Deception of Appearance

Both “Hollow City” and “Tripmaster Monkey” deal with aspects of life in San Francisco that can not be easily detected by the causal observer. The thoughts of Kingston’s character of Wittman Ah-Singh, although having grown up in the bay area and attended Cal, seems to have difficulty negotiating the space that he inhabits as Chinese-American. There is a sense that he feels his own identity is one of hybridity, indicated by Kingston’s use of icons and references that are both “essentially” Chinese and “essentially” American. The character of Wittman questions the way he feels that he represents himself, versus the way others may perceive him--and therefore create their own conceptions of him. The creation and production of Wittman’s play at the end of the story illustrate how truly essential perspective’s such as Wittman’s are; representations of life that outside of what is quotidian, and the way in which perspective is able to shape reality.
There is a sense that outward appearance is often not representative of what goes on internally. The thoughts and actions of Wittman are often, as we are able to read, not what he is thinking. In “Hollow City” this idea is applied to physical space. Gentrification within the city of San Francisco created an “assault on the poor” in the form of urban renewal projects. Solnit implies that the “progression” of San Francisco in the form of taller buildings and a bastion of the frontier left the city devoid of the culture of the lives that lived there, and works to create and maintain a disparity between rich and poor. To some observers, the creation of large buildings and urban space is seen as a progression from an city to influential metropolis, in addition to the numerous jobs created by the expansion. To others, the same buildings could represent the loss of a community that had once been theirs, and displacement by the invisible hands of something larger and much more powerful then they; in the name of an abstract ‘greater good.’