52 pages • 1 hour read
The Many Daughters of Afong Moy
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Act 3, Chapter 18-EpilogueAct Summaries & Analyses
Act 3, Chapter 18 Summary: “Faye (1942)”
Faye leaves the makeshift morgue; when she sees the monk she’d spoken to leave as well, she follows him. As she does, she reflects on her life, focusing on the baby girl she gave birth to when she was 14. Faye had fallen in love with an older man who lost interest in her, and she has carried the shame of having his child and giving her up for decades. Her mother, Lai King, always encouraged Faye to worship at Buddhist temples, especially on sacred days; however, Faye has never felt worthy of this. She has also never married or even considered arranged marriages due to her shame.
Seeing the monk enter a Buddhist temple, Faye hesitates but then enters. He introduces himself as Shi, and they talk further about John Garland. She confides that John seemed to know her and wonders how that could be true. Shi does not believe in reincarnation per se, but he suggests that aspects of the self can stretch beyond the bounds of a person’s life and says that she and Garland might be in some way connected: “[Y]ou’re both waves on the same ocean. Of course, you are separate, you crest and you fall as individual waves, but fundamentally you come from the same place” (285). Faye wishes she could “remember” Garland as he seemed to remember her, and Shi tells her that she needs to “calm [her] ocean” (285).
Faye meditates and is brought back to reality by chaotic sounds coming from outside the temple, where Lois tells her bombers have struck an orphanage. Faye tells her to return to the hospital, feeling at peace with the knowledge that John Garland managed to find her: Through that brief encounter, she caught a glimpse of love.
Act 3, Chapter 19 Summary: “Dorothy (2045)”
Dorothy takes her daughter to Graham’s, telling Annabel she’ll be staying there for a few days. She is convinced that the only way to be the mother Annabel deserves is to finish her current course of epigenetic treatment, so despite the escalating Typhoon Tenjin, she rushes to Dr. Shedhorn’s treatment facility.
Dr. Shedhorn explains that Louis and his mother have filed an injunction to prevent Dorothy from receiving further treatment. She cannot give Dorothy another session for this, but she does give her a bottle of pills—low dose versions of the injections Dorothy had been receiving. By taking these over the next few weeks, Dorothy can avoid losing her progress.
Dorothy goes out into the storm looking for a place to hunker down. Remembering the medallion she received earlier, she goes to a Buddhist hondo where she once sought refuge as a teen. A bhikkhuni named Xi helps her find a place to sleep while the typhoon rages, and Dorothy decides to take all of the pills Dr. Shedhorn gave her. Rather than falling into memories as she’d expected, she blacks out and awakens paralyzed and choking on the floor. As her heart stops, she thinks, “Find me.”
Act 3, Chapter 20 Summary: “Echoes”
Dorothy wakes up in the same hondo, but the building seems different. As she steps outside, she realizes that the cars are all antiquated. She notices a billboard advertising Syren and then receives a text from Greta’s workplace, informing her that someone is there to see her.
As Greta, Dorothy pretends to agree to a date with Carter but then emails Sophia Blessing, the journalist from Bitch magazine, tipping her off regarding Carter’s stock manipulation and sexual misconduct. She gives Sophia the time and place of the date and urges her to confront Carter. Greta/Dorothy then meets Sam for their first date.
As she steps out the door, Dorothy now finds herself at Summerhill as Zoe. When Zoe/Dorothy goes to the library, she refuses to kiss Guto, claiming the volume of Sappho through insulting his manhood. During the all-school meeting, Zoe/Dorothy suggests matriarchy as an experimental system of government before fascism is even suggested. The school votes for the matriarchy, and Mrs. Bidwell is inspired to leave her husband, quit her job, and accept a new post at a feminist newspaper. She writes Zoe/Dorothy a note explaining this and promising to find her. A local newspaper runs a story on Summerhill and includes a picture of the student who suggested matriarchy.
Zoe/Dorothy puts the picture from this article into her pocket. Dorothy then finds herself on a boat in 1941; as Faye, she meets John Garland. They dance and adjourn to a study where they get cozy on a chaise lounge. They’re about to kiss when John jumps up and runs out of the room—she assumes for a condom. Dorothy/Faye begins to question whether they should have sex so soon, doubting whether John Garland is coming back. She takes out the newspaper photo and writes “FIND ME” on the reverse side. He returns not with a condom but with a stethoscope so that Faye/Dorothy can hear his heart race during their first, sweet kiss. He never intended to sleep with her so early.
Continuing her epigenetic journey, Lai King/Dorothy follows Alby as he leaves her side. She cares for Alby as he dies, reassuring him that while she will miss him, she will “see [him] again” (329). She then witnesses his burial at sea.
Finally, Dorothy docks in Baltimore in 1832 and walks through the city until she finds (rather than embodies) Afong Moy. Afong is sitting in a pool of blood giving birth on the street as she did in Chapter 11, but this time she is accompanied not by an unhoused stranger but reunited with Yao Han, who has “finally found [her]” (335).
As Dorothy comes to, she realizes that someone is performing CPR on her. It turns out to be the kind police officer she has interacted with in the past. After Dorothy becomes reoriented to the present, the two share a connection and plan to reconnect one day.
Epilogue Summary: “Annabel (2086)”
Annabel attends a therapy session with Dr. Shedhorn and sees her deceased mother, Dorothy, for the first time in three years. She and Dr. Shedhorn reflect on the fateful night when Dorothy induced extreme epigenetic healing, and both feel grateful for the full life Dorothy lived, which included marrying the kind police officer.
Annabel travels from Seattle to a writers’ retreat in Chicago by bullet train. While talking to a fellow passenger, she reveals that she doesn’t use a common dating app that reveals if two people are an epigenetic match. The stranger on the train quotes a line of Dorothy’s poetry to Annabel; Annabel, now a poet herself, is proud of her mother.
Arriving at the writers’ retreat, Annabel meets an attractive man who also doesn’t use the app. They connect over the possibility that Annabel got the lucky room—it’s haunted by the ghost of the founder and always produces the best work.
Act 3, Chapter 18-Epilogue Analysis
This climactic section combines two of the novel’s themes: The Power of Epigenetics and Buddhist Doctrines Bring Hope and Peace. Faye and Dorothy both find refuge from a storm and a moral guide at Buddhist hondos, 100 years apart. Faye is trying to understand her experience with John Garland and Dorothy is desperate for a breakthrough that will cause her epigenetic visions to end or at least become less intrusive. The response each woman receives at the hondo is the same—to “calm [her] ocean” (285, 306)—though Faye spends more time discussing Buddhist doctrine with Shi than Dorothy does with Xi. Shi tells Faye, “The less you seek your answer, the better your chances of finding it” (285). This is key to Faye’s journey of acceptance. Faye subsequently practices Buddhist meditation to let go of the pain of having put Zoe up for adoption and the sense of unworthiness she herself has carried ever since. Afterward, “she felt okay, with whatever happened next, with whatever danger and mystery lay ahead. She wasn’t fearful, or worried, or even scared. Instead, she felt oddly at peace. […] My ocean is calm” (287). For Faye, this traditional approach to Buddhism suffices: She finds peace even without a full understanding of what happened between her and John Garland and Dorothy.
Shi’s advice could also apply to Dorothy, who has worked hard to find answers to her mental illness without making much headway. However, Dorothy has tools that Faye does not. She couples the Buddhist doctrine she learns from Xi with the epigenetic treatment she receives from Dr. Shedhorn. Xi says, “But that’s the point, isn’t it, to keep learning, to grow, to do more good than harm, to create compassion, to understand that every person you encounter is not there by coincidence? All of us play a role in another person’s life” (305-06). There are clear connections between this advice and the idea of epigenetic healing. The epigenetic treatment Dorothy receives is founded on the idea that things can change, that people can grow, and that the good that one generation does will affect multiple generations in the future. These are the doctrines that inspire Dorothy to seek love and hope in her visions, resulting in changes to the past that reshape her future and Annabel’s future. As she works her way through visions of her ancestors’ lives, she “[does] more good than harm”—Sam’s summary of the “goal” of karma—by intentionally recreating epigenetic experiences (305). She ensures that Greta’s job and relationship with Sam last. She rewrites Zoe’s actions to save Mrs. Bidwell and stave off fascism. She sends goodness back to Faye in the form of John Garland. She lets Lai King find closure by caring for Alby as he dies. Finally, she witnesses the transformation of a threatening unhoused person into a loving Yao Han, ready to give Afong the love and support she never received before. In so doing, the whole epigenetic line experiences the healing.
The Epilogue affirms Dorothy’s successful healing both explicitly (through Annabel’s conversation with Dr. Shedhorn) and symbolically. The recasting of ghosts—once a symbol of trauma and loss—as a symbol of good fortune mirrors the recasting of Dorothy’s entire family history. In a future informed by her mother’s epigenetic breakthroughs, Annabel is on her way to attend a writers’ workshop. She is assigned the Blue Room and is told, “Past residents say it’s haunted, […]. They say founder actually died in that room. […] They also say that it’s the lucky room. That good things happen to whoever stays there” (348). Although this is not a familiar ghost, it has the potential to bring Annabel luck and perhaps prosperity. This benevolent ghost seems to have immediate effects by bringing the attractive man into Annabel’s life. There is no mention of an abusive counterpart; the epigenetic pattern has been healed, and Annabel is ready to embrace her future as a poet and a person.
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