Saying Goodbye to Yang

Jim is the protagonist of “Saying Goodbye to Yang,” and the story is written from his point of view in first-person. Jim’s journey through the story is to come to terms with the loss of Yang, the robot babysitter for his daughter Mika, who has become an integral part of the family. While, as narrator, Jim comes to voice his feelings, to others, Jim minimizes the emotional impact of Yang’s death. Jim is established as white and middle-class, with the privilege those statuses connote. However, financial concerns permeate his arc, and even when he inwardly acknowledges the emotional toll of Yang’s loss, the cost is a focal point of his reaction: e.g., “There goes eight thousand dollars” (6). Jim seems to be in quiet distress throughout the story, working double shifts at Whole Foods to stay afloat.

Jim’s role as a husband and father is paramount to his view of himself and to the world around him. He remarks on the good relationship he has with wife Kyra because of their openness, but his grief is not reciprocated, and he minimizes his feelings about Yang even to her. When Yang is gone, he reads to Mika for the first time in a long time, which connotes how reliant he was on Yang as a caretaker for his daughter.