How we cite our quotes: (Part.Section.Paragraph)
Quote #7
I see Janet Evason finally dressing herself, a study in purest awe as she holds up to the light, one after the other, semi-transparent garments of nylon and lace, fairy webs, rose-colored elastic puttees—"Oh, my," "Oh, my goodness," she says—and finally, completely stupefied, wraps one of them around her head. (3.1.36)
Cue the obligatory scene where the foreign visitor is confused by the natives' strange clothing! And hey, why does Joanna have pink elastic puttees?
Quote #8
I slept in the Belins' common room for three weeks, surrounded in my coming and going by people with names like Nofretari Ylayeson and Nguna Twason. (I translate freely; the names are Chinese, African, Russian, European. Also, Whileawayans love to use old names they find in dictionaries.) (5.11.1)
For Joanna, Whileaway holds none of the horror that it does for Jeannine. For her, ethnic hybridity is part of what makes Janet's world utopian. For Jeannine, it's part of what makes it so disturbingly foreign.
Quote #9
I have never been to Whileaway.
Whileawayans breed into themselves an immunity to ticks, mosquitoes, and other insect parasites. I have none. And the way into Whileaway is barred neither by time, distance, nor an angel with a flaming sword, but by a cloud or crowd of gnats.
Talking gnats. (5.17.1-3)
Joanna/the omniscient narrator has compared Whileaway to the Garden of Eden before, but this clinches it. This is one of the few passages in the novel where Whileaway is described explicitly as an ideal: a place that Joanna/the omniscient narrator can imagine, but to which she has never actually been. As such, it's both foreign and familiar, like the grown-up versions of ourselves we fantasize about as children.