Honor and Duty

Starred review from January 31, 1994
Confirming the promise of his first novel, China Boy , Lee has produced another insightful, moving tale. Traditional Chinese moral strictures must coexist with a quintessentially American, military code of honor and the more elusive value systems of American civilian life as young Kai Ting, a first-generation Chinese-American, leaves his San Francisco home to become a cadet at West Point. It is the mid 1960s, and this country's military involvement in Vietnam is escalating. Kai's father and his stern, American stepmother dream of his graduating from West Point and being a ``real'' American. But Kai has other important parental figures--his uncle, who teaches him to revere the ancient ways; Tony Barraza, his Italian-American boxing coach; Momma La Rue, the loving, Christian mother of his African American best friend, Toussaint. To this eclectic mix Kai adds the overpowering influence of West Point, which he grows to love. Each of the moral codes this earnest young cadet tries to integrate is rigorous in itself, and he finds hardship, joy and wisdom in his heartbreaking struggle to reconcile them with each other and with his own personal shortcomings. Although his plot becomes maudlin at times, Lee fashions a generally convincing first-person narrative in Kai's voice, skillfully drawing the reader into each of his young narrator's painful dilemmas. Moreover, his evocations of West Point's grandeur and of the ancient obligations of gahng and lun (bonds and relationships) at work in Chinese-American communities are enthralling. 50,000 first printing; BOMC alternate.