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most profound sense of identity in being a dwarf, but does not have the physical characteristics
of the typical dwarf, and no one really wants to see him as one. Hamilton says he is being
hard on himself when he talks about being a dwarf, and Cookie remarks that ‘he was not really
a dwarf in the extreme sense: that is, he was not a midget’ (YLD, 4-5). His accent is
Australian, but with British overtones (YLD, 4) thanks to his British education. He looks
Chinese, except for his almond-shaped green eyes. His father was Chinese, though when Pete
Curtis tries to provoke him with a standard derogatory joke about a Chinese gardener in
Australia, Billy simply responds, ‘My father owns a gift store in Dixon Street, not a market
garden’ (YLD, 6). Billy Kwan does his best to distance himself from his Chinese origins, and
complains to Hamilton about the racism he has encountered, saying ‘It’s difficult to break out
of the restaurant and fruit-shop business, if you’re an Australian Chinese. Or it was when I
was young’ (YLD, 19). He insists that he does not speak a word of Chinese, but also that he
does not speak more than a few words of Bahasa, the local language of Java, and this is so
clearly false that one must also doubt these assertions. The Javanese themselves are confused
about him, and their mistaking him for a Chinese Indonesian is a huge professional advantage
for Kwan. Similarly, Kwan tries on a series of philosophies, testing each for its attractions,
but seeming intent just in discovering why it does not fit him before moving on to the next.
Kwan’s identity is, then, defined by all that which he is not.
Such negative-based identification is the norm in the Alice books. Alice is drawn into
the rabbit hole by her curiosity at seeing the White Rabbit, but Lewis Carroll writes:
There was nothing so very remarkable in that; nor did Alice think it so
very much out of the way to hear the Rabbit say to itself ‘Oh dear! Oh dear! I
shall be too late!’ (When she thought it over afterwards, it occurred to her that
she ought to have wondered at this, but at the time it all seemed quite natural.)
(Lewis Carroll, 9-10)
Alice finds the door into the garden, but she is not small enough to go through. She chooses to
drink the bottle marked ‘Drink me’ only because it was ‘not marked “poison”’ (Lewis Carroll,
14). Once she shrinks she discovers she is not tall enough to take the key to the door. Alice
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