By Justine Trinh
Although Severance was published in August 2018 and marketed as a satire, it is difficult not to read it now as prophetic of our modern world. The author, Ling Ma, describes a bleak world that has been ravaged by a global pandemic over a year before the advent of COVID-19, and while instances within the book are meant to come off as humorous – such as the use of the song, “New Slang” by the Shins, as prayer or the demand for gemstone Bibles as the world falls apart – other parts are hard to disassociate from what we have experienced and continue to as this pandemic ravages on.
Alternating between flashbacks and the novel’s present day, the narrative follows Candace Chen, who works at a publishing company, Spectra, and oversees the production of Bibles. Her job is unfulfilling, yet she stays due to the pay and stability it offers. However, her life dramatically changes as a virus, Shen Fever (named after its origins in Shenzhen, China), begins to spread globally. Those infected with Shen Fever are forced into a routine of repetition, whether that be brushing hair or driving a taxi, with no real consciousness, ignoring their bodily needs until they die. These victims are trapped in their own memories. Candace is one of the “lucky” ones who does not get infected at the onset and is able to find a group of survivors navigating this new world. The novel grapples with the themes and the juxtaposition of nostalgia and routine, as Candace thinks back to a time before the pandemic.
The title, Severance, refers to the corporate layoffs that happened as a result to Shen Fever, but also alludes to Candace’s own severance to her birth country when she immigrated to the United States from China. She and her parents no longer belong to their native land and must assimilate to their new home. While her father and Candace are successful, Candace’s mother, Ruifang, is initially unable to assimilate. She longs for her homeland and accuses her husband of bringing her to America to trap her. Not only does she not want to assimilate, but she actively refuses to, as shown through her unwillingness to learn English. However, she slowly comes around to the idea through consumerism since “her homesickness eased in department stores, supermarkets, wholesale clubs, places of unparalleled abundance.”
While Asians/Asian Americans are considered to be the perpetual foreigner and unable to gain full symbolic and social citizenship, Lisa Sun-Hee Park, professor of Asian American studies at UC Santa Barbara, states in her book, Consuming Citizenship, “Consumption, then, is a vital act for the sake of full citizenship,” and “for Asian Americans, class status becomes the central route from which to establish one’s right to make claims upon the state…that you will become ‘American’ and no longer foreign by establishing yourself as (economically) worthy.” To purchase and consume luxury items is a sign of class status. Ruifang ends up consuming these goods such as Clinique products and sends them to her daughter when she is in college, demonstrating that she has buying power in America, a sign of her social citizenship. Even in death, she and her husband consume these goods through their daughter. Candace burns a Louis Vuitton suitcase, a Fendi handbag, Gap and Talbots clothes, Burberry items, Clinique beauty products, Salvatore Ferragamo wingtips, a Jos. A. Bank suit, J. Crew clothing, and other brand name goods as offerings. While these are symbols that they have made it in America, that their hard work has amounted to something material, even in death they must prove their belonging. Yet despite this social citizenship, they never gain full citizenship.
To focus on Candace, she knows what clothes to wear and how to fit in, yet she wishes to be an “art girl” within her workplace who are generally characterized as blond, white women who wear the right clothes. Yet, despite consuming the correct items, Candace cannot truly belong and remains foreign, yet institutions of power, such as her workplace, profit off her exclusion as she is relegated to the Bible publishing section of the company. At an encounter at a bar, she is told to “go back to where [she] came from” by an older man. When she asks him where that is, he responds, “Korea, Vietnam. I don’t give a shit. You don’t belong here.” Asian ethnicities are conflated in this scene as the same and unwelcomed, showing how despite her “consuming” the correct items, she remains a foreigner.
Regarding Shen Fever, it’s hard not to draw parallels between our world and COVID-19. Shen Fever first appeared in the major Chinese economic center of Shenzhen and spread through fungal spores attached to commodified goods shipped globally, while COVID-19 first appeared in Wuhan, another major economic hub. The sick Asian body is not a new phenomenon. The Page Act of 1875 banned Chinese women, whom the United States characterized as prostitutes. In her book, Entry Denied, Eithne Luibhéid, professor of gender and women’s studies at the University of Arizona, attributes this ideology to the American Medical Association that claimed that “Chinese immigrants carried distinct germs to which they were immune, but from which whites would die if exposed.” This categorized Chinese Americans, and by extension Asian Americans, as this diseased, deviant other and therefore, they were not allowed entry into the United States. This act was later extended into the first Immigration Act of 1882 which was later named the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 which barred almost all Chinese laborers from immigrating (diplomats, merchants, and scholars were still allowed to immigrate). The diseased Asian body is not welcome and still prevalent today as evidenced by COVID, which was referred colloquially to as the Chinese Flu or the Kung Flu in more crass circles.
Although in the novel Candace does not initially contract Shen Fever, the audience is left to wonder if she has it by the end of the novel. Her narrative returns back to her memories and repetition, which are symptoms of Shen Fever, but perhaps she is just remembering a different time. The Asian body might be diseased, and perhaps she is carrying it in her as she goes to her new destination of Chicago, hence again showing that it doesn’t matter if one buys the correct items or performs assimilation, the Asian body will never truly belong.
Severance is available from Barnes & Noble, Bookshop, Kinokuniya, Skylight Books, Strand Book Store, and Vroman’s Bookstore.
Justine Trinh is an English literature Ph.D. student at Washington State University. She graduated from the University of California, Irvine with B.A.s in Asian American studies and classical civilizations and a B.S. in mathematics. She then went on to earn her M.A. in Asian American studies, making her the first student to graduate from UCI Asian American Studies’ 4+1 B.A./M.A. program. Her research interests include Asian American literature, critical refugee studies, family and trauma, and forced departure and disownment.