CULTURAL COMING OF AGE STORIES: Coco & Sour Heart
Justin Kavalan and Jenn Thorpe English 1102: Section Q Artifact 3
Immigrant and non-American communities are often portrayed unrealistically in American literature and film as marginalized “others” facing stereotypical challenges determined by their race. Rarely do these representations include the cultural nuances made possible through adolescent points of view, the effects of bilingualism, the importance of place, and representations of other cultural elements. The collection of short stories Sour Heart by Jenny Zhang and the animated movie Coco (2017) both offer narratives and characters that deconstruct racial stereotypes by portraying communities of color as living, human spaces defined by the contemporary complexities of family, love, and heritage.
Sour Heart explores the identity of girlhood through seven loosely connected short stories of Chinese-American daughters from recently immigrated families. These narratives deconstruct the economic myth of being “pulled up by your own bootstraps” from the perspective of adolescent girls who are alienated from the American dream. Zhang’s explicit writing style challenges the idea that identity revolves around individualism instead suggesting that familial and cultural identity are primary factors in how the tension between identity and assimilation are played out. Writing from the perspective of young girls in mostly matriarchal families reveals the reversal of the traditional patriarchal structure in family dynamics specific to a Chinese-American culture.
Coco tells the story of a Mexican boy, Miguel, who rebels against his shoemaker family by pursuing his passion in playing music on the Dia de los Muertos, a Mexican holiday where one’s familial ancestors are believed to return home as long as the family puts their picture on a offering, or ofrenda. As a result of his desire to perform in front of an audience at the festival that day, he finds himself in the Land of the Dead, a version of the afterlife, trying to receive the blessing of his musical idol to return home.Throughout the movie, he tries to win the acceptance of his family in his musical endeavors. Finally, Miguel reconciles his familial identity as shoemakers with his own personal image as a musician. Being based around a crucial cultural holiday that celebrates the value of family, familial identity is heavily linked with cultural values. As a result of limitations from either medium, both narratives touch upon similar themes in different manners. Due to the differences in target audience, Coco relies on sentiment and simple emotions to emphasize the different importances of family and cultural identity in Mexican culture. However, Sour Heart relies on more abject discussion of reality to stress the significance of familial values and cultural nuances as a Chinese-American in America. By building the ethnic main characters to be more than one-dimensional in the search for identity, both ultimately utilize language discourse, perspective, setting, and presentation of cultural evidence to deconstruct contemporary stereotypes of what it means to become an individual within a realm of culture and family.
Sour Heart, being told from a first person point of view, places the reader eye-to-eye with the dreams, interpretations of events, and struggles that each young female explores. In “We love you Crispina,” the goals of her parents are to rise above the poverty line and live a more comfortable life. Christina constantly strives to prove herself as a contributing member in her family as she tries to “come up with all the ways I could possibly sacrifice enough to catch up to my parents, who were always sacrificing” (Zhang, 7). At her age, she doesn’t understand that focusing on school could potentially lead to financial stability for her parents in the future. This naive approach to the struggle for success provokes a new outlook on the roles individuals play in a family of immigrants. Christina’s identity is determined based on her interactions and reward/disappointment scale with her parents - not her own personal success. Although these stories are not directly in line with the childhood of Zhang, her background and childhood plays a role in the discourse of each chapter, such as in her childhood picture (Figure 1) of herself growing up with other Chinese-American immigrants. Taking this into account, writing in a first hand point of view gives each story more life as Zhang experienced life from this perspective once before. Coco, a movie clearly written for young children and families, is an animated film that focuses on only one perspective. The focus on only one perspective places the values and dreams of Miguel on the forefront. Like Sour Heart, Coco touches upon similar themes, e.g. family traditions versus personal desires and the role of our ancestors. In the movie, Miguel’s big dreams of becoming a famous musician conflict directly with his family’s realistic, practical, and realized dream of being a successful shoemaker. From a narrative standpoint, this is a direct result of the medium because it is easier to paint an engaging story when the main character has big dreams or ambitions. The struggle for Miguel’s dreams emphasize the significant role that tradition and familial acceptance play in Mexican culture.
Language is an integral element of culture. Sour Heart and Coco both portrays cultures where the dominant language of the culture is non-English, the primary language of the format of the medium. The effortless switch between their primary languages and English provides a new perspective as to how the protagonists see their world. In Sour Heart, Zhang is fully cognizant of the presentation of other languages within her English text. In an interview with Lithub, Zhang herself stated that “I tried to not make it clear in dialogue if they’re speaking Chinese with the narrators’ translating for the reader, or if they’re speaking in a combination of Chinese and English and switching effortlessly between the two. It was really important, for example, that none of the Chinese alphabet characters were italicized or set off formally in any way.” For instance, Zhang uses the term “Chen shu shu” to reference a character in the story “Our Mothers Before Them,” even though “shu shu” is the romanized form of the word uncle. However, since it would be rude to refer to him without his title (similar to a student addressing a professor by their first name) Zhang merges the title into a part of the name without explaining this process of abbreviation and address to an American audience as a demonstration of natural tendencies in Chinese culture. The refusal to translate each linguistic choice reflects Zhang’s determination not to make the “Chinese” part of her identity subservient to the “American” part. Coco takes a similar, but different approach to reconciling the two languages into the film. The film is predominantly in English, with some Spanish words or phrases thrown in. These are often well-known phrases such as “hola” or other thrown in such as “mijo,” a contraction of the words “mi hijo,” or “my son” that would most likely be familiar to a Spanish speaking audience. By using bits and pieces of non-English languages, this prevents viewers outside of the culture from having a false feeling of understanding (which already exists through stereotypes) while connecting with the Spanish audience. As Ella Cerón puts it, “there's something special about watching the movie and just knowing [the meaning], because that knowledge is something you've always had.”
The location of each story plays a role in the deconstruction of stereotypical ethnic tropes. Despite their immediate surroundings, the protagonists of Sour Heart still struggles with being from a different ethnicity and fitting into the “American” way of life. In “My Days and Nights of Terror,” the main character explains to her name change from 条萧 to Mandee was a result of her father’s reasoning to “have names that were pronounceable by white American English speakers because they already had faces that were considered vile to look at and who was going to hire someone with their faces and their names?” (Zhang, 212). Zhang reveals that in order to assimilate in the American society, you must conform to stand out as little as possible. Instead of celebrating diversity, the girls in Sour Heart struggle to accept their heritage.
As Coco was set in Mexico, the directors and producers went to great lengths to demonstrate the importance of the Day of the Dead in order to represent the cultural implications on identity through Miguel’s adventure. Alanna Ubach, who voiced the character of Mamá Imelda, Miguel's great-great grandmother, noted that Mexican heritage "has been just so challenged these past couple of years. People forget what a rich, sophisticated culture the Mexican culture is." (Puig). Director Lee Unkrich grew up outside of Cleveland, is white, and has no firm connections to Mexico nor its traditions, which made his role a challenge from the start. As Maria Garcia explained in the New York Times article, Unkrich “relied on several research trips to Mexico, and the personal stories of Latino team members, which helped ground… with specific geographic and sociological roots.” In these efforts, Coco captures the true cultural influence of family acceptance and venerating family members on the identity of Miguel.
Accurate representation of the ethnic implications is crucial in each coming-of-age story. Besides language and setting discourse, both Zhang and Unkrich divulged into the importance of specifically matriarchal families cultural implications of the adolescents. The family dynamics and stories of young girls’ discovery of identity in Sour Heart creates new perspective for the audience in terms of what life is really like as a young, female Chinese-American. A commentary on Zhang’s work claims that explains that the book creates an effect like “like watching a wound scar in reverse. It seems to say: This is the site of trauma. I might heal, but I’ll never be the same” (Stephan). Unlike traditional beliefs that children of immigrants feel connected to their homeland, Zhang reveals in the chapter “Our Mothers Before Then” that the protagonist’s only memories from China “were all given to me by my mother” (Zhang, 94). Besides the importance of the matriarchal family, Zhang embodies the feelings of disbelonging in each chapter as each character comes to terms with the fact that their “parents have lived more complex and internally contradictory lives than [they] imagined” (Stephan). The matriarchal structure in the Mexican culture was extremely evident in Coco as the abuela was the driving force behind the celebration. The accuracy of this depiction was noted by Ella Cerón as she explained, “In Miguel's Mamà Imelda, I saw my own grandmother, a matriarch who provided for her family after my grandfather died.” Further, Mieko Gavia explains the importance of accurate visual depictions seen in “Close-up shots of Miguel's face [that] show every freckle, and the thicker, slightly coarser hair follicles that many mestizos run their fingers through every day. Brown people get precious few chances to see themselves portrayed onscreen, and so to see our skin and hair treated with such love and care and nuance is world-changing.” Through accurate cultural and visual depiction, both Sour Heart and Coco individualize their coming of age stories with realistic, authentic cultural ties.
Coming of age is an experience so individual to characters from many different cultures and countries, yet such narratives are too commonly grouped into singular American experiences that value traditional plot points over the complexity of a character’s cultural heritage. Sour Heart and Coco s uccessfully demonstrate cultural values and nuances to show how different each coming-of-age story is because of the rich values and cultural rooting each protagonist struggles to accept. In Sour Heart, Zhang challenges commonly held beliefs about immigrants by using each protagonist’s struggles to show different aspects of Chinese immigrant’s lives. On the other hand, Coco uses a simpler story told by one character in a well-researched and culturally accurate surroundings to create a singular, but emotionally riveting story that builds sympathy with the viewer to a Mexican culture that isn’t plagued by stereotypes, generalizations, and gross simplifications. Even though both stories are fiction, they portray realistic communities that affect their audience's perception of the respective cultures.
Works Cited: Cerón, Ella. “What Disney's Coco Means to Me as a Mexican-American.” Teen Vogue. 28 Nov. 2017. https://www.teenvogue.com/story/disney-pixar-coco-mexico-representation?verso=true. Accessed 7 November 2018 Garcia, Maria. “‘Coco’ Was the Story of My Life.” The New York Times, 28 Nov. 2017. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/28/movies/coco-mexico-audiences-react-pixars.html. Accessed 16 November 2018. Gavia, Mieko. “Pixar’s ‘Coco’ Furthers Mexican Representation - But The Cliches Are So Disappointing.” Bustle. 22 Nov. 2017. https://www.bustle.com/p/pixars-coco-furthers-mexican-representation-but-the-cliches-are-so-disappointing-5526302. Accessed 16 November 2018. LaBarge, Emily. “Sour Heart by Jenny Zhang review - from China to the US.” The Guardian. 22 September 2017. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/sep/22/sour-heart-jenny-zhang-review. Accessed 16 November 2018. Puig, Claudia. “Latino artists and cultural leaders weigh in on how ‘Coco’ got it right.” Los Angeles Times, 2018. http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/la-ca-mn-coco-latino-culture-20180222-story.html. Accessed 7 November 2018. Stephan, Bijan. “The Grotesque Loveliness of Sour Heart.” The New Republic. 2 August 2017. https://newrepublic.com/article/144163/grotesque-loveliness-sour-heart. Accessed 16 November 2018. Ugwu, Reggie. “How Pixar Made Sure ‘Coco’ Was Culturally Conscious.” The New York Times, 19 Nov. 2017. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/19/movies/coco-pixar-politics.html. Accessed 7 November 2018. Ward, Logan. “Top 10 things to know about the Day of the Dead.” National Geographic, 26 Oct. 2017. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/travel/destinations/north-america/mexico/top-ten-day-of-dead-mexico/. Accessed 19 November 2018. Zaleska, Monika. “JENNY ZHANG: ‘I DIDN’T WANT TO GIVE IN TO THE WHITE AMERICAN GAZE’.” Lithub, 3 Aug. 2017. https://lithub.com/jenny-zhang-i-didnt-want-to-give-in-to-the-white-american-gaze/. Accessed 16 November 2018