#6

Wittman Ah Sing is a young playwright living in 1960s San Francisco. As a Chinese American, Wittman struggles to find a place for himself in American culture as well as battles to understand his Chinese heritage. The reader is first introduced to Maxine Hong Kingston's hero Wittman Ah Sing as a character who "consider[s] suicide every day". Within the first page of the book, Wittman contemplates shooting himself in the mouth because "Hemingway had done it in the mouth". The fact that the narrator brings up Hemingway's suicide in comparison with Wittman's suicidal thoughts implies that they are merely fantasies. Kingston even writes, after describing her main character as suicidal, that he merely "entertained" the idea. The word "entertained" as well as the reference to Hemingway's suicide romanticizes the whole notion of suicide. Kingston's word choice and dramatic description of being shot in the head work together to build a first impression of Tripmaster Monkey's hero.