Saying Goodbye to Yang

“Saying Goodbye to Yang” is a family drama about the loss of a child’s caretaker, but its themes are heightened by two key factors—genre and point of view. Through protagonist Jim’s first-person narration, the reader views Yang’s demise, his family’s reactions to the crisis, and his own inner turmoil as he comes to grips with what Yang means to him, as well as his limited comprehension of the world around him. His emotional journey exemplifies Weinstein’s oeuvre, which is primarily concerned with exposing and interrogating humanity and human behavior through our relationship with technology. The genre provides a distance through which the reader can examine and unpack contemporary issues, as the extreme choices Weinstein’s characters must make are simply amplified versions of the challenges endemic to the human condition. “Saying Goodbye to Yang” may take place in a world in which raising clones of yourself is de rigueur, but the emotions it centers are universal and timeless. The juxtaposition of the fantastical elements of the story and the broader morals that connect with the reader’s world is a staple of science fiction and speculative fiction.

Yang’s unexpected death throws Jim and his family in disarray in just the abbreviated period during which the narrative takes place. Jim’s family is uprooted and forever changed by the loss of Yang, akin to how a family would cope with the loss of a human family member. The theme of Technology as a Lens for Human Behavior rings true throughout Weinstein’s story, insisting that beyond the science fiction exterior, the story is, at its heart, about loss.

“Saying Goodbye to Yang” opens with Yang slamming his head against his cereal bowl repeatedly, malfunctioning in a way that demands immediate action. It isn’t initially clear that Yang is not human until the second paragraph. By keeping this plot point veiled, the readers initially see Yang as a human and a member of the family. The line between human and machine is immediately blurred in the story, and the reader is forced to think to Yang as a person. Jim asks himself what to do: “Shut him down, call the company? Shut him down, call the company?” (1). Jim doesn’t have much time to struggle with Yang’s humanity or the implications of simply powering down his surrogate son, instead needing to stop the violent image of Yang short circuiting in front of their family.

The story unfolds quickly, following Jim troubleshooting the lack of caretaking for their daughter while contemplating, then dealing with, his own grief. The truncated time frame of the story intensifies the emotions Jim goes through, and readers are reminded of how quickly life can change. The scope of “Saying Goodbye to Yang” is intimate, primarily taking place within Jim’s home and within his mind. The detours into Russ Goodman’s Repair Shop and Quick Fix magnify Jim’s burden, but seeing the events through Jim’s eyes narrows the story. Though the plot is wrapped up in a little over a day, the implications and ramifications of Yang’s death linger beyond the page, highlighting the theme of Grief, Loss, and Mortality present throughout the narrative.

“Saying Goodbye to Yang,” which was inspired by events from its author’s life, takes place in near-future Michigan (Ann Arbor and Kalamazoo). The Midwest American setting both resembles and deviates from the contemporary milieu from which Weinstein crafted his story, and the location is central to Jim’s arc. Jim and Kyra are white and middle-class with an adopted Chinese daughter, and they struggle to make ends meet by working in upscale home goods and grocery stores that are synonymous with the type of life people of their station are believed to lead. They have public-facing jobs that are likely not salaried: “Kyra was putting in forty hours a week at Crate & Barrel, and I was still managing double shifts at Whole Foods” (4). Class anxiety permeates the story and Jim’s perspective, emphasizing the familiar roles of Race, Class, and Gender in a Dystopic Future.

George and the technician he refers Jim to, Russ Goodman, are different from Jim in many ways. Even though Jim loves baseball and tries to get Yang to share his passion, he is dismissive of George because George plays football with his cloned kids and “paints his face for Super Bowl games” (7). Jim lives in a college town and views himself as progressive and privileged, and he assumes because George has different interests that they have different values. Whereas George surprises Jim, Russ confirms his fears through his racist commentary. The cultural and class differences in these men are similar to that of the reader’s world, but are exacerbated by the heightened technology in “Saying Goodbye to Yang.” While Jim adopts a Chinese daughter, George clones his children, implying that a perfect copy would better suit their family than a child who needs to be adopted and is not white. New issues, such as Jim’s distaste for cloning, and Russ’s racism toward a personified robot, add a new element to social issues that already existed before this technology.

Despite Jim’s concerns about a prejudiced society in both the way he interacts with the world and in his purchase of Yang for his daughter, Yang’s cultural information is limited to “fun facts,” and Kyra dismisses the idea that Yang could ever teach them Mandarin. A more expensive model of Yang, who could provide more cultural expertise, would have been $200 more than their $8000 purchase. This choice to not upgrade Yang could be viewed as an issue of class and income but could also be shortsighted on Jim and Kyra’s part. They want to provide their daughter with everything she needs and want to do right by her heritage, but in a way, their attempt falls short because of Yang’s model. They leave Mika with Yang, a surrogate babysitter, and minimally engage with her in terms of also learning about her heritage.

While there is no outright antagonist in the story, there is nevertheless conflict in “Saying Goodbye to Yang.” Financial unease and emotional distress wracks Jim throughout the narrative. Jim often tasks himself with trying to appear like he has things under control: e.g., “‘I’m wondering if it might be a problem with his hard drive,’ I say, feeling like an idiot. I’ve got no clue what’s wrong with him; it’s just something George mentioned I should check out” (10). Jim doesn’t want to feel like he’s out of his depth and wants to prove something to Russ—that he is capable and intelligent—and is overly concerned with how he appears to others for the majority of the story. This ties in with Jim’s feelings on masculinity and fatherhood, which is a strong theme in “Saying Goodbye to Yang.”

It could be inferred that he feels like he is failing Mika in some way—from the robot purchased to mitigate his lack of understanding about her culture, to being unable to replace Yang with a new model, and in struggling for words in the end when Yang asks about where he is. In this way, Jim is both protagonist and much of the conflict’s source within the first-person framing of the story. The obstacles he must overcome are largely internal, as he can only mourn Yang when he has fully investigated the depth of their relationship. Jim stops caring about what the neighbors think only when he realizes he cannot bear to simply throw Yang out rather than bury him, as he would any family member.

The tone of the story is at times darkly humorous and mournful, with lyrical passages in which Jim meditates on nature as he lets his sadness about Yang sink in. Grief is the throughline of “Saying Goodbye to Yang,” and its genre again lends both insight and another layer to Jim’s journey. In the reader’s world and in Jim’s, death can be sudden, there may be obstacles to getting the right treatment for our loved ones, and the physical realities of what happens both immediately after death and beyond arise. Even if Jim has no idea what happens now to Yang, or why he was collecting dead butterflies and building matchbox cabins, only when he acknowledges how important of a role Yang played in their lives can Jim understand the wonder behind the unknowable.