Counterfeit

These chapters introduce the surprising twist that the narrative Ava has been constructing for the detective is much different from the story told from Winnie’s point of view. In Chapter 12, which describes Winnie hiding out in China and getting plastic surgery to change her face, Ava is not Winnie’s dupe but her partner and conspirator. Winnie’s account of their time in college and Ava’s help getting her green card reveal a character who is far from a victim but rather someone ruthless and ready to game the system. Ava’s letter constructed a narrative tailored to what she knew the authorities wanted to hear. Ava’s ability to construct a false front casts doubt on the reliability of Ava’s earlier narration. Her tendency to Live Up to Expectations allows her to participate in Counterfeit, Disguise, and Deception. This works because of Negative Beliefs About Asia and Asian Identities.

Winnie suggests that Ava’s participation in her counterfeit business is motivated by resentment that Ava’s efforts to achieve, perform, and measure up to expectation have not yielded the satisfaction she felt she was promised. Ava feels cheated and so resorts to cheating. Winnie claims Ava enjoyed their con and invented her own strategies for returns, which contradicts Ava’s insistence to the detective that she hated lying. Winnie depicts an ambitious business manager who manipulates Negative Beliefs About Asia and Asian Identities to engage in Counterfeit, Disguise, and Deception. Ava made similar suggestions about Winnie. Winnie’s perspective suggests Ava played up what the detective assumed about a black factory in China—that it is an airless sweatshop exploiting helpless young women who are desperate and maimed.

Winnie’s plastic surgery speaks to the theme of counterfeiting and parallels the “face” that Ava is presenting to the detective. This procedure presumably reverses or modifies the double-eyelid surgery Ava noted in the first chapter. The first surgery would have created a visible crease in Winnie’s eyelid, replacing the monolid she might have had before and making her eye appear rounder. (Monolid describes an eyelid shape with no visible crease, lending the appearance of “one lid,” and is a common feature among people of East Asian descent; the double-eyelid surgery would make Winnie appear more Western.) This focus on eyes plays on themes of seeing and perception that are upended in this section. Winnie’s decision to revise the original surgery suggests that she now deems Western beauty standards inauthentic, while viewing her natural, more oval-shaped eyes as more authentic to herself and culture.

After this twist, Ava’s further first-person story appears in an entirely different light. The reader notices how she manipulates her story, emphasizing her own feelings of guilt and regret and downplaying her culpability. Part of what makes her a believable character is that she represents herself as part of a wholesome family, acknowledging her part in the fights with her husband, and emphasizing her struggles as a mom. She also puts undue emphasis on the fact that she is proud of Olivier, which makes the reader wonder if this, too, is a front. When she reflects on her mother, however, Ava seems wistful, especially when she thinks how her mother—and Ava and her brother—would have had a different life growing up among their family in Hong Kong.

Ava also plays on the detective’s Negative Beliefs About Asia and Asian Identities by creating a contrast between her clean, sanitized life in California and the smog, sleaze, and corruption in China. The gift she receives in China is a valuable handbag made of crocodile skin, which suggests a predatory exchange. The vase Ava brings Olivier is one she bought at the airport and is made of clear and seemingly innocent glass.