“What a Terrible Thing it Was” by Esmé Weijun Wang is my favorite story we’ve read in this class so far. It has an aspect of the narrator’s, Wendy, deteriorating mental health as well as interestingly bringing in the election as another huge piece of it. However, I was particularly interested in the Epigraph included in the beginning as well as the pieces of it sprinkled throughout the story. Reading this before the story confused me a lot about how this connected with a story about mental health. However, finding the pieces of it throughout the story as the Becky character is introduced is powerful. Going back through, I found that the part that says, “let me braid your hair. I can’t, said Becky, I’ve died way over there” reveals so much about how Becky felt during her life. In the very beginning, the receptionist says she loves Wendy’s hair because it’s long, black and natural. She mentions that she’s sad when Asain women dye their hair. Later on, it’s revealed that Becky had a bright red streak in her hair and was considered strange to a lot of people. However, her oddness was actually normal, but not to other people’s standards. The second part of this sentence in the epigraph saying she can’t (or doesn’t want) people to play with (or have opinions about how she wears) her hair. I thought back to page 298 where it says, “Becky could be anything, once she died, and the rest of us would have to live.” Now she Becky was dead, she didn’t have to deal with differing opinions of how she should live her life.
