Shanghai Girls by Lisa See – I really liked this book,
although I’m not sure if everyone else did.
It is about two women from Shanghai who are sold as brides when their
father gets into trouble with his gambling.
They go from living a glamorous lifestyle to just trying to survive when
war in China starts in the 1930s. I will
warn you that there is a graphic rape scene that was hard for me to read. What I found the most interesting were the
details of “Angel’s Island,” the so-called Ellis Island of the West. America does not treat immigrants of color
well today and did not then either. It
infuriates me to no end that immigration centers are set up like prisons! I also found the ending very interesting
too. The book is told from the point of
view of the oldest daughter (Pearl) who feels like she must protect her younger
sister (May) at all costs, which often makes her feel like a victim. At the end of the book, Pearl and May have a
heated conversation, where May tells Pearl how she views the events in their
lives and one comes to the realization that perhaps the youngest daughter
didn’t need so much protecting after all. In fact, it comes out that the
younger sister actually did quite a lot to protect Pearl without Pearl even
realizing it. It is a lot like life when
sometimes we get so used to viewing things in one perspective that we never
consider that there may be another way to approach and view life
situations. The book proved to be a very
sobering reminder of the dangers in viewing life as a victim-I have learned
that while there may be times when it is fair to say that one is being
victimized, staying in that emotional victimizing place is incredibly damaging
and destructive, because it takes away a person’s power. In this life, where things are often very
unfair, we still must always strive to find the ways in which we can be
empowered and to claim and act on our own power, even if the only way to do
that is to constantly remind ourselves that we are just as important and
valuable as anybody else. The book ends
on a cliff hanger, which made me very unhappy, as I don’t like to wait to see
how a story is resolved. At least Lisa
See wrote a follow-up book, called Dreams of Joy, which I will have to read sometime very soon.
The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka – This book was
recommended by one of my group members and I’m glad she did! It has won several awards and is very well
written. It’s a very interesting and
creative book, because it is written in the plural-instead of saying, “She did
this,” Otsuka writes, “We did this.”
This is not the story of one woman or even of a small group of women
with a linear plot line; rather, it is the collective story of all the Japanese
women who came to America as mail-order brides and the trials they experienced
before and during World War II. Some of
them have fortunate stories and some of them have very tragic ones. It’s interesting that even though they face a
lot of extremely tough and sad situations that are mostly out of their control,
for the most part, they are not presented as victims. They chose to come to America as mail-order brides
and despite their disappointments most of them chose to face their new
situations with the resolve to work hard and to make the best of their lot in
life. This is perhaps what saves
them. I know it is what has saved me in
my many trials with illnesses that often times seem out of my own control-I
have been reflecting on that a lot more lately, because one of my dearest
friends is struggling to make sense of her very severe illness, but I am afraid
that she is viewing her struggle through the eyes of a helpless victim, which
is only making the situation much, much worse for her. The
ending is exceptionally clever, as it changes perspective and is told through
the viewpoint of the white townspeople whom are perplexed as to where the
Japanese families are and feel a little sadness now that they are gone. Of course, the Japanese families have been
taken away to the internment camps during World War II. It is a very sad and chilling ending, as the
townspeople soon start to forget that the Japanese families were ever a part of
their community at all. The story of the
Japanese internment camps during World War II in the United States is a very
depressing one and I believe a shame to the country. It makes me apprehensive to have it be a part
of our history, because it set a precedent that could happen again. I worry that it just might happen again
fairly soon if the war on terrorism continues only this time it would affect
families from the Middle East. The book
is very short and is a quick read. It I
exceptionally well written and it tells the experience of Japanese women before
and during WWII so simply and powerfully that I think it should be required
reading in college courses, if not in high school. As a warning, there are some descriptions of
rape and domestic violence, although writing it in the plural I think takes out
some of the sting-I didn’t find them as hard to read as the rape scene in
Shanghai Girls, even though the situation, because it was so obviously shared
by many, seemed extra sad. Still, while
the book is indeed haunting, I did not find it overly depressing and I still
heartily recommend it.
Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman – My book club read The Dovekeepers by Alice Hoffman a few months ago and I absolutely loved it and
typically when I love a work by an author, I then become totally obsessed and
strive to read every book they’ve ever written.
Apparently, that’s not always a good idea. Practical Magic is Hoffman’s most famous work
and was even made into a movie, but for the life of me, I really don’t know
why! The writing for The Dovekeepers was
exquisite with absolutely beautiful, almost poetic phrases and descriptions,
but the writing for Practical Magic seems very amateurish and is both over
the top and uninspired-quite a feat! As
one reviewer on GoodReads noted, the whole book just exudes an air of amorality
and none of the characters are remotely likeable. I just fail to see this book’s appeal and so
many people like it! Why?! What I really hated the most was that this
book absolutely gets love and lust mixed up.
The book spends pages and pages pathetically describing dysfunctional
relationships where women become wildly desperate and practically grovel for the
men they lust love for to “love” them back. Physical attraction is not the same thing as
love and neither is despairing infatuation and I find Hoffman’s portrayals of
female approaches to “love” both disappointing and dangerous. There was one review where the reviewer
thought all of this mix-up was intentional and it was an artful way to point
out the flaws in these types of relationships, but I have my doubts. Maybe I take life way too seriously, but I
seriously doubt it when my favorite book series is The Hitchhiker’s Guide tothe Galaxy by Douglas Adams.
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Currently Reading:
Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery
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I need men to
hate patriarchy because of the ways it hurts them. Not the ways it hurts women
they love. Not the ways it hurts their relationships, or their ability to have
relationships, with women. I can’t trust an ally in a fight this hard unless I
can see their driving motivation as something intrinsic to who they are.
In order to do a painting
such as Tea Time and be mentally ill, with an illness so disabling as
schizophrenia, you have to sacrifice a lot. Truely, your one aim in life
has to be an artist. Your one goal day after day is to paint. Paint
as much as is physically and psychologically possible until you are
drained. I don't ask that life be fun. I don't ask that life be
happy. I don't ask that life be pain free. And most certainly, I
know, I don't try to fit in any shape or form into mainstream society.
Oprah doesn’t seem to understand, that a rich, independent,
college-educated chick like her, who shuns traditional marriage, is in Tyler
Perry’s world the DEVIL, a veritable, conniving bitch, who hates babies, men,
and old people, needs Jesus, plus a good slap from a sexy Black man, and will
still probably catch AIDS and live in misery because she chose not to conform
to the dictates of Christian respectability.
It is because
society tells us that women are objects, not subjects, that Stephen Hawkings can declare women to be “a complete mystery”, and
have newspapers gleefully latch on to this, declaring women “the greatest
mystery known to man”. It is a common refrain for men to bleat about not
understanding women, but this is because they have simply never tried, because
society has trained them to never look at life through the eyes of a woman.
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