10.6
Happy Family
Jane Shore
A poet and English professor, Jane Shore grew up in the 1950s in New Jersey. She received her BA from Goddard College and an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Shore was a Briggs-
KEY CONTEXT The inspiration for this poem is the quotation from Anna Karenina (1875) by Leo Tolstoy: “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
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In Chinatown, we order Happy Family,
the Specialty of the House.
The table set; red paper placemats
inscribed with the Chinese zodiac.
5 My husband’s an ox; my daughter’s
a dragon, hungry and cranky; I’m a pig.
The stars will tell us whether
we at this table are compatible.
The waiter vanishes into the kitchen.
10 Tea steeps in the metal teapot.
My husband plays with his napkin.
In the booth behind him sits a couple
necking, apparently in love.
Every Saturday night after work,
15 my mother ordered takeout from the Hong Kong,
the only Chinese restaurant in town.
She filled the teakettle.
By the time it boiled,
the table was set, minus knives and forks,
20 and my father had fetched the big brown paper bag
leaking grease: five shiny white
food cartons stacked inside.
My little sister and I unpacked the food,
unsheathed the wooden chopsticks —
25 Siamese twins joined at the shoulders —
which we snapped apart.
Thirteen years old, moody, brooding,
daydreaming about boys,
I sat and ate safe chop suey,
30 bland Cantonese shrimp,
moo goo gai pan, and egg foo yung.
My mother somber, my father drained,
too exhausted from work to talk,
as if the clicking chopsticks
35 were knitting something in their mouths.
My mother put hers aside
and picked at her shrimp with a fork.
She dunked a Lipton teabag in her cup
until the hot water turned rusty,
40 refusing the Hong Kong’s complimentary tea,
no brand she’d ever seen before.
I cleared the table,
put empty cartons back in the bag.
Glued to the bottom,
45 translucent with oil, the pale green bill
a maze of Chinese characters.
Between the sealed lips of my fortune cookie,
a white scrap of tongue poking out . . .
Tonight, the waiter brings Happy Family
50 steaming under a metal dome
and three small igloos of rice.
Mounded on the white oval plate, the unlikely
marriage of meat and fish, crab and chicken.
Not all Happy Families are alike.
55 The chef’s tossed in wilted greens
and water chestnuts, silk against crunch;
he’s added fresh ginger to baby corn,
carrots, bamboo shoots, scallions, celery,
broccoli, pea pods, bok choy.
60 My daughter impales a chunk of beef
on her chopstick and contentedly
sucks on it, like a popsicle.
Eating Happy Family, we all begin to smile.
I prod the only thing left on the plate,
65 a large garnish
carved in the shape of an open rose.
Is it a turnip? An Asian pear?
The edges of the delicate petals
tinged with pink dye, the flesh
70 white and cool as a peeled apple’s.
My daughter reaches for it —
“No good to eat!” The waiter rushes over —
“Rutabaga! Not cooked! Poison!” —
and hands us a plate with the bill
75 buried under three fortune cookies —
our teeth already tearing
at the cellophane, our fingers prying open
our three fates.
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Understanding and Interpreting
How does the setting, a Chinese restaurant, establish the mood of the poem?
When the speaker shifts to her childhood in the third stanza, what are the similarities and differences she describes between her birth family and her current family?
Why does the speaker describe the food from both the past and present scenes in such detail, listing ingredients and making comments such as “the unlikely / marriage of meat and fish, crab and chicken” (ll. 52–
53)? How do these descriptions relate to the depiction of the families? How does the speaker’s understanding of her birth family contribute to her perceptions of her current family? How does the memory of an experience from her past influence the present?
Does the poem have a happy ending? Explain your reasoning. In your response, take into account the reference to the “stars” in the opening stanza and the “fates” in the final stanza.
Analyzing Language, Style, and Structure
What is the story line, the plot, of this poem? How do the shifts in time structure the narrative of “Happy Family”? If Shore had started with the past and moved chronologically to the present, how would that choice have changed the effect?
What elements of disruption, perhaps even violence, do you find in the poem? Identify specific words and images (such as “impales”), and consider how they contribute to a sense of danger. What contrasting images do you find? Are these patterns in tension or balance with one another? Cite textual evidence to support your response.
To what extent do you think the title “Happy Family” is ironic? Is the overall tone of the poem ironic? If not, how would you describe it?
Connecting, Arguing, and Extending
How does this poem comment on the Tolstoy quotation about happy and unhappy families? As you respond to this question, consider the definition of “happy” that emerges from the poem.
Research the Chinese dish called “Happy Family.” Apart from its name, why is it a particularly appropriate dish for this poem?
Write your own narrative that either illustrates or challenges Tolstoy’s claim that “[a]ll happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” You might focus on your own family, another you’ve observed, or one you’ve experienced through your reading.
Find or create two visual images, one that represents the speaker’s current family, the other her birth family. Juxtapose them in such a way that they comment on the relationship between the two families. Write an explanation of your choices.