DUALITY | APIA ANTHOLOGY
THE RIGHT THING TO DO Marcus Degnan Short Story
The concept of duality is an ever-haunting one within cultural expression of mixed race people. Because of the polarizing collisions our jumbled identities create, I believe we fantasize of simplistic binaries because of our inability to identity as such. The short story, “The Right Thing to Do,” demonstrates these thoughts through the cruelty I portrayed. In the daughter, we see how a simplistic concept of ethnic identification harms her father. It is because she only sees her identity superficially as either white or Asian that she fails to understand the pain she inflicts.
Linda thinks she’s doing the right thing by taking her father to her favorite restaurant, which sold both American and Vietnamese cuisine. She thought it’d make his day, given how shrewd he was when it came to restaurant names, after criticizing the ones she’d already suggested. He said The Flying Biscuit sounded cartoony, that Bagels Unlimited was trying too hard, that Peach Valley Café belonged in Portland, not Florida. Linda took his silence as consent when she suggested her final choice, Bagels and Noodles, surprised to find that he was willing to go. Linda thought she was doing the right thing because her father hadn’t tried Vietnamese food since her mother passed away two years ago, her freshman year. When she and her father arrived and sat down in the booth, next to a scenic shot of the vacant street, Linda began to talk about how all her friends came to the restaurant at least twice a week. She talked about how it felt to be almost done with school, about all the friends she had made. Linda knew her father felt apprehensive, so she wanted to distract him from thinking too much about the past on his first visit to Gainesville. Mr. Johnson thought it would be a good idea to give his daughter’s efforts a chance. He knew it was the right thing to do because she had mentioned wanting to go to grad school “anywhere but
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