A Rather Serious Book Review
Snow flower and secret fan and others -- Books that I always wanted to read
A lot like Shanghai Girls, by Snow Flower and Secret Fan, Lisa See didn't let me down. I'm quite accustomed to generalize a book with an adjective, but later find this method both self-assured and oversimplifying. For people who do believe in the philosophy that every book is a miniature of the author's lifetime, that every word makes sense of whoever's writing it, this Snow Flower and Secret Fan could no longer be dismissed by such clichéd acclaims as "spectacular", "big-hearted, "mesmerizing", which contemporary book recommenders are obviously fond of.
I discovered my personal obsession with cross-cultural literature, as I call it(there seems to be no correspondent terminology for this). By cross-cultural I mean those literatures, whoever authors them that portray stories in a language that is not spoken in where the stories are set. Asian-American (Eileen Chang, Amy Tan), Indian-American, Afghanistan-American (Khaled Hosseini) or even an American writing a Chinese family of the Qing Dynasty (Lisa See). I am somewhat entertained to how the stories are told---which reveals a lot about the way the authors see their stories that happened back in their native lands, or the way a person from a dramatically different culture sees our culture. And this is often very subtle.
I've read Khaled Hosseini's work, A thousand Splendid Suns and the Kite Runner, each of which was, commercially speaking, an international bestseller, respectively told from women's and men's perspectives. Conceivably, lives portrayed in both stories were bittersweet, as if looking backwards at the past agonies, soothing and caressing the old scars with both relish and dull pains. And that again is subtle, but makes sense: a man suffering from all imaginable miseries in the tumultuous, precarious war-time Middle East, escaped to United States for shelter, fortunately found a cultural community there and left the past all behind, safe and sound from dangers that used to be sort of a childhood daily. There is a Chinese phrase for this particular sentiment: remembering the past bitterness and knowing the present sweetness and such sentiment seems to never outdate.
However there were times when I grew suspicious of this kind of anguish-reflection: isn't it somewhat debasing to disclose the mess out there one's native country, or isn't it somewhat condescending to write about the afflictions in another country with a pitying tone of a bystander? Isn't it doubtable of commercial taunt? Pity and sympathy are too different to be interchangeable. I ruled out this presumption after a long period of time, by realizing that the authors didn't really called for pity or commiseration but true sympathy, empathy and compassion. And occasionally, reverence. Such is the greatness of masterpieces that distinguishes them from mediocre storytelling.
Reverence. That sentiment of greatness spontaneously arising from masterpieces, for either one's native culture or an exotic culture that one's totally alien to. Shanghai Girls, Snow Flower and Secret Fan were transcribed and refined from narrative memoirs of Chinese old women who had gone through the time of China's greatest obscurity and disgrace, feudalism, distorted Confucius philosophies that did all but bring well-being for people, excruciating old traditions like foot-binding, wars, famines, poverty and shame. Women suffer the most, as is told in A Thousand Splendid Suns, "like a compass needle that points north, a man's accusing finger always finds a woman, always." " I wanted them to place a value on their lives, which for the most part are dismal...from poor and ungrateful families...suffered the heartache of separation from parents, the loss of children, indignity of being the lowest position in in-law's houses...and far too many of them had husband who constantly beat them." Virtues of endless endurance, absolute obedience, filial piety, illiteracy and blind loyalty were cherished, daughters were deemed as useless and unpromising branches of the family, and wives who didn't produce sons were severely persecuted and disgraced by their in-laws, to an extent that is far more than what it can personally imagine, even if when I myself is a Chinese and always thought I had a sufficing knowledge of our own history.
These facts, both provided by Mr. Housseini and Miss See, stunned me. And at first I did feel pity, for that I can't possibly imagine and much less empathize. For thousands of years since the origin of Mesopotamian and Ancient Chinese civilization, have things always been like that, men suffering, women suffering more, from inhospitable livelihood, certain non-tolerating creeds and traditions of religion and patriarchy. The answers lie nowhere because that history commemorate more of the overshadowing significance of politics and little of civilians; while literature might sometimes have captured certain scenes we are searching for, it is for the most part obscured, poorly persevered and often believed to contain frequent dramatization. But a common fact lies in the present, that no matter what people witnessed or suffered from, they survived, they made it through whatever, from generation to generation, an everlasting, veritable human consciousness of survival that is credited in neither Confucism nor Menfucism, that sustained them for decades and millennium, on women's fragile lily-feet from foot-binding, men's weather beaten shoulder and puffed eyes from consecutive days of labor. And there are China and Afghanistan, standing on the edge of Mesopotamian Plain and the shores of Yangtze River, telling stories of survival which will still subsist and nourish lives in the future, either unforeseeable or promising.
Such is the greatness of masterpieces, from which I can't really tell it is, in the end, the greatness of the authors or that of humankind and civilizations.
A lot like Shanghai Girls, by Snow Flower and Secret Fan, Lisa See didn't let me down. I'm quite accustomed to generalize a book with an adjective, but later find this method both self-assured and oversimplifying. For people who do believe in the philosophy that every book is a miniature of the author's lifetime, that every word makes sense of whoever's writing it, this Snow Flower and Secret Fan could no longer be dismissed by such clichéd acclaims as "spectacular", "big-hearted, "mesmerizing", which contemporary book recommenders are obviously fond of.
I discovered my personal obsession with cross-cultural literature, as I call it(there seems to be no correspondent terminology for this). By cross-cultural I mean those literatures, whoever authors them that portray stories in a language that is not spoken in where the stories are set. Asian-American (Eileen Chang, Amy Tan), Indian-American, Afghanistan-American (Khaled Hosseini) or even an American writing a Chinese family of the Qing Dynasty (Lisa See). I am somewhat entertained to how the stories are told---which reveals a lot about the way the authors see their stories that happened back in their native lands, or the way a person from a dramatically different culture sees our culture. And this is often very subtle.
I've read Khaled Hosseini's work, A thousand Splendid Suns and the Kite Runner, each of which was, commercially speaking, an international bestseller, respectively told from women's and men's perspectives. Conceivably, lives portrayed in both stories were bittersweet, as if looking backwards at the past agonies, soothing and caressing the old scars with both relish and dull pains. And that again is subtle, but makes sense: a man suffering from all imaginable miseries in the tumultuous, precarious war-time Middle East, escaped to United States for shelter, fortunately found a cultural community there and left the past all behind, safe and sound from dangers that used to be sort of a childhood daily. There is a Chinese phrase for this particular sentiment: remembering the past bitterness and knowing the present sweetness and such sentiment seems to never outdate.
However there were times when I grew suspicious of this kind of anguish-reflection: isn't it somewhat debasing to disclose the mess out there one's native country, or isn't it somewhat condescending to write about the afflictions in another country with a pitying tone of a bystander? Isn't it doubtable of commercial taunt? Pity and sympathy are too different to be interchangeable. I ruled out this presumption after a long period of time, by realizing that the authors didn't really called for pity or commiseration but true sympathy, empathy and compassion. And occasionally, reverence. Such is the greatness of masterpieces that distinguishes them from mediocre storytelling.
Reverence. That sentiment of greatness spontaneously arising from masterpieces, for either one's native culture or an exotic culture that one's totally alien to. Shanghai Girls, Snow Flower and Secret Fan were transcribed and refined from narrative memoirs of Chinese old women who had gone through the time of China's greatest obscurity and disgrace, feudalism, distorted Confucius philosophies that did all but bring well-being for people, excruciating old traditions like foot-binding, wars, famines, poverty and shame. Women suffer the most, as is told in A Thousand Splendid Suns, "like a compass needle that points north, a man's accusing finger always finds a woman, always." " I wanted them to place a value on their lives, which for the most part are dismal...from poor and ungrateful families...suffered the heartache of separation from parents, the loss of children, indignity of being the lowest position in in-law's houses...and far too many of them had husband who constantly beat them." Virtues of endless endurance, absolute obedience, filial piety, illiteracy and blind loyalty were cherished, daughters were deemed as useless and unpromising branches of the family, and wives who didn't produce sons were severely persecuted and disgraced by their in-laws, to an extent that is far more than what it can personally imagine, even if when I myself is a Chinese and always thought I had a sufficing knowledge of our own history.
These facts, both provided by Mr. Housseini and Miss See, stunned me. And at first I did feel pity, for that I can't possibly imagine and much less empathize. For thousands of years since the origin of Mesopotamian and Ancient Chinese civilization, have things always been like that, men suffering, women suffering more, from inhospitable livelihood, certain non-tolerating creeds and traditions of religion and patriarchy. The answers lie nowhere because that history commemorate more of the overshadowing significance of politics and little of civilians; while literature might sometimes have captured certain scenes we are searching for, it is for the most part obscured, poorly persevered and often believed to contain frequent dramatization. But a common fact lies in the present, that no matter what people witnessed or suffered from, they survived, they made it through whatever, from generation to generation, an everlasting, veritable human consciousness of survival that is credited in neither Confucism nor Menfucism, that sustained them for decades and millennium, on women's fragile lily-feet from foot-binding, men's weather beaten shoulder and puffed eyes from consecutive days of labor. And there are China and Afghanistan, standing on the edge of Mesopotamian Plain and the shores of Yangtze River, telling stories of survival which will still subsist and nourish lives in the future, either unforeseeable or promising.
Such is the greatness of masterpieces, from which I can't really tell it is, in the end, the greatness of the authors or that of humankind and civilizations.