The Chinese Groove is a novel published by Kathryn Ma in 2023. At its most basic level, one could fairly term it a Chinese-American version of Pollyanna. The heroine of Eleanor H. Porter's series of children's novels eventually became synonymous with a wide-eyed optimism that cannot be dampened by the darkness of any reality. Shelley is a latter-day Pollyanna whose will to believe he is destined for a happy ending will simply not allow for the possibility of any other alternative.
Shelley is the unusual name of a young Chinese teenage boy born into the most despised family living in the Yunnan Province. Shelley is overjoyed upon learning he has been offered the opportunity to visit his rich relatives in San Francisco. He asserts within the first two pages of the book that provides insight into the stage of his optimistic attitude: "I didn’t want to be like my friends who were lined up to work at the Beautiful Objet d’Arts and World Crafts Tin Factory. Theirs wasn’t the fate for me. My future lay outside those gates, for where in a factory could I become the man I intended to be, which was a cool guy and a poet?" This simple ambition of Shelley to become a cool poet in America seems adorably naive at first. And then one learns the rationale behind his resolute belief in the possibility.
"Cousin Deng told me that poets in America got fancy cars and special housing, revered as they were by their fellow citizens as keepers of the famous American freedoms. Thus, my foolproof plan took shape." Shelley, living halfway across the globe and joyously living in oblivious ignorance of the facts, develops a perspective upon American society that is fueled by misinformation. At this point in the narrative, Deng's words of wisdom almost threaten to become a foreshadowing of what is certain to become Shelley's disappointing encounter with the harsh realities of life for Chinese immigrants in America.
It is at the point at which Shelley discovers that his "rich" relatives who run a fabulous shopping center in America are distinctly middle-class citizens who once owned and operated something closer to a single convenience store that the full depth of Shelley's relationship to Pollyanna becomes apparent. Ultimately, his story becomes one of maintaining the ability to be upbeat about future possibilities even in the face of facts and truths capable of creating despondency and hopelessness. Shelley's confrontations with disappointment that nothing he has been led to believe about America is true is also a metaphor for the American Dream, specifically how it relates to the immigrant experience. Before he heads across the ocean, a small but key scene takes place back in his homeland during a romantic pursuit of a girl named Lisbet. "She bought me a ball cap, Houston Dolphins.' She said it was a total fiction; no such team existed." Lisbet then proceeds to warn him against buying into the "whole American Dream crap" because, she insists, "it isn't real."
None of which registers with Shelley. He will not be deterred from pursuing his vision of that concept either back home in China or on American soil. That Houston does not have a team called the Dolphins or that the Dolphins are a team located in Miami is utterly beside the point because the cap is cool and represents the idea of America if not the reality. Just like the fact that Shelley never quite becomes that poet driving fast cars and living in mansions does not matter.
The narrative treks along on the fuel of Shelley's never-ending optimism toward its surprising anticlimactic expression of the eventual fulfillment of his ambitions: "I guess you know the public part of the story. My app became a grand success, making millions." The American Dream has always been a story about people starting toward an imaginary destination and, if lucky, winding up in a different reality that is at least as good as the dream. Shelley's story does wind up where he expects but it is only because he never gives up on his firm belief that the dream will come true that his story winds toward a happy ending.
