I don't usually read other people's review of a book until after I have finished it and written my own review. When I was on Goodreads adding this book to my virtual shelves, however, I noticed that the very first review only had one star.  Given what I know about Amy Tan and her work, that seemed nonsensical.  I have found every book of hers to be well-written, at times both evocative and provocative, and generally moving and emotionally engaging.  As I scrolled down the list of reviews, I found that the first one-star reviewer was not the only one.  I suppose that everyone is entitled to an off day (or book), but given my track record with Tan I decided to go ahead.

Saving Fish from Drowning is in many ways a typical Tan novel, and in some ways something completely different.  Her usual setting and themes are there-China and southeast Asia; the relationship between parents and children, or husbands and wives; culture clashes, and/or trying to navigate two worlds by staying true to tradition while living in modern society.  But the narrator and the structure of the novel set it apart from her other works.  The narrator is wealthy art patron Bibi Chen, who spent her early years in China, and emigrated to the US during the Cultural Revolution.  As a member of the board of directors for an Asian art museum, she has taken on the role of tour guide for other wealthy Americans who wish to travel to Asia and explore the rich cultural heritage in places like China and Burma.  What makes her a unique narrator is that she is dead.  At the beginning of the novel we learn that she was found, throat cut, on the floor of her antique store in San Francisco.  The tour group she was supposed to take to Burma (which has recently begun to open its borders to more foreign visitors), decides to go ahead with the trip.  Things quickly go wrong when the group decides not to follow the carefully thought out and arranged plan Bibi created.  We know this because Bibi herself goes along on the trip, though of course, no one can see her, being dead and all.  After some initial problems, the group makes it to Burma, only to be kidnapped by members of a tribal group hiding out in the mountains, after two of the tribe's members become convinced that one of the Americans is in fact the long, lost savior they've been waiting for.

For me, the strongest aspects of the novel had to do with the cultural misunderstandings that occur between the Americans and the people they come across in both China and Burma.  There is the stereotype of the "ugly" American, someone who visits foreign places, looking for exotic experiences while at the same time expecting the people they encounter to change their own behavior to make the Americans more comfortable.  There is certainly some of that in the book, though the characters themselves believe that they are looking for "authentic" experiences.  But even these supposedly worldly travelers are shocked, dismayed, and judgmental about the conditions in the hotels and cultural sites they visit, exhibiting a basic lack of knowledge of their own privilege.  There is a minor celebrity, who seems rather put out when he is not recognized.  There are a few academics, who are interested in learning about the cultures they are visiting, but in a passive, waiting to be filled sort of way.  There is even a young American who works with an organization trying to aid the people of Burma and dismantle the oppressive regime, who considers herself to be on a sort of spy mission, showing a naivete that is more frustrating than charming or admirable.  And while Tan describes the various native characters as being essentially naive and superstitious in many ways, they definitely come off better than the Americans do in the end.

At the heart of the novel is an exploration of what it means to live life as a person who feels deeply.  Bibi herself admits that she long ago learned to turn off her own feelings, to live on the surface of an emotional life, mostly in response to a demeaning and cold step-mother.  This part of the book felt very much like Tan's other books.  But the concept of emotional connection is explored in various ways through the relationships the American travelers make with each other, both romantic and platonic.  There is a mother and daughter, a father and son, and various couples in various stages of commitment.  And, of course, there are some vacation hook-ups. To be honest, none of the characters was completely likable, except for maybe the two teenagers.  Each person has some flaw in their character that makes it difficult to be completely sympathetic when thing go wrong, which happen quite a lot.  When we discover what really happened to Bibi at the end of the novel, Tan's message seems to be that holding ourselves back from deep, authentic feelings towards others-through selfishness or fear or greed-will inevitably lead to disasters both small and large.

Do I think this book deserves a one-star review?  Absolutely not.  Most people seemed to find either the first-person omniscient narrator problematic, or they were put off by the characters in some way.  Some people didn't like that all of the Americans were so unsympathetic, some felt that there were too many, lots of people complained about the amount of detail Tan provides which they thought was irrelevant.  None of that really bothered me, but I don't think that this novel rises to the level of the Joy Luck Club or The Bonesetter's Daughter, either.  Overall, if you are a fan of Tan's work, it is worth it to read this novel so that you can be knowledgeable about her entire body of work.  If you have never read Amy Tan, don't start with this one.

Poor Little Rich Girl, Chinese Style

If you are a person who knows anything about Chinese culture, beginning in the medieval period through the 20th century, you probably know that women were not valued in society, except as pawns in their family's quest for wealth or political gain.  Foot binding and female infanticide are the two most horrific examples of this attitude I can think of, but overall the fate of women and girls in China has largely been left in the hands of their fathers and husbands.  Foot binding continued into the 20th century, and even today in China girl babies are abandoned to orphanages at a much high rate than male children.

And, as Falling Leaves: The Memoir of an Unwanted Chinese Daughter demonstrates, this sad state of affairs for women and girls crossed class lines, and affected both the rich and poor alike.  But Falling Leaves is more than just a story of a Chinese girl who grows to thriving womanhood in spite of her family's cruelty. It is the story of China's transition from monarchy to communism, both from the perspective of how it affected the daily lives of its people, and how it changed the economic landscape for the wealthy and well-educated. The author, Adeline Yen Mah, is the titular unwanted daughter.  She was the result of her wealthy father's first marriage, but her mother died soon after giving birth to her.  In Chinese tradition, this was the first mark against her-she brought bad luck to her mother, so she was bound to bring bad luck to others.  When her father remarried, to a much younger Eurasian woman, she and her older brothers and sister were shunted from the forefront of family life to the background.  They were forced to watch as their younger half-brother and sister were given every advantage, while they had to beg for even the most basic necessities, such as train fare to get to school.  Her step-mother, Niang, was cruel and manipulative, setting the siblings against each other whenever possible, and eventually beating down her husband's spirit such that he no longer stood up for his older children.  Ma and her siblings were mostly able to escape their step-mother's day to day control, but she held the reins on the family finances and pitted her children against each other until her death.

Despite her lonely, abusive childhood, Ma was extraordinarily privileged compared to most of her countrymen.  Her family was able to escape to Hong Kong before the Cultural Revolution, and was able to keep most of it's wealth along the way, But that privilege did not keep her from being affected by the larger societal forces at work, and it certainly didn't help her beloved aunt, a mother figure for Ma, or her elderly grandfather, who was made to feel like a beggar in his own home.

Ma tells her story matter of factly, without drama or exaggeration.  In a way that makes her story all the more chilling, reflecting as it does the emotional barrenness that Ma lived with most of her childhood. Just relating the events as they happened was enough to make me feel her loneliness, her longing for acceptance, her anger, and, in the end, her resignation.  Ma's story should strike a chord with anyone who has desperately tried to gain acceptance and love from people who were never able to give it, as her step-mother appears not to be able to do.  May as well try to get love and acceptance from a piece of cold, green jade.

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, or Why I'm Glad I Wasn't Born in 19th Century China

Sometimes I am in horrified awe at the things that people have done to make women more "desirable".  As oppressive as I find the ridiculously unrealistic American beauty ideal, it is downright feminist when compared to past and present practices from around the world.  And while I realize that this novel is probably supposed to be about the power of women to create community, but I couldn't get past the foot-binding.

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan is the story of Lily and Snow Flower, who meet at young girls in 18th century China.  They become laotong, or friends bonded for life, at age seven at the behest of a matchmaker in the hopes that their friendship will yield better marriages for both.  Because of their families' social status, the girls have their feet bound at the age of seven.  Foot binding was practiced by all but the poorest families in China, the goal being to stop the girls feet from growing.  The smaller the feet, the better the marriage.  Lily tells the story of her friendship with Snow Flower through all of the stages of life-childhood, adolescence, womanhood-through their use of nu shu, a special written language used only by women.

Lisa See does an excellent job using the story of Lily and Snow Flower to paint a vivid picture of Chinese culture, especially women's culture.  My 21st century brain was routinely appalled by how the women were treated. But nothing was as horrifying as the description of the foot binding process.  The girls toes were bent under their foot and bound there.  They were then forced to walk on them until they broke, and the foot slowly bent under until there was only the big toe left to balance on.  Perhaps the most disturbing part was the fact that it was generally their mothers who bound their feet.  As a mother myself, I can't imagine the social pressure that a person must be under to cause that kind of pain to your own child.

It also struck me reading this novel how many times in the history of the world people have created social rules that in fact work against not just their self-interest, but their actual survival.  Forced to flee their homes due to civil unrest, many of the women died trying to walk up a mountain on their "golden lilies", as their small bound feet were called.  Purposely keeping whole classes of people illiterate also seems counterproductive, to say the least.  And of course, determining a woman's value by her physical attributes...seems like we're still working on a few of those today.

Wild Ginger, by Anchee Min

WELCOME HOPPERS!  

If you got here through Crazy-for-Books, I'm glad you decided to stop by.  That crazy Jennifer hosts the Book Blogger Hop each Friday. 

This week's question/topic comes from: Anne @ My Head Is Full of Books

Post a link to a favorite post or book review that you have written in the past three months.

 

Which is how you ended up here!  I hope you enjoy my review of Anchee Min's Wild Ginger.

I've always been baffled by religious, cultural, or political philosophies that seem to fly in the face of the very things that make us human.  Love, sex, the need to celebrate-rather through biological imperative or the need to feel a sense of belonging, humans have always found ways to express these and other emotions through our cultural and societal institutions.  This is one reason that, while I consider myself religiously tolerant, I don't really get Jehovah's Witnesses.  It feels against human nature somehow to deny a community the right to celebrate together.  Say what you will about the Catholic Church, but when they wanted to convert the heathens they were smart enough to co-opt their holidays and ceremonies.  I don't really get the prohibition against sexual behavior in most religious doctrines, either.  We are all sexual beings, and having healthy sexual relationships can only make us as a people stronger.

I experienced that familiar sensation of bafflement when reading Wild Ginger, by Anchee Min.  Wild Ginger tells the story of two teenagers living in China during the Cultural Revolution.  Maple is the daughter of a former teacher of Chinese history who has been sent to a labor camp for being a reactionary.  Every day at school Maple is taunted and beaten by Hot Pepper, the head of the Red Guard at their school.  Every day, that is, until Wild Ginger joins the school.  Wild Ginger, the daughter of a French-Chinese man and a Chinese mother, is viewed with suspicion because of her European roots.  Having nothing to lose, Wild Ginger stands up to Hot Pepper, and Maple and Wild Ginger begin a deep and abiding friendship.  Together with a boy named Evergreen, Maple and Wild Ginger begin preparing to sacrifice their personal lives in pursuit of Mao's vision for China-until a love triangle forms that threatens all of them.

The story of Wild Ginger is a familiar one-love triangles are not exactly new in the world of literature.  What makes this novel feel new and different is the setting.  China during the Cultural Revolution was a place turned on its head.  Mao, a communist, used the country's poor economy, uneducated populace, and history of exploitation at the hands of the West, and marched his Red Army right into power.  Everyone and everything that could have threatened the absolute control he had over the country was rendered suspect.  Teachers, prosperous business owners, artists, foreigners-all had to be turned to the purposes of Mao or expelled from China.  Anyone considered an intellectual was also an automatic reactionary.  The schoolchildren were only taught Mao's Little Red Book-a book of the famous sayings and speeches of Mao.  They were expected to memorize the entire book, and regurgitate it on command.  Any hint of questioning the Maoists could get you arrested, jailed, sent to a labor camp, or executed.  It was a time of wide-spread fear, as anyone who felt wronged by you could turn you in as a reactionary with very little evidence.

Maple and Wild Ginger both lived on the edge-Maple, because as a teacher of Chinese history her father was suspect, and Wild Ginger because of her mixed heritage.  But while Maple was more conflicted about being a Maoist, Wild Ginger threw herself into it wholeheartedly.  By pushing away her unsatisfactory parentage, she hoped to make herself a model of what a young Maoist should be.  Despite her family's persecution, Wild Ginger takes on the very characteristics of the people who have rejected her.  As she began to gain power within the movement, the pressure on her to be the perfect Maoist in every way grew and grew, until she was consumed with it.  Evergreen, who at first appears as zealous in his Maoism as Wild Ginger, begins to realize that his desire to recite Mao's teaching every night has less to do with Mao and more to do with his feelings for Wild Ginger.  Despite her own feelings, Wild Ginger cannot give up her quest to ultimately be respected by the very people who appeared to despise her and her family when she was a child.

And this is what I mean about doctrines-religious or political-that deny basic human needs.  Mao was indeed treated like a god by his most ardent followers, and his theology, if you will, included no recognition of the need for physical or affectionate love.  In order to be an ideal Maoist, you were supposed to not just deny yourself love and sex, but denounce the very idea of love as Western and bourgeois.  Never mind the folk songs no longer sung, or the Buddhist rituals driven underground-the very emotion that created the joyous reasons for songs and celebrations was forbidden.  Ultimately, I suppose that's one reason Maoism was doomed to failure (that and the fact that it brought down the entire economy of China!).  People will only submit to being stripped of their humanity for so long.