Gish Jen's The Love Wife: The Mixed-Race Child

In Gish Jen’s The Love Wife, Bailey, who is the biological child from Blondie and Carnegie, refracts Blondie and Carnegie’s racial senses of identification. Both Carnegie and Blondie gain their sense of identification as they see the appearance of their son Bailey. Though Bailey is a half-breed child, he does not look like “soup du jour” (156), suggesting the multiethnic heritage. Since Bailey, who resembles his mother as embodied with blue eyes and blond hair, is much more like the white, Blondie not only sees her son whose appearance is similar to her but also takes him as a sense of belonging which she can wholeheartedly devote herself to Bailey. As Blondie mentions that the more she looks at Bailey, she sees more bits of the image of her white family (156), which Bailey becomes their inheritance henceforth. Although Blondie considers that Bailey has “Carnegie’s tilt eyes, and bridgeless nose, and perfect ears” (156), she constantly claims her dominance by saying that Bailey is “[her] child” who was “blond blond” and even “blonder blond” (154). Blondie sees that Bailey positively implies the new direction toward the future because she feels a bit superior to Carnegie’s gene. Nonetheless, what Carnegie sees his son Bailey suggests the negative thought about the sense of inferiority for the “disappearing past” (Jen 156; emphases original). Furthermore, after Bailey was born, Carnegie strongly feels that he is being estranged from Blondie who tries to attentively nurse her child as if he was being cast out due to his Asian appearance. Carnegie thus begins to worry about his son, Bailey, who would marry a white woman, and their child consequently is born blond. Carnegie fears that he may be gradually forgotten.