The Family Chao

For the Chao family, The Fine Chao, the Chinese restaurant run by Leo Chao and his wife, Winnie, symbolizes the notion of the American Dream and the complexity of their relationships to it. The restaurant itself represents the life they have built in Haven, Wisconsin, and the impact they have had by serving food in their community for 35 years—a symbol of Loyalty, Filial Piety, and Sacrifice for Family. For Leo and Winnie’s sons, the restaurant represents their father himself. The wordplay on Chao as sounding like “chow” (English slang for food), captures Leo’s irreverent attitude and hints at his scorn for the people around him. The restaurant, like the family, presents a public image of a hard-working father with his devoted wife and accomplished sons, an image in which Leo takes pride. But in the back rooms, like the office and kitchen where the hard labor takes place, the secret side of the family is revealed: Leo’s cruelty to his sons, his contempt for other people, the daughter he is hiding by not acknowledging her as his child. Similarly, the novel suggests, the notion of the American Dream appears shiny and noble from the outside, but its reality reveals a disparity of resources and opportunity, systemic and intrapersonal discrimination, and a privileging of wealth and whiteness that complicates it.