Chee has always surveyed the world, but he can't survey himself with both eyes.
I chose this title because I was struck by Chee's description of his eyes scribbling in his notebook in The Curse.Chee's insecurity has been present since childhood, not only because of who he is, but also because of the curiosity and comments his identity invites and his own out-of-placeness, so there is a connection between Chee's self-interrogation and his closeness to the world (others). exists in some way.
Chee's shadow appears between the cracks of those romantic words, sometimes sitting in the damp changing room of the swimming pool, with the scent of shower gel and the scuffs of his clothes, outside the blue pool glistening in the sunlight; or he may mingle among pedestrians hurrying by under the street lamps at night, his calm gaze surveying the world around him through layers of blonde hair; or it may appear not to be himself, but he is in the literary sense of the word projection of a mixed-race, confused and disturbed teenager strolling through the streets of Edinburgh.
Yes, Chee is always surveying everything with his eyes. He surveys the tanned faces of boys his own age in the locker room of the pool, he scrutinizes the slowly passing cars and cheering men on Halloween night, and he's watching the world.
Chee shows his confusion and insecurity in many places-his confusion about his place in the world and the way he relates to it-and The Curse is one of the best examples of this. experiences as a 15-year-old exchange student in Tuxtla Gutierrez, Mexico. The town is close to the Guatemalan border, and he lives with a wealthy family who learns to speak Spanish every day by watching a TV series with their chef.Chee says, "Sometimes I'm staring at myself," and most of his notebooks contain doodles of eyes, as if observing and scrutinizing himself, hiding him, but giving him the strength.
Why, then, does Chee have to resort to the eyes in his notebooks, or the eyes of others, in order to calmly examine himself? Why does he close his eyes and turn his head when his gaze touches his identity, his childhood and his present? In Chee's essay The Guardians, a subtle analogy, Chee writes that he is gripped by despair and shame, unable to face the things he so earnestly wants - feelings for his homosexuality, acceptance of his mixed-race identity, and the courage to face himself -- had been so profoundly corrupted. He falls away, "I made a doll of myself to leave in my place, and I ran away." (The Guardians, 6) He believes that he is not recognized by the world, that he can't look his true self in the eye, and that he is running away.
Chee's escapism is not without reason - his long absence from the world's acceptance and understanding has caused him to slowly build a fortress inside of him that he hides in the deepest recesses of his mind.Chee has been lonely, with no one possessing eyes that can look into his eyes, and with only his own scribbles on his notebooks to provide the faintest of support and protection. No one possessed eyes capable of scrutinizing him-or rather, very, very few people capable of standing in the same situation as him-mixed-race, gay, a confused and disturbed childhood-and gently to measure him, to comfort him, and to see the waves that churned within him.
In the Mexican summer, Nick, the boy he secretly fancied, told him, "You sound Mexican," and Javier, the friendly young man, laughed and said, "You're probably mestizo. Their eyes don't penetrate the young Chee in front of them, they don't see the scrutiny, understanding and support he really needs. People had a hard time understanding his existence, so he was always pacing in a circle of possibilities, defined by the limited imaginations of others, and unable to embrace the true self that no one understood.
It is from this that he lacks a sense of belonging and can't find where his home is, or a group of companions who share it with him.Chee is left to hide, to hide the real, confused, vulnerable version of himself in that hybrid shell, amidst people's well-intentioned, or unemotional, laughter and conversation.
But when Chee borrows a new identity, he is able to find a community of people who are similar to him and kindly embrace him, and with that embrace and security, he has the opportunity, and the confidence, to see himself with new eyes, curled up in the body of the mestizo gay man. In the Mexican summer depicted in The Curse, Chee fictionalizes a boy, Alejandro from Tijuana, and deals with his Mexican friends in that capacity. He's like Chee himself, but more at home in the world, more relaxed, not waiting around all day to be caught out, "You're a mestizo, right?" , and not being treated like an alien and receiving strange ogling glances.
In The Girl, Chee recalls his first time in drag, which was Halloween 1990 in the Castro, when he dressed up as a beautiful blonde girl. "This beauty I find when I put on drag, then: It is made up of these talismans of power, a balancing act of the self-hatreds of at least two cultures, an act I've engaged in my whole life, here on the fulcrum I make of my face."(The Girl, 115)
It is when he enters into someone else's identity that he has the opportunity to examine himself. On that bright blue summer day in Mexico, he is Alejandro from Tijuana, Mexico being his happy, eternal home; on the night of the Halloween bash, he is the popular, beautiful, blonde white girl with a face similar to his own mother's. The refractive experience of attraction and otherness-sex, race-in an unfamiliar setting illuminates his feelings as a mixed-race and cool kid growing up in a New England reality." Whatever I thought I was doing by observing the experiment, I could see that I was a boy who had lost himself as a way of finding himself in the image of the Other."
One of the most bizarre things about Chee is that those moments when he looks at himself through his own eyes, confronts who he is and reconciles himself to the world, the ways he uses them are truly anomalous - or, rather, unacceptable to the world. From pretending to be someone else to cross-dressing as a girl, Chee's way of accepting himself and the world is not the simple challenge of transformation found in inspirational novels, but rather the borrowing of unfamiliar identities, with a hint of deception. Yet Chee needs to rely on this borrowing, or the creation of unfamiliar identities that have nothing to do with or even in common with his own, in order to take a serious, dispassionate, and painless look at himself-a sensitive writer, a mixed-race man, and a gay man. It is when he escapes from his own identity that he is able to put his head down and face his true self head on.
Is it sad, to embrace yourself and accept the world in a way that the world doesn't recognize? I don't think it is. Because when Chee is his conformist self, he is alone and helpless, however, when Chee is in his strange and beautiful new identity, he is not alone, he is no longer the Alexander Chee who is always on the receiving end of strange and curious stares, who nobody understands or cares about, but rather, he is the dazzling one of a group of drag queens, or simply a happy resident of a small Mexican town. One of those moments when he is no longer alone. In those moments, when he is no longer alone and therefore no longer disturbed, he has the courage to look at the real himself, with his own eyes - and, of course, to write, to write it all down, in the form of an autobiographical novel.
That's why he only needs to cross-dress once, or pretend to be a native Mexican, and Chee isn't trying to hide in someone else's identity to escape from his original self - if that were his goal, he might just go back to Mexico or frequent drag parties - he needs to do more than that. -Chee has just been waiting for a sign, for a sight, for someone to tell him that he's not alone in the world, that no one understands him, that there's a group of companions in the world who look like him.
So, while pretending to be Alejandro from Tijuana or a beautiful blonde girl, he was surrounded by "eccentric" Mexican friends and boys who were also dressed as women. On Halloween night, he sees in the compliments of his friends and boyfriends, in the whistles and stares of passersby, in the photographs taken by photographers, a version of himself that is accepted by the world. He gets the signal, so he settles down, stops feeling alone and lost, and tries to embrace his true self.
He no longer needed a second disguise, so he put away those beautiful dresses and gave his blonde wig to someone who really needed it. But he wants to write, to remember in words those feelings of acceptance, of being released from loneliness, to sort out his relationship with the world. Through his writing, he generously communicates his long-lost courage, faith and love to the whole world. He looks at the familiar, but unfamiliar himself through his words.
In the words Chee writes, in those descriptions of his assumed identity, he is enjoyable, reassuring, joyful and calm. Even if that identity is fleeting - like, say, the last two afternoons of partying in Mexico, or just a few hours of Halloween night. But it was enough, enough for his mind to escape his shell, enough for him to realize that he was not alone, and he was able to rest assured that he would be able to re-examine his face, his mother tongue, and even his feelings for the same sex, with his own eyes, and accept himself. By the time this soul returns to its mixed-race American-Asian, sexual-minority body at the end of the orgy, it has been sublimated. Like a caterpillar weaving a new cocoon, when it leaves that cocoon, the transformation has fully taken place, and out of the cracks of the cocoon emerges not a fragile, young being, but a butterfly with beautiful wings, able to soar in the flowers and the sky. chee returns to reality from his new identity, with bright eyes, and with his beautiful, moving memories and words.
When Chee was in his original identity, he was too confused and upset to calmly examine and accept himself. And when he creates and enters into a new identity and environment, he is not alone, and so gains a sense of belonging and security, and is able to look at himself dispassionately with new eyes, as he does with his writing.
Chee is perceptive, scrutinizing with his eyes the whole world he is in and the human beings who are similar to him but not related to him; Chee is also lonely, his identity determines that he can't be easily understood and supported, and there is no one who has eyes that can scrutinize him, observe him, and understand him. But he still manages to confront himself and reconcile with the world, by briefly escaping his old body, by taking on a beautiful and illusory new identity, and by writing. He is his eyes.
Chee, Alexander. How to Write an Autobiographical Novel, 2018. Apple Books. https://books.apple.com/us/book/how-to-write-an-autobioGraphical-novel/id1259638687
"The Curse" P7-35
"Girls" P113-138
"The Guardian" P413-454
How Fiction Helped Alexander Chee Face Reality, Fergus McIntosh, https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/how-fiction-helped-alexander-chee-face-reality
Author Alexander Chee on His Advice to Writers, https://www.vulture.com/2019/10/author-alexander-chee-on-his-advice-to-writers.html
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