51 pages • 1 hour read
Weike WangJoan Is Okay
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2022A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Pages 102-159Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Pages 102-159 Summary
It is later that day in the hospital cafeteria, and Joan is pleased. She scoops a large portion onto a plate and brings it to share with Reese. Reese tells her that he has had an epiphany: Unlike Joan, he never truly belonged in medicine. Joan had been at the top of her class and is the best among the attending doctors at their hospital, but Reese is solidly middle-of-the-pack, and he does not think that he will ever be able to rise above that position.
It is the end of the year, a time typically filled with death in the hospital. It is flu season, the holidays usually bring about more substance misuse, and winter weather generally means an uptick in car accidents. Joan is aware of these patterns, and they do not affect her, but there are always younger doctors who struggle with sadness and grief during December and January.
Joan returns home to find a large television set blocking her doorway. She knocks on Mark’s door and explains that his new television (she assumes) is out in the hallway. Mark corrects her: This is Joan’s new television set, his old one. He thinks that she needs one, has just purchased a new one, and is gifting this perfectly functional television to her. He even offers to oversee the cable installation as Joan will be working every day for the foreseeable future. During the installation, Joan is trying to instruct one of the residents on how to perform a complex medical procedure while simultaneously fielding texts from Mark about the placement of the television. The resident makes a series of mistakes as Joan receives a flurry of texts from Mark, but the cable is successfully hooked up. Joan now has 200 channels to choose from. Joan finds that Mark was right: Television is relaxing.
Fang calls Joan to invite her skiing in Vail. He then starts an argument with her over her work habits, her unwillingness to move to Connecticut, and her indifference to being promoted to a position with a better title. He does not seem to understand the differences between medicine and his own field, so he doesn’t realize that Joan cannot just negotiate herself into a “better position.” The only people senior to her at the hospital are administrators, and that is a job that she does not want and does not feel uniquely qualified for. As she usually does, Joan tries to tell herself that his combative, judgmental behavior is actually how he shows love, and she tries to avoid as much conflict as possible.
Joan’s mother calls her more and more frequently. The topics of conversation range from small things, like not remembering where she put her glasses or passport, to larger topics related to Joan’s life choices and what life is like with Fang and Tami. Joan is not entirely pleased with this new era in their relationship but dutifully answers the phone each time her mother calls.
January has been declared wellness month by HR. Hospital employees are encouraged to take yoga classes and given samples of calming teas and surveys about their health and wellness habits. Joan didn’t mind the wellness focus when it was limited to one day or even one week, but she finds one month excessive. During wellness month, Reese disappears, and the hospital staff learns that he has taken a wellness leave. No one was informed ahead of time because, per HR policy, such leaves of absence are private and are decided by the employee and their HR representative. The hospital director pulls Joan aside and asks if Reese has been acting strangely, if Joan thought that he was likely to file a complaint, and if Reese’s decision to take a leave of absence surprised her. Reese has always been the darling of the HR department, and Joan is not surprised.
Joan receives an invitation to Fang’s springtime party. She also receives an unwanted visitor in the attendings’ office, a representative from HR. The representative explains that although the hospital is very pleased with Joan’s work ethic and the quality of care she provides, she does not take enough leave time; after her father’s death in particular, she should have taken bereavement leave. The HR representative further explains that Joan is to take this time now, and although it is, of course, optional, she is strongly advised to do so. Joan tries to obtain her director’s approval to refuse this leave but is told that she has to take it. When she returns after her six weeks off, he will prioritize her for any shifts that she wants.
During her leave, Joan watches many episodes of Seinfeld as well as Breakfast at Tiffany’s. She spends time with Mark every day, and although the two get to know each other better and she enjoys his company, some of his topics of conversation are ones she would prefer to avoid. Because Joan didn’t want to reveal that she was forced to take leave and lied to Mark about why she was made to, he concludes that her forced hiatus was the result of race-based discrimination. Joan cringes, but Mark continues to explain how he conceptualizes discrimination against Asians in particular in the workplace. Joan, who detests such essentializing rhetoric and conversations that center race, is mortified.
At the end of January, Wuhan goes into lockdown because of a new virus. Joan is glued to the news coming out of China, but no one in her family seems to be concerned. Mark is also not worried, and he glibly tells Joan that their medical systems were built for such emergencies and that the virus is on the other side of the world. Joan responds that our medical systems actually were not designed for these things. Maddeningly, Mark does not seem moved by her expertise. Joan is further upset when her mother’s flight home to Shanghai is canceled because of the virus. Though Fang is happy to have his mother stay longer and Joan assures her that the virus is a real threat, their mother insists that anti-Chinese bias is creating mass hysteria and that the danger of the virus is over-hyped.
Joan returns home one day to find her apartment full of people. Mark has organized a sort of surprise party so that Joan can “connect” with a group of their neighbors whom he thinks she’ll like. Joan is horrified but does her best to mingle. After making the rounds of the party for a while, she cannot handle it anymore and decides to leave. She calls Fang to tell him that she is on her way, and although he is surprised at the lack of warning and the lateness of the hour (it is past 8 pm), he happily picks her up at the station. He is sure that she is grieving the loss of their father and has been avoiding her family as a way to avoid grief. When he asks her to stay for a while, Joan explains her work situation and agrees.
Pages 102-159 Analysis
In this section of the text, even as Joan’s eccentricities become an asset at work, the novel approaches the topic of privilege from the lens of Joan’s worldview, in which merit should be most important. Within the theme of Gender, Societal Expectations, and Interpersonal Relationships, this section presents Joan’s struggle with men in particular, who often insist on engaging with her on their own terms, rather than attempting to unlearn the norms that have tended to benefit them. The disconnect between Joan and Fang grows. Reese’s privilege begins to be more evident, and Joan observes a similar lack of self-awareness in Mark. As the COVID-19 pandemic gets underway in China, Joan and Mark stop seeing eye-to-eye altogether, and it becomes clear to Joan that Mark lacks boundaries and any real understanding about who she is as a person.
Much of the novel is, in some way, an answer to the question that is implied by its title: The only one who is truly sure that Joan is okay is Joan herself. Part of why Joan is “okay” is that the very particular way that she has set her life up serves to maximize her potential and her happiness. Many of Joan’s likes, dislikes, and individual characteristics strike others as strange and antisocial, but there are numerous instances in which these qualities come to Joan’s aid, marking how strongly her Work and Identity are enmeshed. One such instance opens this set of scenes: It is wintertime in the hospital, a season that always brings about more serious illness and death. Many of her coworkers struggle through the bleak winter months and experience higher-than-usual rates of emotional burnout. Joan, because she maintains an emotional distance between herself and everyone else, is able to work through this difficult period without strain.
Rather, Joan’s sources of strain stem from her efforts to build or maintain interpersonal relationships. Joan experiences strife within her family unit, as Fang steps up his efforts to badger her into quitting her job, moving to the suburbs, and opening up a (much more lucrative) private practice. Fang is equally upset that Joan is choosing not to pursue a promotion, even though the only conceivable promotion attainable for Joan would be a move into hospital administration, a path in which she has little interest. This series of interactions continues to highlight the divergence between the siblings in terms of values and belief structures: Fang values money and Joan values work. However, it also highlights in this section Fang’s unwillingness or inability to see things from Joan’s point of view. Joan, to her credit, is not bothered by the differences between Fang’s choices and hers; although she wishes that he would stop pestering her, she does not judge him for the extent to which he values wealth above everything else in his life. The same cannot be said for Fang. Joan, who is so often the target of other people’s judgment, often refrains from judging others. This emotional labor is something that work rarely demands of her, one exception being with Reese’s choices in this section.
Although Joan does mostly reserve judgment, she cannot help but notice Reese’s extreme privilege. Because the director has pointed out to Reese his lackluster work habits, Reese has a sort of existential crisis. Reese’s response is to complain to HR, a department whose favor he has long courted with mild flirtation and office visits just to “chat.” HR allows him to take an extended wellness leave, and the vacation during a particularly busy time of the year garners attention all over the hospital. It is obvious that Reese is used to being treated as competent because of his genial (and flirtatious) nature and because he has the rugged good looks that many people associate with prime-time television doctors. This kind of behavior is antithetical to everything that Joan believes in: Joan admires the fact that medicine is a meritocracy. Although Reese was able to skate by on appearances for a time, eventually his shortcomings are obvious and, especially in contrast to Joan, he comes up short. Reese’s character thus becomes a subtle indictment of both male and white privilege and is one of the ways in which the novel is rooted in contemporary conversations about race, gender, and privilege in the United States.
Mark, too, becomes a subtle engagement with masculinity and privilege, one that interacts even more so with the theme of The Difficulties of Immigration. Because Joan does not want to reveal to Mark that she has been forced to take leave, she fabricates a story that leaves him with the impression that Joan has been the victim of race-based discrimination. Although she assures him that this is not, nor has it ever been, the case, Mark does not believe her. Mark sees Joan primarily through the framework of race, and for him, that means discrimination and prejudice. Joan communicates clearly to him that she has not experienced prejudice in this manner, but Mark ignores her, proving that he is not as race-conscious as he would like to think: Ignoring the lived experience of someone belonging to a different (and traditionally underrepresented) identity group is itself a kind of micro-aggression, a subtle moment of dismissiveness that amounts to casual racism.
Mark continues this problematic behavior in the way that he dismisses Joan’s knowledge of COVID-19, both what she knows about preparedness in China and in the United States. Joan observes: “On January 23rd, Wuhan was sealed off, in the strictest meaning of the term: no one enters and no one leaves. Days before the lockdown took effect, five million people left the city without being screened” (143). Joan realizes that this mass movement of possibly infected people is a problem and that hospitals in the United States are not designed to handle pandemics, but Mark chooses to rely on his own biased, unexamined opinion rather than listen to Joan’s expertise. He further alienates Joan by hosting a party in her home without obtaining her permission. Again, he fails to see Joan for who she is and to consider that there might be cultural differences between the way that the two approach boundaries, friendship, and hosting. Although Mark considers himself “woke,” he finds it remarkably easy to dismiss the opinions (and identity) of a woman of color.
