The Edge of the Empire: First Impressions

Alba gave me this book by Sanya Polprasid about the origins of the Thai people. Though it is based on currently accepted theory that the Thai migrated south from China, it is a novel and like all novels, authors have license to fictionalize. So I do accept the facts, broadly speaking, but not its details. In the introduction, the editor states that the book was written in "the classical style" and I am not sure what that means. In the first 30 pages of the book 17 characters have been introduced; there is no main character or hero.

Reading China

Last week, Sudarat gave me two books to read about China. One was Shen and the other was Chu Ju's House by Gloria Whelan. We are looking for books for the seventh graders to read for a course called Humanities. Chu Ju is about a young teenaged girl who realizes that as a girl, she is not as valued as a boy. When her little sister is born, her poor family cannot afford to raise two girls. They consider selling the baby. To save her sister, Chu Ju runs away.

As I read Chu Ju's story, I compared it with Chrisman's book of stories. One is set in contemporary China, the other in a China of long ago. I didn't read all the stories in Shen of the Sea as I sampled only two of them. In any case, the language would be difficult for my students and they would find it hard to identify with the characters. Chu Ju would be easier to read but I wondered how many of them would be able to identify with the main character's problem. I am looking for a balanced portrayal of the Chinese for my students to read; something that speaks to their experience, too.

Shen of the Sea: Seeing China

I read two stories out of Shen and the Sea. The first one was “Ah Tcha the Sleeper” and the other was “As Hai Low Kept House.” Arthur Bowie Chrisman won the Newbery Medal in 1925 for distinguished children's literature in the United States. This book is an artifact of its time, preserving early 20th century attitudes; a fossil in print. As folk tales, the stories depend on archetypes to teach a lesson or to send a message. Unfortunately, archetypes portray people as one-dimensional, such as Hardworking and Industrious or Silly and Ridiculous. The name Chrisman gives to the character "Hai Low" pokes fun at how Chinese names sound to Western ears and shows the reader that Hai Low is ridiculous in the author's eyes. Today, no book publisher would dare accept stories that make fun of another ethnic group. In 1925 when the book was published, attitudes were different. Dr. Sun Yat-sen, the leader of China had died. China was engulfed in civil war, forcing the US to send six warships to China to protect Western interests. Yet these stories show nothing of the Chinese struggle to become a modern nation. Instead, the Chinese are presented as people who wear traditional dress, have funny-sounding names, and live in a place that is out of step with modern times. It's hard to reconcile this image of China with images from the Beijing Olympics.

Reading Literary Broads: A Woman from Malaya

The Teardrop Story Woman was the most conventional of the three women. In the beginning Mei Kwei rebelled against the patriarchy, the male-dominated society of Luping, Malaya. But then inexplicably, she began to behave in the most predictable ways. She displayed an unfortunate tendency to play to stereotype--the cold beauty rising from the scum of colonial Luping. The Native falling in love with a European. The Faithful Wife Wrongfully Accused of Infidelity. Catherine Lim, the story woman, also borrows a page from Colleen McCullough (The Thorn Birds). In both books the heroines experience Impossible Forbidden Love. I got impatient and I read the ending. I could see where this was headed, and I was right. Lim lost her voice, the one at the beginning that introduced us to the irony of being born female and Chinese. But instead of being an insightful account of the condition of Chinese women, Mei Kwei's story reveals a woman who cynically prostitutes her beauty to survive; first by marrying a handsome rich man, then by taking on a rich lover when her husband abandons her. There is nothing tragic in it because we don't get a sense that she has a fatal flaw, like Scarlett O'Hara's single mindedness that blinds her from recognizing true love until it is too late. Mei Kwei's beauty is not flawed; it is merely a necessary tool for survival. This is not a new insight; there have been rich concubines, not all of them literary.

Reading Literary Broads: A Queen

I don't remember how I came to have The Red Queen in my library, but she was very patient, I think, waiting for me to come around to reading her. Set in 18th century Korea, it's the story of the Lady Hyegyong and her mad husband, Crown Prince Sado. Like the Wife, the Queen conflates time. Her 18th century consciousness has adopted a 21st century ability to analyze the roots of her husband' s psychosis in his relationship with his father, the king. Gazing from the 18th century through 21st century lenses, the Queen tells her story, interpreting and re-interpreting events. Some of that (re)-interpretation is provided by Margaret Drabble. The Queen is given an awareness of a legacy, that others not yet born when she is writing her memoires are reading her story. This device helps the reader to understand the setting and empathize with the Queen.

However, in the second half of the book, the Queen suddenly becomes a character in a biography and the scholarly Dr. Babs Halliwell is reading her. It is Oxford, sometime in the early 21st century. Since the life of an academic is one of observer rather than participant in history, the horror of the prince's slow death in a rice chest is replaced by an academic conference in modern day Seoul. The switch from viewing events through the Queen's eyes to Babs' view of the conference and her life afterwards is a too-sudden release of tension, rather like the air escaping from a balloon.

Reading Literary Broads: A Wife

The Time Traveler's Wife is a book that Taranee had given me for Christmas with the recommendation "it's awesome!" Since what is awesome to a twentysomething is not necessarily so to her mother, it took me 2 years to get around to reading this book. I didn't exactly find it awesome, but the postmodernist that I am was intrigued by the possibility that time is not linear and that you can meet yourself in your past, present, and future. Which raises the question, what would be "home" to a time traveler--his past, present, or future? Which one of Me is the true Self? I was enthralled by the book's romantic premise of a woman who meets her future husband when she was seven and he was thirty. The time was never right for them--when would they be the right age to meet and fall in love?

The Lady or the Tiger?

In this story by Frank Stockton, a princess must watch her lover die or marry another. The king, her father, has decreed that her lover must choose one of two doors. Behind one door is a hungry tiger. Behind the other is a lady. If he opens the first door he will die, but if he opens the second door, he must marry the lady at once. The princess knows the secret of the doors and she has promised to help her lover. Which door will she choose?

In reading this story, I pictured in my mind what the arena must look like with the two doors, and the difficult dilemma facing the princess. I read that the king's daughter was very much like her father, so I decided that she must be just as ruthless, without pity. She would have chosen death for her lover rather than give him to another woman.