I Am Not Jessica Chen

Paintings and photographs form an important motif in the book, reflecting The Relationship Between Appearance and Identity. The first of these to appear is Jenna’s self-portrait, which she flings paint at in frustration after not getting into Harvard. This happens on the same night that Jenna wishes she were Jessica Chen, with her wish coming true the next morning. Symbolically, the paint she flings at the portrait obscures her eyes in the portrait, signifying Jenna’s desire to cast away her own identity. As time wears on, the paint magically obscures more of her features, reflecting how Jenna is ceasing to exist in other people’s memories.

The deteriorating painting and Jenna’s existence itself are tied together in symbolism that is reminiscent of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray. In Wilde’s novel, the protagonist keeps his youthful appearance alive while a magical self-portrait that is hidden away ages horribly. In a similar fashion, the longer Jenna continues to inhabit her new body, the faster the traces of her past self in the portrait begin to vanish. Jenna’s continued life and appearance as “Jessica” is thus sustained by the erasure of Jenna’s identity. This parallelism is seen in other paintings and photographs as well: Jenna becomes a blurry, unrecognizable figure in the school photograph, and her features are similarly obscured in her series of self-portraits presented at the exhibition.

Painting is something that Jenna is actually deeply passionate about and talented at. When she discovers she has lost the ability to paint, Jenna truly feels like she is actually losing herself. Until this point in the story, she had still largely focused on the positives of living Jessica’s life; this, however, serves as a turning point where she begins to miss her old life. Accordingly, Jenna paints a new self-portrait that captures the contentment she now feels in her identity toward the novel’s end, breaking away from the longing and dissatisfaction that once plagued her.