All That Matters

By Wayson Choy, 2004 

Set very specifically in Vancouver’s Chinatown in the interwar period, All That Matters is a fascinating and complex book about family, friendship and community in an immigrant community. It’s specific but the themes are universal.

The descriptive detail that Wayson Choy brings into his story make it easy to visualize the reality of the characters’ lives – especially for a Vancouver resident who can place each incident in a well-known setting.  When Choy says that someone could hear the roaring trains passing through the neighbourhood, or could sit on their back porch and watch the sun shining on the mountains, I know exactly what he means. But even for a non-resident, I think the settings would be concrete and real.

Since the story deals with specific historical events and locations, this concreteness helps set the story as the lived experience of people in a real place and time, in spite of a mystical layer that Choy also weaves in. He places things so specifically that I kept thinking the story was autobiographical, although it is not.

Choy offers an insight into an immigrant experience that helps to understand the complexity of the city’s past. Although the Chinese and Irish kids are neighbours and play together, they rarely enter each other’s houses, and their parents barely acknowledge each other over the back fences. And the Chinese immigrants want Canada to enter the war against the Japanese because they know the brutality their families face in China, and hope to take over confiscated Japanese Canadian property. Even within the Chinese community, political and social factions compete, and often resent the benefits that luckier ones have won – such as the children that the single men are unable to father because they cannot bring a wife from China.

Choy also shows the complex relationships within the family. Third Uncle, who is a clan member but not a blood relative, sponsors Father, Grandmother and Kiam-Kim (the narrator as a child) after the death of his own wife. This creates feelings of gratitude, but also obligation, When Second Wife arrives to replace Father’s dead first wife and bring up the family, resentments also grow, although over time that develops into deeper, positive emotions. Kiam-Kim’s own relationships as Eldest Son make him responsible for the adopted Second Son, although he also resents him. When Father and Second Wife have their own children, the family seems to grow together more naturally into a loving unit. Later in the story, secret relationships are revealed that explain some of the underlying family tensions.

I’m not sure what to think of the mystical elements that Choy introduces to these very concrete scenes. Kiam-Kim’s dead mother seems to hover over his life and he sometimes feels her as a real presence. His grandmother communicates with her past lover, and makes artworks that seem to be inspired by unseen forces. These elements seem to be more than the traditional spiritual practices of the community, but represent a powerful force in the lives of the characters – perhaps the weight of their past and their community’s history.

By the end of the story, Choy seems to be saying that what matters is not nationality or community or even family, but supporting the people who are important to you. This will include family, but also others who are part of your life. This perspective is unexpected in a culture where family is central, but as a gay writer, Choy knows that “chosen family” is as important as legal family, even when traditional family ties are complex and deeply part of a character’s psyche.