Bookie Mee » National Book

Waiting by Ha Jin

mee — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 11:22:02 +0000

I have other things to post, but I almost can’t wait to talk about this book! I read it sometime at the end of December during my vacation, brought over to January, so I’ll just count as my first book of 2010. And what a great start it was!

Waiting is written in English by Ha Jin, who moved to US from China in 1985. The story is of Lin Kong, an army officer in mid 1900s China, and two women in his life. One–his wife who was matched up by his parents but he never loved, lived in the village at countryside. Another is a female colleague who he falls in love, but could not marry, because his wife refuses divorce, year after year, until it goes on for 18 years.

While the concept of waiting might be foreign to our 21st century Westernized mind (who mostly also live in privileged circumstances), it is not uncommon for many Chinese stories. Waiting for the tides to turn, waiting for the wind to change, enduring, submitting to fate — it’s a very humbling thing to do if you think about it. It’s rather easy to pass judgement on why people don’t take action and do something to change their fates, but as I grow older, I find myself to be more willing to understand. After all, life is never easy, and I would never know what it feels like to live weighed down by centuries of suffocating customs.

I read this book straight after Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, so it’s hard for me not to make some comparisons. While I loved Snow Flower, there was always a feeling that it was China from the eyes of a foreigner and the characters were caricatures of Chinese people. With Waiting, the characters felt so much more real, like ordinary Chinese breathing and living somewhere. (As a note, Ha Jin was inspired to write the book by a true story that he heard about an army doctor in China who waited for 18 years to get a divorce to marry his long-time friend, a nurse. Source: Wiki)

I was expecting some sort of love story (because that’s the impression I got from the back cover and possibly some reviews), but I was getting so much more. Nothing is sugar-coated. Nothing is sweet. It’s all rather harsh reality, mixed with the complexities of human mind and reactions to bound circumstances. Really, it’s communist China around 1960s. In essence, it’s survival story. The love is not a glorified romantic thing. Chinese love is practical love.

I’m quite surprised to find that not everybody loved the book as much as I did. For me it’s such a poignant book and it speaks to me in many ways. It’s sad in a quiet way, it’s humbling, and it taught me so much about China, or to be more exact, about its people.

I highly recommend it for you who have any interest in China. I’m happy to say that I understand why Waiting has won so many awards. They can’t be more well-deserved.

1999, 308 pp

First line
Every summer Lin Kong returned to Goose Village to divorce his wife, Shuyu.

Awards
1999 National Book Award for Fiction
2000 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction
Finalist of 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

Challenges
China Challenge (book #3), Book Awards IV (book #1), Women Unbound (book #4): for a glimpse into women’s lives in mid to late 1900s China, Pulitzer Prizes, Reading the World

Also reviewed by
Loved it! – Regular Rumination
Liked it somewhat – mrdes | American Bibliophile | Reading Matters | Book Bird Dog
Didn’t – A Striped Armchair | A Book A Week

I tried to find more reviews but there weren’t many. Let me know if you’ve posted your thoughts about it, especially if you liked it! :)

American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang

mee — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 10:32:02 +0000

American Born Chinese is a graphic novel comprised of three interrelated stories: an American-born Chinese boy who tries to fit in at his school, the legendary Monkey King, and an American boy who is extremely embarrassed by his visiting cousin who fits into the ultimate negative Chinese stereotype. The stories come together at the end in slightly bizarre way.

Anybody who’s born in Asia region or has Chinese heritage would know the story of the Monkey King, since it’s one of the oldest and the most popular Chinese literature that ever was. I grew up with countless variations of the story retelling and derivation: movies, tv series, manga, anime, illustrated books, you name it. So I would be interested to know if anyone outside the culture ever heard of the story. I can’t remember a time when I lived without the Monkey King, so I just assume that everybody in the world must know about it! Well, do you? If you’d like to read more about the origin, check out the wiki page of Journey to the West, which is probably a good introduction to the story. Or you can read Yang’s reasoning behind all three stories, which also includes some history of the Monkey King.

Out of the three stories, I enjoyed the Chinese cousin Chin-Kee the least. It’s too over the top with eating cat gizzards and peeing in a coke can for someone to drink. He’s disgusting, annoying, and frankly, almost insulting to Chinese people. I’m not sure if the story’s inclusion is really necessary and I wondered a bit why Yang put it in. The conclusion at the end of the book didn’t convince me. I read Yang’s story of the origin of the character (at the very end) and I got to understand in some way. He said,

“In order for us to defeat our enemy, he must first be made visible.”

I can’t ask for more. It’s the perfect way to explain his decision and I respect it.

The Monkey King story is pretty close to the original one and I do think I could appreciate it more having been so familiar with the original story. But inevitably, I enjoyed most the good old story of Asian kids wanting to fit into dominantly white society. Along with him, there’s a Japanese girl and another boy from Taiwan in school. It’s always interesting point that the ignorant always group all the Asians together like a big pot of slanted eyes people.

While the graphic novel is fiction, it’s not hard to imagine that parts of it are biographical. Yang was born in 1973, and I imagine there were probably few Asians in school in those days. I’m not sure about American school these days, but in Australia I do see plenty Asian high school kids all over the place. So the difficulty to fit in may not be as high as, say, 20-30 years ago.

One of my favorite scene is the one where the two Chinese friends meet at some cafe drinking bubble tea. Bubble tea! For you who don’t know, it’s Taiwanese drink that’s really popular in East Asia and overseas. It usually comprises of milk tea and black tapioca balls in bite size. I happen to like it as well, and there were a lot of times that I hung out with my Asian friends drinking bubble tea — in Australia, Canada, USA, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia. Bubble tea is ubiquitous! It brought me fond memories, just thought I share. It’s such a perfect ending to the book, as for me, it shows acceptance of who you are.

It’s kinda weird that I probably spent more time compiling this review than reading the book (it’s really short). But I guess it’s the type of book that could invoke all sorts of reaction and feeling. And the more I dwell on it the more I appreciate the uniqueness of this book. Who has ever produced anything like it before? The rawness of it really hits you on the head.

American Born Chinese is published by First Second, whose collection looks absolutely amazing. I’m most interested in reading Kampung Boy by Lat (kampung means village in Malaysian and Indonesian) and The Color of Earth by Kim Dong Hwa (Korean author). Gorgeous covers!

2006, 240 pp

Gene Yang website | Gene Yang on American Born Chinese

Awards
2007 Michael L. Printz Award (First graphic novel ever to win. Won over the Book Thief by Markus Zusak in that year.)
2007 Eisner Award Best Graphic Album – New
Finalist for 2006 National Book Award – Young People’s Literature (First graphic novel ever to be nominated)

Challenges
Book Awards III (book #5), Dewey’s Book (book #12), Graphic Novels (book #17), China Challenge (book #1) — Not sure if this book counts, since half of it is set overseas, not China, but the Monkey King story? Surely it counts!

Also reviewed by

Didn’t. — The Zen Leaf | Bermudaonion | The Bluestocking Society | Thoughts of Joy

Did I miss yours?

The Color Purple by Alice Walker

mee — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 11:09:48 +0000

The story in The Color Purple is told through a series of diary entries and letters. Somehow this worked well for me, since I could have short attention span sometimes, and reading diary entry or letter means it’s hardly longer than 2-3 pages at a time. The narrator, Celie, is a black woman who lives in 1930s in Southern United States. Since the diary entries are all Celie’s, the book is practically told in dialect, something that resembles “broken English”. It took some pages getting used to, but I got it pretty soon.

Celie is a poor uneducated woman who, at fourteen, repeatedly raped by a man she calls Pa and impregnated twice. The children were taken away from her and she was forced into marriage with a man who’s equally abusive. The only person she loves, her sister names Nettie, was separated from her. Later on the letters in the books are recorded from both Celie and Nettie, even though each doesn’t know if the other would read it.

The Color Purple discusses issues of degradation, poverty, sexism, racism, abuse, lesbianism (things in book that usually get banned..) But also about friendship, God, hope, and empowerment. I’m most interested in the relationships of the women in the book. From wife, mistress, ex-wife, girlfriend, step mom/daughter, sister, to nanny. The men are mostly portrayed as abusive, and therefore these women have at least something in common so they stick together and watch each other, even though it sometimes doesn’t start very smooth at the beginning.

I like the narration, how it feels so honest and down-to-earth, because the narrator, well, is a simple person. I get to like the simplicity of Celie’s observation of the world, her opinions and views about things, how she just hopes for the best and does everything she can to survive. The book is not at all heavy, but it’s touching and heartbreaking. I teared up at the end.

I think The Color Purple is a very important book. It touches on important issues without being preachy. It opens your eyes to ways of people’s lives that you may not be familiar about. At the end of the book, you’d feel that you are privileged to be allowed a glimpse into these amazing people’s lives. That they’re really alive somewhere, flesh and blood, and not just characters in a fiction book, which brings me to share the interesting dedication from Alice Walker at the beginning of the book:

To the Spirit:
Without whose assistance
Neither this book
Nor I
Would have been
Written

and at the end:

I thank everybody in this book for coming.
A. W., author and medium

She’s a medium, really? I would have believed her. The characters were so real, it is as if they were coming as spirits to her.

The Color Purple is one of the most frequently challenged book according to ALA because of its explicit content. It’s no. 6 in the top 10 of most challenged book of 2007 with reasons: Homosexuality, Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language. I’m reading this for Banned Book challenge 2009 (and other challenges). Just a note from me, I don’t think the book is over-the-top sexually explicit apart from the very first page. It’s sort of started like an explosion, but calmed down more after that. And now that I think about it, there wasn’t any offensive language that I could remember of. It’s just that I can easily think of other books that contain more sexual content and offensive language that are not banned. I guess people are wary about the whole topic more than anything else.

Memorable Quotes

“But it ain’t easy, trying to do without God. Even if you know he ain’t there, trying to do without him is a strain.” ~ Celie, p174

“… have you ever found God in a church? I never did. I just found a bunch of folks hoping for him to show. Any God I ever felt in a church I brought in with me. And I think all the other folks did too. They come to church to share God, not find God.” ~ Shug, p174

“I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it.” ~ Shug, p177

“People think pleasing God is all God care about. But any fool living in the world can see it always trying to please us back. … It always making little surprises and springing them on us when us least expect.” ~ Shug, p177

“Not if it make us crazy. It hard enough to git by without being a fool.” ~ Sofia, on Reefer, p198

“Now. Is this life or not? I be so calm. If she come, I be happy. If she don’t, I be content. And then I figure this the lesson I was suppose to learn.” ~ Celie, p257

Rating: 4.5 out of 5
Pages: 261
Publication year: 1982

Awards
1983 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and National Book Award

First line
You better not never tell nobody but God.

Last line
Matter of fact, I think this the youngest us ever felt.

Also reviewed by