Carole Maso, from The American Woman in the Chinese Hat


1. A sense of self-reflexivity--the author or narrator's presence in the text--runs throughout The American Woman in the Chinese Hat. In this excerpt, the narrator's presence is increasing over time. By the excerpt's end, the narrator expresses a kind of frustration with what happens and the way in which we are able to see it. "And I would like to help her," the narrator admits, "but I can't." Explore the narrator's role in this novel fragment, and describe how this role shapes the reader's experience of the scene.

2. The very title of Maso's novel indicates existence in a multilingual world. How does the excerpt portray the nature of this kind of complication, and what kind of judgments does it appear to be rendering? What is the role of silence both for the characters who participate in this world and the narrator who views it?

3. "I know," the narrator says, "I am sounding less and less like myself. More like--quoi? a nouveau roman perhaps--a borrowed voice. Still one feels lucky to sound like anything at all. To be able to say anything, to feel anything." Describe how the narrator's and the characters' voices are borrowed and yet are indeed able "to say anything, to feel anything." How are cliché and stereotype used in these pages? What seems original?

4. Compare Maso's use of compression and stereotype to Grace Paley's (in "The Pale Pink Roast"). How do the language and the content of each piece appear rooted in the historical context of the piece, and how do they appear separate from that context?