Roxane Gay's tweets infuriate me sometimes, but she picked a great anthology last year.

I'm not sure I'm going to keep doing this. It's been good for me as a writer to read with the level of attention I've been giving it, but I'm really pressed by other commitments now, and I may have to take a break from it.

I will make this offer, however, to the folks who run BASS, who've been very kind to me. Especially editor Heidi Pitlor, who has occasionally re-tweeted or liked some of the tweets I've sent out linking to BASS posts. The last two years, the final story in the journal has been written by someone named Wang. Now, I realize that the Chinese girl isn't at the back because of any bias on BASS's part. It's just BASS's alphabetical-order-by-last-name way of doing things. But does AMERICA know this? Do you want to take that chance? Next year, if you put one of my stories in--and I've got one coming out (I hope) soon--I can guarantee nobody named Wang will be the last story next year. And I certainly won't complain about being last in the 2020 BASS anthology.