Introduction

As a young boy, Pao comes to Jamaica in the wake of the Chinese Civil War and rises to become the Godfather of Kingston's bustling Chinatown. Pao needs to take care of some dirty business, but he is no Don Corleone. The rackets he runs are small-time, and the protection he provides necessary, given the minority status of the Chinese in Jamaica. Pao, in fact, is a sensitive guy in a wise guy role that doesn't quite fit. Often mystified by all that he must take care of, Pao invariably turns to Sun Tzu's Art of War. The juxtaposition of the weighty, aphoristic words of the ancient Chinese sage, with the tricky criminal and romantic predicaments Pao must negotiate builds the basis of the novel's great charm.

A tale of post-colonial Jamaica from a unique and politically potent perspective, Pao moves from the last days of British rule through periods of unrest at social and economic inequality, through tides of change that will bring about Rastafarianism and the Back to Africa Movement. Pao is an utterly beguiling, unforgettable novel of race, class and creed, love and ambition, and a country in the throes of tumultuous change.

Kerry Young was born in Kingston, Jamaica, to a Chinese-African mother and a Chinese father-a businessman in Kingston's shadow economy who provided inspiration for Pao. Young moved to England in 1965 at the age of ten. She earned her MA in creative writing at Nottingham Trent University. This is her first novel.

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Excerpt

1

1945

Me and the boys was sitting in the shop talking ’bout how good business was and how we need to go hire up some help and that is when she show up. She just appear in the doorway like she come outta nowhere. She was standing there with the sun shining on her showing off this hat, well it was more a kind of turban, like the Indians wear, only it look ten times better than that. Or maybe it just look ten times better on her.

She got on this blue dress that look like it must sew up with her already inside of it, it so tight, and a pair of high-heel shoes I never before seen the like of. I almost feel embarrassed that she come here and find me like this, sitting on a empty orange crate, in my vest with the beer bottle in my hand.

So we all three of us quickly jump up and ask her how we can help. And what she want is for me to go visit her sister in the hospital so I can see what some white sailor boy do to her.

‘What he do to her?’ Hampton ask.

‘He beat her. He beat her so bad I can hardly recognise her, my own sister.’

‘So what he beat her for?’

‘Just go see her. That is all I am asking of you.’ And then she look directly at me and say, ‘Can you do that?’

And I just say yes even though I don’t know why.

Then she say, ‘Thank you,’ and hand me a piece of paper with the details of the hospital where the sister at. The sister name Marcia Campbell. Then she say, ‘Marcia will tell you how you can contact me if you decide you want to help.’ And she turn and walk outta the shop.

No sooner than she gone Hampton start, ‘The sister a whore,man.’

‘How you know that?’

‘Sure, man, sure. What you think she doing with the sailor boy? They most likely arguing over money. And this one, she probably a whore as well even though she look so good and I bet she taste good too, but she a whore, man, sure.’

‘So what you saying, if she a whore it don’t matter if she get beat?’

‘It come with the territory. Like should I get vex if somebody try my patience? No, man, it come with the territory.’

I ask Judge Finley, ‘You think she just a whore as well?’

‘Yes. I think most likely Hampton right. But if this white boy really beat her like the sister say then you have to ask yourself what kinda man this is and if it OK for a white man to beat a Jamaican woman and it pass just like that.’

‘Cho, man, white men been beating Jamaican women for three hundred years.’

‘That is true,’ I say to Hampton, ‘but this is the first time anybody come ask us to do something ’bout it.’

The next day I go up the hospital to see Marcia Campbell, and she is in a state. The boy break her arm and two ribs and he mash up her face so bad her own mother wouldn’t recognise her. Then she show me the bruises and fingerprints he leave all over her body, and her back where him kick her. Is a wonder the girl still alive.

I ask her, ‘You know the name of the man who do this to you?’ And she tell me, and I say, ‘How can I get hold of your sister?’ I didn’t ask her nothing ’bout what happen because I reckon no kind of argument could justify the condition this woman was in.

When I catch up with the sister she tell me her name Gloria and she ask me what I going to do. So I say to her, ‘You don’t need bother yourself ’bout that. You just leave it with me.’ And afterwards I tell Hampton to go sort it out.

A week later Gloria Campbell come down the shop with money to pay me. She hear ’bout what happen to the sailor boy and how him in the naval hospital. I say to her, ‘I don’t need no money for that. The bwoy had it coming.’ So she put the money back in her purse.

Then she say to me, ‘You know what happen with all of that?’

And I say, ‘No, and I don’t need to neither.’

‘But you know the business we in?’

‘I can have a damn good guess.’

‘We have a house in East Kingston. We got four girls living there. Men think that just because we a house of women they can come there and do whatever they want. That’s how come what happen to Marcia.’

So I tell her, ‘This got nothing to do with me. Yu ask me to help yu and now it done. Yu don’t need to come here to talk ’bout it or explain nothing to me.’

‘I wanted to ask you if you would keep an eye on us. You know like you watch over Chinatown.’

This is the first time I look at this woman properly. Look her in the face because it suddenly strike me that she is a serious businesswoman. And when I look at her she catch me the same way she did that first day. And even though my head is telling me not to get involved with her, my mouth is moving and I hear myself saying, ‘What do you have in mind?’

When I tell Zhang he say, ‘They have a name for that.’

‘I am not pimping these girls. They running their own business. All I am doing is trying to make sure what happen to Marcia Campbell don’t happen again. They paying me the same as Mr. Chin and Mr Lee and all the rest of them.’

‘Chin and Lee run honourable business. What these girls do

not honourable.’

‘They making a living. You want me not do it?’

‘Is your business now, I tell you that the day I retire. You must run it way you see fit.’

The first time I go over to the East Kingston house Gloria invite me to dinner to celebrate Marcia coming home from the hospital. They make a traditional Jamaican dinner, stew chicken and rice and peas with coleslaw and cho-cho that Gloria cook herself. The only people that is there is me and these four women. And what I discover is that these women are just ordinary people who talk ’bout everything from the price of rice to how Bustamante come outta jail and go set up his own political party and win the election from Manley. And that was after a year and a half detention at Up Park Camp because his union call so much strike him nearly bring the country to a standstill and Governor Richards couldn’t take it no more.

To me the whole thing was a joke because after three hundred years of British rule the Queen decide she going let us go vote but the House of Representatives we elect didn’t have no power to do nothing. All it could do was talk, and make decisions that the Governor have the last say over anyway. They call it a partnership between the Colonial Office and the ministers. I call it a stupid waste of time.

But these women take it all serious, like they think all this going actually make a difference to something. Then just the same way they want set the country to right, the next thing is they laughing and joking and getting up and dancing with one another when the mood take them.

What I discover ’bout Gloria is that she got a edge but she also kind and gentle. And when she walk with me out to the car I notice how her arms look like black satin in the moonlight, and my nose catch the sweet, spicy smell coming off of her. Afterwards I discover it a perfume called Khus Khus.

After that I find I am going over there almost every other day. I take something with me, like a hat or a newspaper or something like that, and I leave it there on purpose so I have to go back and fetch it. Then it seem that every errand I am running take me by the house and I step inside because I am passing. It get so bad the rest of the girls just start laughing when they see me coming. So then even I know how it must look. And all I am doing there is drinking tea with Gloria Campbell. I am sipping Lipton’s Yellow Label at ten o’clock in the morning and ten o’clock at night. And I am talking about god knows what because half the time I can’t remember.

Then one day Gloria smile at me and say, ‘You know when I ask you to watch over us I didn’t mean for you to be sitting down here every day looking at me. I already broadcast the news that we under your wing so everything is fine.’

I rest the cup in the saucer, and I put the saucer on the table, and I stand up and say, ‘That is good,’ and I walk out.

Some days she have to tell me to go away because the poor woman can’t get no work done. Every day I promise myself that I will stop going there, and that last maybe two or three days.

Next thing you know I become a odd-job man, fixing up the cupboard door, sawing and hammering even though I don’t know a damn thing ’bout what I am doing. I swear every time I fix something and leave they must have to call a carpenter to come sort it out.

Then one day me and Judge Finley sitting alone in the shop and him say to me, ‘What you doing with Gloria Campbell?’

And I say, ‘Nothing.’

‘Well you better make up your mind to do something or stop going over there. You got things to do and I’m damn sure she got plenty to keep herself busy as well.’

So I say to him, ‘What yu think of Gloria?’

‘What you asking me this for?’

‘I just asking yu, that’s all.’

‘Well now you asking me to give an opinion about a woman I hardly know, a woman I seen maybe five or six times when I happen to take a envelope from her. She beautiful, I give you that. And she got style. She carry herself well. And I think she have some brains as well running all them girls and turning a profit.' view abbreviated excerpt only...

Discussion Questions

From the publisher:

1. The novel begins in 1945, when Pao first meets Gloria, then flashes back to his immigration to Jamaica seven years earlier. Why does the novel open with the love triangle of Pao, Gloria, and Fay, instead of at the beginning of Pao’s life in Kingston?

2. Pao is written in dialect, with words spelled as Pao pronounces them. What is the effect of reading the novel in Pao’s voice? What would the novel be like without Pao’s distinctive voice as narrator?

3. Consider Pao’s first impressions of Jamaica as he arrives from China by boat. How does the city of Kingston look to Pao? How does he quickly make Kingston his home?

4. When Pao falls in love with Gloria, Judge Finley tells him, “Marriage is not for celebrating. It is something you do to give your children a name” (6). Why does Pao choose to marry Fay Wong, and what price does he pay for his choice? How does he eventually reconnect with Gloria’s daughter, Esther, even though he has not given her his name?

5. Compare the two Yang brothers, Pao and Xiuquan. How are the brothers similar and how are they different? Xiuquan declares, “I want something better. Something better than being a Chinaman in Chinatown” (45). Does Pao, too, want something better? Explain.

6. Consider Pao’s inheritance from Zhang. What does Pao learn from the older man? Pao hopes that “maybe one day I become like him, a man that believe in something. A man that is loyal to a cause. A man that people can count on” (51). How does Pao grow up to become like Zhang, and how does he remain different from his mentor?

7. Discuss the impact of Sun Tzu’s The Art of War on Pao’s decision making. How does he put Sun Tzu’s strategies to action? At the end of the novel, Pao realizes, “And then I think to myself sure enough Sun Tzu right ’bout all these things, but maybe life not just a matter of strategy . . . Something that got more to do with what Zhang say ’bout benevolence and sincerity, humanity and courage” (262). How does Pao strike a balance between Sun Tzu’s teachings and Zhang’s principles?

8. According to Zhang, “the Jamaicans same as the Chinese, poor and exploited and oppressed” (30). If the Jamaicans and Chinese are “brothers in arms,” as Zhang believes, why are there tensions between these two groups? How does Pao strive to overcome the ethnic tensions of Kingston, and when does he fail?

9. Discuss the ongoing conflict between Fay and her mother, Miss Cicely. How does Miss Cicely treat her daughter? Why does Fay rebel against her mother, even as an adult? What are the origins of their dispute, and why are they unable to resolve it?

10. Pao narrates, “When Michael Manley win the general election in 1972 I celebrate more than I done for Independence ten years earlier, because this time it really seem to mean something” (200). Why is Pao skeptical of the 1962 celebrations of independence from England? Why is he more interested in politics in the 1970s? Does Pao do his part to improve the living conditions of all Jamaicans? Why or why not?

11. Discuss Father Michael’s involvement in Pao’s life. What is the basis of the friendship between these very different men? What attracts Father Michael to Fay, and what price does Father Michael pay for his temptation?

12. Consider Fay’s escape to England. How does Pao react to his family’s disappearance? What steps does he take to get his children back, and how does he realize that they are better off in England than in Jamaica?

13. When Pao arrives from China as a boy, he becomes Philip Yang; when his son Xiuquan settles in England, Pao agrees to call him Karl. What is the significance of these name changes?

14. Consider the long rivalry between Pao and Louis DeFreitas, the gangster who controls West Kingston. How do these two powerful men conduct business differently? How do Samuels and Kenneth Wong fall victim to the gang war? How do Pao and DeFreitas finally resolve their rivalry?

15. Kerry Young, the author of Pao, moved from Jamaica to England in 1965, much like Pao’s daughter Mui. How does Young portray Mui in the novel? Why does Mui remain attached to her father and to Jamaica, even as a barrister in England? The novel ends just before Mui’s homecoming to Jamaica. How does this ending feel?


Suggested reading
Cristina García, Monkey Hunting; Ha Jin, Waiting; Anchee Min, Pearl of China; Jean Kwok, Girl in Translation; Edwidge Danticat, The Dew Breaker; Junot Díaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao; Jamaica Kincaid, Annie John; Julia Alvarez, In the Time of Butterflies; Lisa See, Shanghai Girls; Henry Chang, Chinatown Beat; Beverley Manley, The Manley Memoirs; Sun Tzu, The Art of War


Kerry Young was born in Kingston, Jamaica, to a Chinese-African mother and a Chinese father, a businessman in Kingston’s shadow economy who provided inspiration for Pao. Young moved to England in 1965 at the age of ten. She earned her MA in creative writing at Nottingham Trent University. This is her first novel.

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