Bee-e-een! Nation, Transformation and the Hyphen of Ethnicity in Kingston's Tripmaster Monkey
Near the end of Maxine Hong Kingston's Tripmaster Monkey: his fake book, a linked pair of acrobatic twins somersault across a stage. Played by two Americans, one of Japanese ancestry, one of European, both wearing one green velveteen suit, Chang and Eng the Double Boys are both separate and conjoined, neither fully unified nor fully distinct, and expressible only by the grammatical impossibility of the plural singular pronoun (t)he(y). As an individual(s), (t)he(y) find loneliness and identity equally impossible, and their/his (un)solitary (un)doubleness extends to the culture (t)he(y) inhabit. Adopting green velvet and the surname of a battle of the American Revolution, (t)he(y) are included in the practice of cultural signification: (t)he(y) marry, get drafted, attend parties and get drunk. Simultaneously, (t)he(y) are debarred from it, relegated to a marginal world of Black women, yellow men, and freak show exotica. Assaulted by the audience and jailed for the ensuing riot, (t)he(y) berate the crowd through the bars: