Picture Us in the Light

The first chapters of Picture Us in the Light introduce readers to Danny Cheng, a first-generation Chinese American teenager trying to navigate family, friends, and his dreams.

As a first-generation child of immigrants, Danny is a symbol of hope and a new future. Unlike his other first-generation friends, like Harry, Danny is relatively out of touch with his Chinese culture, identity, and language. His parents don’t speak the language with him, nor has he ever been to China. For Danny’s parents, their move to America is about the present and the future, as well as a way to escape the past. Danny doesn’t face the stereotypical pressures of the immigrant narrative. For example, his parents are fully supportive of his pursuit of art as a career; they don’t pressure him to find a course of study that is more secure or lucrative. Still, Danny’s happiness and stability would represent the success of his parents’ immigrant journey. For him, they’ve given up family and the comfort of being at home in their language and customs. Danny’s father can’t express his innermost thoughts in English, highlighting a barrier between the two generations.

The loss or lack of Danny’s Chinese American identity is connected to a slew of family secrets. Danny was told that his parents had a daughter before him, but that she had died as a baby. He doesn’t know how his sister died, as his parents never talk about it. There is also a tinge of fear and sadness to his parents when they think about returning to China. These realities are the background of his parents’ experience, and Danny is curious about how their past has informed their present. However, his parents’ secrets seem deep and foreboding. Danny’s father’s box of papers on Clay Ballard adds a level of suspicion to the narrative and foreshadows future conflict as Danny tries to uncover the truth. As Harry points out to Danny, it’s possible that these secrets are none of his business. There are also other implications of a gap between Danny and his parents, even though they are a supportive and loving family. As a child, Danny found a list his father had made about conversation topics to broach with him. This reveals a certain level of anxiety between father and son, that they won’t know what to talk about with each other. Danny’s teenage life in America is vastly different from his father’s youth in China, leaving him in a situation where he knows things his parents don’t.

Danny’s parents are often presented as overprotective. They don’t know what to expect when Danny leaves home for summer camp or school field trips. Moreover, the loss of their only daughter compounds their anxiety over Danny’s safety. Both parents struggle with mental health, with Danny’s father having experienced depression in the past and his mother having a history of panic attacks. Danny helps his parents work through these difficult emotions with empathy and love but doesn’t know what spurs them. Kelly Loy Gilbert implies that, in conjunction with other signs, the couple’s issues are somehow related to each other in ways that Danny doesn’t yet understand. This lack of answers creates tension and foreshadows a pursuit of truth. In getting to know his parents better, Danny’s own identity may be challenged.

One of the ways that Danny connects with his parents is through mutual respect and care. Danny’s parents support his art dreams, and in return, he wants to be more interested in his father’s passions. Though he is uncertain why his father’s secret experiment is so controversial that he would lose his job and set his mother into a panic attack, he is confident that the experiment comes from a place of genuine inquiry and curiosity. Just as Danny uses his art to understand the world around him, so, too, does his father use science to solve his own questions. There is a kinship between him and his father because of this shared belief that they can only navigate life through their respective passions. Even the reader, who knows more about the experiment than Danny does due to Gilbert’s use of dramatic irony, isn’t given answers about why the experiment is so controversial. Danny’s mother was frightened by the experiment after seeing its results—results that are not revealed in the Prologue. Regardless, Danny’s pursuit of art and his father’s pursuit of science develop Gilbert’s message that one should always follow their dreams, no matter the risks.

The empathy Danny extends to his father’s dreams, the dynamic between his parents, and his mother’s emotions are indicative of Danny’s emotional intelligence. Danny is characterized by his generosity when approaching other people’s behaviors and emotions. Within his friendships, he practices the same level of empathy. He notices that Regina has been acting differently, emphasizing recent trauma that she has yet to address with him. Danny doesn’t overwhelm Regina with questions or concerns, but instead watches out for her with gentle, quiet compassion. He is attuned to Regina’s shifting emotions and believes he can be supportive of her without intervention. This level of emotional intelligence is uncommon in adolescents, whose confusions about the world demand trust and open communication. But for Danny, not knowing everyone’s secrets doesn’t make him feel insecure about his relationships. He cares about what his friends think of him, but he is ultimately confident in them. He is not self-conscious about whether or not his friends like him, even in moments of low self-esteem.

However, Danny’s friendship with Harry is more complicated. They trust each other, but Danny feels an imbalance in their relationship. He worries that Harry doesn’t like him as much as he himself likes Harry. There is an implication of romance in the way Danny desires Harry’s attention and love, though Gilbert doesn’t explicitly address Danny’s sexuality. Danny’s happiness stems from being included in a “we”—which is why he cherishes his family and friends so much. But “we” may be more important to Danny than it is to Harry. Because the story is narrated in Danny’s first-person perspective, the reader naturally leans toward his perspective—and is limited by it. The reader can only access Harry through Danny’s perception of him. Therefore, the reader sees Harry as aloof, complicated in his desires, and concerned about Danny’s wellbeing. Danny’s memory of Harry sneaking out of camp to drink alone during middle school is a sign of alcohol dependency at a young age, implying that he doesn’t have the tools to deal with stress in a healthy way.

Danny and his friends are currently experiencing an intense year of impending change. Gilbert relates to her young readers by highlighting the stresses of one’s senior year of high school. Danny will soon be separated from his family, friends, and comfort zone. The internal conflicts that arise on the cusp of young adulthood are slowly dawning on Danny and his friends, causing concern about the future. This uncertainty is an important trope in young adult fiction. Danny is worried about finding himself a fraud in art school: In Cupertino, he’s an artistic big fish in a small pond, but at an elite art school like RISD, he’ll have to prove himself anew. He’ll also be leaving his parents alone with their mental health issues. To add to this stress, the family’s financial situation is at risk because his father recently lost his job. These financial and emotional stresses are further compounded by Danny having to leave his friends, separating him from the “we” that has informed his happiness for years.