The story is located in Cincinnati. “ Silam Paley was a successful entrepreneur who lived in Cincinnati and conducted businesses in many countries”. Some of the concrete places are: a wealthy neighbourhood, a child care centre, the headquarters of the HMO (Health Maintenance Organisation),  a scrabble factory in Korea or the university. “As a result of his high marks, Young-Li was accepted into the University of Cincinnati”.  The treatment of space has  only a narrative purpose, its sense is supporting the characters’ descriptions. As a matter of fact there are very few or no descriptions at all, according to space. Its main function  consists on appearing as a “link” between the stories, which are independent. Each of them has an introduction, a plot and a conclusion; each of them talks about one main character.  Some characters have no connection but the city they live in. The funny thing is that almost all characters have some kind of indirect relationship. “The police apprehended him around midnight when they received a report of a suspicious Asian in a wealthy neighborhood”. This sentence, for instance, refers to Robert Sullivan: “ he had called the police on an Asian man who had been behaving suspiciously in his neighborhood.” This is the way in which the author connects the stories, using several links which take us from one story to another. Here  is a study of these connections:

First story (A): “Chicken soup for your Transnational ass” Has three links: to B, C and E

Second story (B) “Chicken soup for your Rainforest-Bulldozing ass” Has three links, to A, C and E

Third story (C) “Chicken soup for your Landlord ass” Has five links, to , B, E, A , D and E

Fourth story (D) “Chicken soup for your Health Insurance ass” Has four links, to D, A, B and E

Five story (E) “Chicken soup for your Animal Experimentation ass” Has five links, to E, D, B, C and A

As we can see, there are twenty links which  guide the reader through the story and show the coexistence of the stories in space and the way characters are related, directly as character from A with character from B or indirectly, as character  A and D through character B and so on.
 
 
 
 
 

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Academic year 2001/2002
© a.r.e.a./Dr.Vicente Forés López
©Elena Martínez Fernandez
Universitat de València Press
emarfer@alumni.uv.es