Red

In many instances in Lo’s novel, red represents the allure and danger of womanhood. The color red first appears in the prologue of the novel, when Lily observes that the girls competing in the Miss Chinatown beauty pageant are wearing red lipstick and also sees that one of the girls has developed “an ugly red mark where the back of the shoe had rubbed against her Achilles tendon” (4). For Lily, the girls represent both a path into womanhood and the general American beauty standards for women that she wonders if she should adhere to. The contrast between their lipstick, which shows them displaying a single, stereotypical idea of femininity, and the one girl’s wound demonstrates the desire to conform to this femininity and the possible individual consequences of trying to fit a general mold. Together, they show how womanhood as a concept can be...