It's July, it's summer, it's hot. Amidst the scorching heat, Kim and Hà Trang slip into a discussion about works whose settings are summertime, yet whose interpretation of summer is radically different. In extracts from Call Me By Your Name by André Aciman, the summer is ideally elitist and enchanting, one full of burning desire and coming-of-age infatuation. The high-class castle and white romance make up a Western tradition of secluded and sexual summertime.
By contrast, "Chinatown Diptych" by Jenny Xie presents a steaming July in Chinatown, where bangs are softened with grease and night shifts are followed by day shifts. This is what summer looks like to immigrant workers in the intensely hybrid Chinatown; you consume as much as you are consumed, and any effort to preserve your culture manifests into attempts to sell such exoticism in a Western world.
