Immigrant Identity and Language Loss in Dial A for Aunties

The Price of Belonging: Language, Sacrifice, and Immigrant Identity in Dial A for Aunties {#the-price-of-belonging-language-sacrifice-and-immigrant-identity-in-dial-a-for-aunties}

In Dial A for Aunties, Jesse Q. Sutanto builds a comic thriller around a family whose every sentence carries the weight of a migration history. The thematic claim at the heart of the novel is that language loss is not a failure of intelligence but a visible scar of generational sacrifice: the aunties’ broken English, Meddy’s halting Mandarin, and the family’s trilingual mish-mash all encode a story of fleeing xenophobia, changing names, and choosing safety over fluency. This linguistic fragmentation shapes every character’s sense of belonging, trapping Meddy between the duty to stay and the desire to leave, and forcing the aunties to wield their imperfect English as both a shield and a weapon. The novel refuses to treat language as a simple obstacle; instead, it shows how the very cracks in communication become the bonds that hold the family together—and the chains that keep Meddy from forging her own path.

Historical Roots: The Author’s Note as Thematic Blueprint {#historical-roots-the-authors-note-as-thematic-blueprint}

The Author’s Note functions as a direct statement of the theme. Sutanto explains that all four of her grandparents emigrated from China to Indonesia between 1920 and 1930, changing their Chinese surnames to Indonesian ones to avoid xenophobia. This act of renaming—Chen becoming Sutanto, Ho becoming Wijaya—is the first linguistic erasure, a deliberate sacrifice of identity for safety. The next generation grew up speaking Bahasa Indonesia first and Mandarin second, but when the nineties riots targeted the Chinese population, the parents sent their children to Singapore, where English became the first language and Indonesian was largely forgotten. The result, as Sutanto describes it, is a family that is “technically trilingual, but each of the three languages we speak is broken in some way.” She explicitly frames this brokenness as “the price my parents have had to pay to ensure that my brother and I were safe and sound.”

This note is not an aside; it is the interpretive key to the entire novel. Every time Ma says “exsqueezed” instead of “exquisite,” or Big Aunt says “moving in” instead of “moving on,” the reader is meant to hear not incompetence but a history of displacement. The aunties’ English is a second or third language acquired late, under pressure, and often in the service of their children. Sutanto also acknowledges the “fine line between authenticity and stereotype,” insisting that the book is not representative of the entire Asian community. This self-awareness is crucial: the novel asks us to see the aunties’ language as a badge of sacrifice, not a punchline.

Language as Sacrifice: The Aunties’ Broken English {#language-as-sacrifice-the-aunties-broken-english}

The aunties’ speech patterns are the most visible manifestation of the theme. In Chapter 1, the family gathers at a dim sum restaurant to plan a wedding. The scene is a masterclass in code-switching: Big Aunt speaks Mandarin, Second Aunt mutters in Indonesian, and Meddy replies in English because, as she notes, “Second Aunt says listening to me struggle through Indonesian or Mandarin makes her blood pressure rise.” The aunties’ English is functional but wobbly—Big Aunt says “moving in” for “moving on,” and Fourth Aunt corrects her with a smug “On. It’s moving on, not moving in.” This correction is not just a grammar lesson; it is a power play. Fourth Aunt’s mastery of English is described as “the best of all of theirs, yet another thing Ma will never forgive her for.” The novel thus shows that language proficiency within the family is not neutral—it becomes a weapon in the sisters’ long-running rivalries.

Ma’s malapropisms are equally telling. When she describes her flower arrangements as “exsqueezed,” Fourth Aunt immediately supplies “exquisite,” and Ma gives her “the deadliest side-eye in the history of all side-eyes.” The comedy here is layered: Ma’s error is endearing, but it also signals her position in the family hierarchy. She is the second-youngest sister, and her English is better than Big Aunt’s but worse than Fourth Aunt’s. The novel uses these linguistic differences to map the sisters’ relationships—Big Aunt’s authority, Second Aunt’s passive-aggression, Fourth Aunt’s needling, and Ma’s defensive pride.

The Readers Guide explicitly asks readers to consider the immigrant experience of learning a new language, noting that “Big Aunt, Second Aunt, and Ma struggled to speak English well, while Fourth Aunt has mastered it and sometimes wields it as a weapon against Ma.” This is not a side note; it is a central tension. The aunties’ broken English is not a deficiency but a testament to the fact that they learned it late, often while working long hours to support their children. When Big Aunt says “moving in” instead of “moving on,” she is not failing; she is carrying the weight of a life spent moving—from China to Indonesia to California—and the language she speaks reflects that journey.

The Weight of Belonging: Meddy’s In-Between Identity {#the-weight-of-belonging-meddys-in-between-identity}

Meddy’s relationship to language is the emotional core of the theme. She is the child of immigrants, born or raised in California, and she is “neither fully at home in California nor in Indonesia,” as the Readers Guide puts it. Her Mandarin is “awful” and her Cantonese “nonexistent,” and she only gets about 50 percent of what her mother and aunts say in Mandarin or Indonesian. This linguistic gap creates a constant sense of inadequacy. At the dim sum restaurant, she struggles to order food because she cannot communicate with the waitresses, and she only gets the good dishes when she manages to grab them herself. The dim sum becomes a symbol of this in-betweenness: the food is a shared cultural touchstone, but the language required to access it is a barrier.

Meddy’s identity is further complicated by the family curse, which she describes in the Prologue as having followed them from China to Indonesia to California. The curse killed the men in earlier generations, but in California it “made them leave”—her father disappeared, her male cousins fled to out-of-state universities. Meddy secretly applies to Columbia, but when she is accepted, she crumples the letter and throws it away, deciding she “can’t just abandon my family.” She tells her mother she will attend UCLA, and the aunties celebrate, with Big Aunt saying, “She stay with you forever. You always have companion.” Meddy’s choice is framed in the language of sacrifice: she is “the only one not heartless enough to leave.”

This decision is not just about geography; it is about language. To leave would mean entering a world where English is the only language, where she would no longer have to parse her mother’s broken sentences or feel guilty for not understanding Mandarin. But staying means remaining in a linguistic limbo where she is always translating, always mediating between her family’s world and the outside world. The novel shows this tension most painfully in Chapter 8, when Meddy breaks up with Nathan because she cannot bring herself to move to New York with him. She tells herself she is “better than my cousins. Better than my uncles—and I sure as hell am better than my father. I won’t abandon my family.” But the breakup is a lie, and she knows it. She cannot speak her truth because her truth would require leaving, and leaving would mean severing the linguistic and emotional bonds that define her.

The Cooler and the Camera: Symbols of Miscommunication and Observation {#the-cooler-and-the-camera-symbols-of-miscommunication-and-observation}

Two symbols deepen the theme: the cooler and Meddy’s camera. The cooler is the walk-in fridge where the family hides Jake’s body after Meddy accidentally kills him. But the cooler also becomes a site of linguistic chaos. In Chapter 13, when the family discovers that the body is not Jake but Ah Guan, Ma’s lily supplier, they erupt in “rapid Indonesian” that Meddy begs them to switch to English. Ma’s first reaction is not horror but a practical lament: “Who am I going to get my lilies from now?” She pokes the corpse with a carrot and says, “Eh, Ah Guan, qi lai ah,” mixing Mandarin and Indonesian. The scene is absurd, but it underscores how the family’s multilingual panic is both a source of comedy and a reflection of their inability to fully communicate even in crisis. The cooler, which is supposed to preserve, instead becomes a place where secrets are hidden and misunderstandings multiply.

Meddy’s camera, by contrast, is her escape. She is the family photographer, the one who observes rather than participates. At the dim sum restaurant, she confirms her camera gear is ready, and later she photographs the wedding. The camera allows her to frame the world in a single language—the visual language of images—without having to struggle with words. But it also distances her. She is always behind the lens, never fully in the frame. The camera is a symbol of her in-betweenness: she can capture her family’s chaos, but she cannot fully join it.

Complexity and Contradiction: Authenticity vs. Stereotype {#complexity-and-contradiction-authenticity-vs-stereotype}

The novel is careful not to romanticize language loss. The aunties’ broken English is a source of pride, but it is also a source of pain. Meddy’s mother and aunts are constantly correcting each other, and Fourth Aunt’s fluency is used to belittle Ma. The Readers Guide asks whether readers have “witnessed immigrants being made fun of or belittled for not speaking their adopted language fluently,” and the novel itself shows how that belittlement can come from within the family. Ma’s “attention hole” for “attention ho” is funny, but it also reveals how she has internalized the idea that her English is wrong.

Sutanto also complicates the idea that language loss is purely a sacrifice. The Author’s Note admits that the author herself “forgot how to speak Indonesian almost entirely,” and that her parents’ broken English is “the price” they paid for her safety. But the novel does not suggest that this price is fair or that it has been fully repaid. Meddy’s guilt is not just about leaving; it is about the fact that she can never fully repay her mother and aunts for the linguistic and cultural sacrifices they made. The curse, which Meddy believes will make any man leave her, is a metaphor for this inherited burden: she is doomed to stay, not because of magic, but because of the weight of her family’s history.

The novel also acknowledges the fine line between authenticity and stereotype. Sutanto writes that she is “straddling a very fine line between authenticity and stereotype, and it’s my hope that this book defies the latter.” The aunties’ broken English could easily become a caricature, but the novel grounds it in their individual personalities and histories. Big Aunt’s authority, Second Aunt’s passive-aggression, Fourth Aunt’s smugness, and Ma’s fierce protectiveness all come through in their speech patterns. The language is not a uniform marker of “immigrant” but a set of individual voices shaped by shared history.

Study Questions {#study-questions}

1. How does the Author’s Note frame the theme of language loss as a sacrifice rather than a deficiency?

The Author’s Note explicitly states that the aunties’ broken English “is not a reflection of their intelligence, but a reflection of the sacrifice that they have made for us.” Sutanto explains that her grandparents changed their names to avoid xenophobia, her parents grew up speaking Bahasa Indonesia and Mandarin, and her generation adopted English in Singapore to escape riots. The brokenness of each language is the price paid for safety and opportunity. This framing reframes the aunties’ speech as a badge of honor, not a flaw.

1. In the Prologue, why does Meddy choose to stay in California, and how does this choice relate to her linguistic identity?

Meddy secretly applies to Columbia but crumples the acceptance letter because she cannot abandon her family. She says she is “not like my boy cousins” who left, and she believes the curse will make any future husband leave her. Staying means remaining in a world where she must constantly translate between her family’s languages and her own English. Her choice is a linguistic commitment: she stays to be the one who can bridge the gap, even though it means sacrificing her own dreams.

1. How does the dim sum restaurant scene in Chapter 1 illustrate the family’s trilingual communication and its emotional consequences?

The scene shows Meddy struggling to order food because her Mandarin is poor, while the aunties switch between Mandarin, Indonesian, and English. Big Aunt corrects Second Aunt’s English, Fourth Aunt corrects Big Aunt, and Ma’s malapropisms are met with side-eyes. The chaos of the restaurant mirrors the chaos of their communication, but it also shows how they work together—Meddy gets the har gow, Big Aunt approves, and the meal proceeds. The scene demonstrates that language is both a barrier and a bonding ritual.

1. What role does Fourth Aunt’s mastery of English play in the family dynamics?

Fourth Aunt’s English is the best of all the sisters, and she uses it to needle Ma, correcting her “exsqueezed” to “exquisite” and wielding big words as a weapon. The Readers Guide notes that she “sometimes wields it as a weapon against Ma.” This creates a hierarchy where linguistic proficiency translates into social power. Fourth Aunt’s fluency is a source of pride but also a source of friction, showing that language can be used to assert dominance within an immigrant family.

1. How does the cooler scene in Chapter 13 complicate the theme of language loss?

When the family discovers the body is not Jake but Ah Guan, they panic in rapid Indonesian, and Meddy begs them to switch to English. Ma’s first concern is her lilies, and she mixes Mandarin and Indonesian while poking the corpse with a carrot. The scene is both absurd and revealing: the family’s multilingual chaos is a survival mechanism, but it also prevents clear communication in a crisis. The cooler, meant to preserve, becomes a site of misunderstanding, showing that language loss is not just a historical burden but an ongoing, practical challenge.

These questions invite readers to move beyond the comedy and see the novel’s linguistic texture as a deliberate, compassionate exploration of what it means to belong—and what it costs to stay.