Omakase by Weike Wang

Omakase Reviews

• 
  Hsinju Chen

  The title, Omakase (お任せ), means “I leave it to you.” Think of it as no-menu dining.
  
  This short story follows the POV of a 38-year-old Chinese American woman having a meal at a sushi bar with her white boyfriend. Over the course of the dinner, she reflects on her two-year relationship with this man as he flirts with the young Asian waitress and befriends the Japanese sushi chef.
  
  All of the characters were unnamed. Wang seldom names her characters. I think that provides the sense of shared experience, especially since “Omakase” focuses on the multiple identities of an Asian woman growing up in an immigrant family. We get to see some relatively conservative values the woman’s Chinese parents indoctrinated her, and I have to say a lot of them are what I learned growing up, too. There was one brief mention of the Sino-Japanese War, which the woman insisted was way before her time and that she held no hostility toward the Japanese, and I love how, toward the end of the story, we see the Chinese-Japanese tension between the younger woman and the older sushi chef. No matter what she thought she believed in, she still stands with her people (Chinese).
  
  In the beginning of their relationship, the woman wondered if it was an Asian fetish. On their first date they watched the Wuxia film “House of Flying Daggers” (2004, 十面埋伏; note: I watched this movie in 2005 when I was 10, so I loved seeing it mentioned). People around her coddled this white guy for his knowledge of Chinese history (I love seeing Tang sancai, 唐三彩, mentioned since he is a potter) and that he is good at using chopsticks. It’s ridiculous but also very real. I once chatted with a random American during a flight, and she told me about her white friend and Asian friend in Taiwan, receiving very different reactions when they speak broken Mandarin. I am going a bit tangent here, but yeah, double standards and what Wang portrayed is sadly reality.
  
  One other thing to note is that none of the dialogues have quotation marks. It gives the sense of everything replaying in the woman’s head as she perceives whatever is happening around her. It also blends unsaid thoughts with what has been said. The woman’s insecurities is mainly seen in her inability to voice her discomfort, and of course, her thoughts, such as “She did not want to take up too much space.” When she finally did in the end, to the sushi chef, her boyfriend got annoyed because he was having a nice time chatting the Japanese up. Through all the character interactions, we see the sureness in the man’s conversations and how he always wanted to be “right,” never-failing, amongst the other three characters, who are all Asians. Also, the woman was always the one adjusting to the man’s life, moving from Boston to New York, finding a job as a financial analyst, and “would frequently wonder, but never ask, if he had looked for a job as diligently as she had.”
  
  But as the title suggests, the interpretation of the story is entirely up to the readers. I leave it to you.
• 
  Angeline Ma

  I'm seeing a lot of comments/reviews that refer to this piece as a cautionary tale against overthinking.
  
  I would say that the woman is not overthinking at all. Her thoughts are in fact very much representative of the struggles of interracial relationships and the miscommunications that occur from the inevitable culture clash. The man is blatantly unaware of the multitude of microaggressions he is committing, which is not necessarily his fault. The woman is angry with the man for this thing that is not his fault, which is also not her fault.
  
  As I read Omakase, I was reminded of a specific passage in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's brilliant novel Americanah. At one point, the protagonist, a Nigerian immigrant, dates Curt, a well-educated and well-meaning White American. The passage in question is essentially a list of Curt's microaggressions. We see all the subtle forms internalized racism can take, and the ways in which these subtle forms are never called out for fear of disrupting relationships, or for fear of being accused of "overthinking".
  
  Ultimately, it's all about the many nuances of race, and the man's failure and refusal to acknowledge those is–as author Weike Wang puts it–a luxury.
• 
  Q☼

  Oh my god. Painfully relatable just like Chemistry, which I read a couple years ago. The variety of microaggressions that Wang managed to cover in such a small amount of space is truly impressive. There was that moment of Asian solidarity between the woman and the sushi chef when the white man made an insensitive comment implying that all Asians look similar or know each other; this was contrasted with the moment of Chinese-Japanese tension later on when the sushi chef perpetuated the stereotype that all Chinese people are cheap. While to some degree both of these characters have assimilated into American culture, there is the implication that we will always return to and defend our roots, and I am inclined to agree.
  
  Also, this line had me howling (maybe 80% laughter and 20% tears, since the double standards are all too real): "For each meal, her mother set out a pair of chopsticks and also cutlery. When the man chose the chopsticks, her parents smiled at him as if he were a clever monkey who had put the square peg into the square hole."
  
  Seriously, I'll read anything Weike Wang writes.
• 
  M•C

  This man wears his ethnicity like a badge ugh!
• 
  Kumari de Silva

  I liked this enough to search out "Chemistry" by the same author. Chemistry reads like this is the same narrator. Don't know if this was meant to be a chapter of this book. The voice sounds the same. I dunno, you're supposed to "write what you know" but I hope this author branches out a little in the future. This short story felt put together neatly and is generally more masterful than her novel. The novel felt sprawled. A good editor could have helped her pull it together, but I don't know if authors and editors have relationships anymore like they did in the twentieth century. . . An audio version of this story can be found on YouTube for free if you do not have access to the New Yorker. I do feel the story is worth reading. It's tight, well written and engaging
• 
  Maria

  I thought about the author's motivation and questioned the intention in their message. A lot of people will read this and react to the intersectionality of being an Asian woman compared to the privilege of being a white man. Was this the author's intention or did she just want to write a cute couple story that came out this way? I'm leaning towards yes based on the title she picked which means "I'll leave it up to you", but I'm not sure what is the takeaway she wanted to portray, besides what we already know from career literature.
• 
  Dat

  “She was excited that he was turning out to be a regular guy. He met most of her friends, who afterward found a way to tell her how lucky she was to have met someone like him: single, American—an artist, no less—and her age. By “American,” some of her Asian friends also meant “white,” the implication being that she was somehow climbing the social ladder. She hadn’t thought any of these things before, but now she did. Or maybe she had thought all of these things before and was just now admitting to them.”
• 
  Thompson McDaniel

  Makes you want to eat sushi and drink Saki in a little place in a big city. Also makes you feel a bit embarrassed for over-privileged, under-achieving white guys (especially if you are or ever happened to have been one) . . . And very funny.
  
  This was the second time “reading” (via the New Yorker fiction podcast) it, and I start to get the point if reading things more than once. Having Deborah Treisman and Gary Shteyngart dissect it makes it that much more delicious.
  
• 
  Eithan

  Well written story about a problem that many people having now- they can't make their mind about relationship, they keep looking for the Best one instead of the Good that is at their flat. Although it's well written (and has a dose of race play in it and how some people are sensitive about it) but the story doesn't manage to fly, it runs but can't take off
• 
  Ted

  Detailed story about a Chinese woman in late 30s on a date with her boyfriend at a sushi place. Heard on Selected Shorts. Liked how much she overthinks everything about her life in the course of the meal.
• 
  Astrid

  Góð og fangandi minimalistisk stuttsøga um eitt par, har mentanarmunur verður lýstur meðan tey eru á eini sushimatstovu. Er at finna sum podcast hjá The New Yorker: Fiction, parturin frá 1. januar 2023.
• 
  Haoyu

  An absolutely fabulous piece, piercingly true to the Asian American struggle for identity.
• 
  Jenny

  I like that in such a small event as a meal, the Asian woman has to deal with her ethnic identity whereas her white boyfriend has no clue about all these things in the background. The part about her misgivings about him having Asian fetish just because he picked a Chinese movie for their first date also resonates with me and baffles my boyfriend.