World Literature – …on the B.L.

Read Yes
Length 354
Quick Review At 19, Joy finds out her family’s biggest secret. She runs away to find her father in her ancestral homeland of newly communist China.

I have had the accident of unknowingly buying sequels without reading the first. Fortunately, they have not been dependent upon the first book, so I am not totally lost while reading.

I did this again with Dreams of Joy by Lisa See, which is a sequel to her book Shanghai Girls. Joy and May were young sisters in the first novel; now, they are middle aged women with a dark secret embodied in their daughter Joy.

Joy is an idealist nineteen year old born in Los Angeles to Chinese parents. She yearns to go to China to build a Republic based on equality. When she learns her mothers’ secret, she runs away to China to find her father, who happens to be a famous artist. Spending time in communes and in the upper echelons of society with her father, it takes time for her to fully see the true meaning of Red China. Pearl embarks on her own mission to bring her daughter home to America. She returns to China and Shanghai after more than two decades away. Bittersweet. Many things have changed, but many have stayed the same.

Dreams of Joy is told from two perspectives: Joy, the daughter, and Pearl, the mother. They have their own unique viewpoints and voices. Their voices and views fit their age and experience. Pearl’s voice comes across more naturally. Joy’s voice is more forced with a tendency toward explanation and immature phrasing. It feels like the author isn’t fully invested or understanding of the characters perspective or psyche.

See discusses many horrible aspects of Chinese culture during the early years of communist China. Foot binding had been outlawed for many years in China, but there were still women alive who had endured the experience during the early years of the government shift. Infanticide and more atrocities were common practices during the famine. The desire to have male children was a violent and sincere part of culture even when men and women were considered “equal” by the government. See has no qualms about jumping head first into the ugly sides of history in her novel.

I really enjoyed Dreams of Joy and suggest it to anyone looking to learn a little more about Eastern culture. It’s a story of motherly love, idealism, and harsh reality.

Memorable Quotes
“She’s so sure of herself, but anyone can be sure at nineteen.”
“Those who have little to lose don’t want to lose what little they have.”
“To lose a daughter is sad, they tell me. To lose a son is tragic.”
“Mao my day women hold up half the sky, but it is the lesser half.”
“That means all food must go to males first.”
“Fu Hsüan’s famous poem that begins, “How sad it is to be a woman! Nothing on Earth is held so cheap.””

Title: Dreams of Joy
Author: Lisa See
Publisher: Random House
Copyright: 2012
ISBN: 9780812980547

Read Yes
Length 112
Quick Review A very short yet punchy memoir about a woman reminiscing on the events of her twelfth summer, and how her perception was forever altered by the trauma.

Annie Ernaux is finally able to commit to paper the life altering event which shaped her life’s perspective. Since the event, she has been marked by a feeling of never ending shame. This book is different from others she has written. She had been able to name her hometown previously, but found herself unable to after writing the first page.

Ernaux starts the book out with a stunning sentence: “My father tried to kill my mother one Sunday in June, in the early afternoon.” Normally a writer would leave something like this for further into the book; however, she starts with this and uses the rest of the book to explain her life leading up to the event.

As the daughter of store owners, a religious zealot of a mother, and a push-over of a father in a small, rural town in France, Ernaux felt oppressed, confined, controlled, and watched. Ernaux was “lucky” enough to go to private school meaning a school in a convent. Her parents had a shop in their home. Her town was small full of watching eyes. These aspects culminated in having to always maintain a facade of perfection in order to maintain a good standing at school, keep her parents happy, allow the family to look perfect, and never stray from the path.

Her father, who had been nothing but acquiescent to her mother, lost it and held a scythe to his wife’s neck in front of his daughter, Annie. By the afternoon, everything went back to normal in the house. For Ernaux, nothing was ever normal again. She viewed life as before and after. She was constantly waiting for the next time; nervous she would arrive home to a disaster.

Though it’s a short book, it is relatable. Everyone experiences shame in one way or another. Shame is felt by people for different reasons in different ways, but it is a burden we all bear silently because we feel alone in our own shame.

Memorable Quotes
“We have no true memory of ourselves.”
“Politeness was the supreme virtue, the basic principle underlying all social behavior.”
“Believing and having to believe were the same thing.”
“For me the word private will always suggest deprivation, fear and lack of openness. Including in the expression private life. Writing is something public.”
“The worst thing about shame is that we imagine we are the only ones to experience it.”
“…that the shame will never cease and that it will only be followed by more shame.”

Title: Shame
Author: Annie Ernaux
Translator: Tanya Leslie
Publisher: Seven Stories Press
Copyright: 1998
ISBN: 9781888363692

Tag: World Literature

Dreams of Joy

Shame by Annie Ernaux