History as Fiction - Tracy Li

I've found the lack of a sidekick, best friend, or consistently-appearing loved one to be part of the surreal aspect of Invisible Man, especially as the narrator speaks with such conviction of love and hate and similar attachments by the end of the novel. When wondering if the narrator truly loved anyone, I thought initially of Mary. Certainly, Mary Rambo is one of the few characters the narrator ever feels personally attached to. She becomes far more to him than just the landlady.  The name 'Mary' has always been associated with maternity, ever since the birth of Jesus. Similarly, Mary Rambo represents a mother figure in the narrator's life, especially after his 'rebirth' from the paint factory. She takes him in; she nurses him back to health physically and mentally; she is like a solid rock in his life he anchors himself to while searching for his identity in an unfriendly city. Like mother and son, Mary becomes a necessary part of the narrator's existence...

Yams After reading Chapter 13 of Invisible Man, I haven't looked at yams quite the same. At first, it was hard to understand how such an ordinary food could be symbolic of a heritage that the narrator grew to recognize to be shameful to unavoidably his. I’m sure we all thought he was just getting crazier. But then fifth-grade memories started to filter back, and I remembered uncomfortable recesses when I tried to eat my mom’s home-cooked Chinese meals as fast as possible, before the other girls with their peanut-butter jelly sandwiches could realize -- maybe from the rich but unfamiliar smell of Asian spices -- that I was having “weird Panda Express” for lunch. It was the same vague feeling of shame for not conforming. But dumplings and stinky tofu, foods connected to Chinese culture that goes back hundreds to thousands of years are one thing to be awkward with. Why would the narrator feel as if eating yams was out of place in New York?  We can first establish that the yam isn’t ju...