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3.66 AVERAGE
3.66 AVERAGE
3 reasons which did prompt me to read this book were as follows.
Chinese immigrants, Vancouver/Canada and to be honest the book cover itself.
The book is divided into three sections, something that you won't realise until you start each section. Three of the four children from the household each have their own part, in which they narrate from their point of view about a defining event.
Beautiful to read and the end brought me dangerously close to bawling.
Chinese immigrants, Vancouver/Canada and to be honest the book cover itself.
The book is divided into three sections, something that you won't realise until you start each section. Three of the four children from the household each have their own part, in which they narrate from their point of view about a defining event.
Beautiful to read and the end brought me dangerously close to bawling.
This book vividly brought to life the experience of Chinese immigrants growing up in Vancouver Canada in the 30s and 40s. It is told from the point of view of each of the 3 children of one family, in turn. I found all 3 narratives riveting. There isn't anything that connects the three narratives, and the book feels unfinished at the end, but I didn't mind that. These characters will live on in my memory, and I learned a lot that I didn't know about the history of Chinese immigration to Canada.
This is a fictional collection of short stories. The novel is about a family in World War II-era Vancouver Chinatown. The three parts are written by three children in the family. I love anything Chinese, really, but I thought this was wonderfully written and I can still remember some of the stories. A Joy Luck Club for Canada, sort of.
Close to a 3.5 for me. I love character studies and books that have no plot are fine. This book was alright for me, but it never truly delved into race as much as I hoped. I mean, they do discuss racism but it's not as much as I truly wished. Same with sexism, it was only briefly touched upon. My personal opinion on the author are notwithstanding (his pride in being a banana is disconcerting). Overall an easy and enjoyable read.
If your local library is ever selling about three boxes full of the same book for 10 cents a piece there is a reason. I thought this book would be at least semi-interesting because it takes place in Chinatown of Vancouver area which is familiar to me. That's some hours and ten cents of my life I'll never get back.
A sad novel that better revealed the layers of racism present in our society than any other book I've read. Ending during the Second World War, the racism between white people and Chinese and Japanese, and the Chinese towards the Japanese paints an ugly picture through the eyes of a child who is otherwise ignorant of it all.
It was interesting to hear experiences of life in Chinatown through three related, but remarkably different, points of view. I like the way old language, customs, and culture from China is written and blend into new life in Canada. I like that the Grandmother is the connecting thread between the stories, even though she fades into the background. I like how each child relates differently to the Grandmother and old customs and traditions.
This book took a while to get going. Perhaps it was because I started off with a little wariness – I’m not all that fond of reading Chinese immigrant stories, partly because they’ve always seemed… perhaps a little too similar to each other. Perhaps because they also hit close to home, but in a different sort of way (my great grandparents moved from China to Singapore – essentially moving from one Chinese-dominated country to another). It’s hard to explain, but it’s always made me hesitant.
Wayson Choy’s The Jade Peony is set in Vancouver’s Chinatown in the 1930s and 40s and opens with a story of Jook-Liang, the ‘useless girl’ who dreams of being Shirley Temple and befriends old Wong Suk (Monkey). This story tripped me up a little, it was kind of sweet but I don’t think I was in the right frame of mind to read it (still wary, still hesitant – the grumpy grandmother stuck in her old ways especially called for a big fat ‘aiyah‘*). I have to admit that I almost put this book away at this point. But I’m glad I stuck with it, as in the end, the book was quite worthwhile.
The second section was second brother Jung-Sum’s story. He was adopted by the family at age four and struggles with his new life and the spectres of his past. The third story is told through the eyes of Sekky, the youngest, during the Second World War and the tensions between the Japanese and Chinese immigrants in Vancouver. This third story has the most action – the other parts seem more like reminiscences, rather episodic. But despite the lack of action, the reader feels drawn into the lives of these three children, perhaps on the strength of their characters. However, the three stories seem quite separate from each other, and the three main characters seldom feature in each others’ stories, which is quite curious.
* Which can be translated into somewhat of a sigh or an ‘argh’.
Wayson Choy’s The Jade Peony is set in Vancouver’s Chinatown in the 1930s and 40s and opens with a story of Jook-Liang, the ‘useless girl’ who dreams of being Shirley Temple and befriends old Wong Suk (Monkey). This story tripped me up a little, it was kind of sweet but I don’t think I was in the right frame of mind to read it (still wary, still hesitant – the grumpy grandmother stuck in her old ways especially called for a big fat ‘aiyah‘*). I have to admit that I almost put this book away at this point. But I’m glad I stuck with it, as in the end, the book was quite worthwhile.
The second section was second brother Jung-Sum’s story. He was adopted by the family at age four and struggles with his new life and the spectres of his past. The third story is told through the eyes of Sekky, the youngest, during the Second World War and the tensions between the Japanese and Chinese immigrants in Vancouver. This third story has the most action – the other parts seem more like reminiscences, rather episodic. But despite the lack of action, the reader feels drawn into the lives of these three children, perhaps on the strength of their characters. However, the three stories seem quite separate from each other, and the three main characters seldom feature in each others’ stories, which is quite curious.
* Which can be translated into somewhat of a sigh or an ‘argh’.
THE JADE PEONY: NOTES
Part One: Jook-Liang, Only Sister
• Old man visited house in 1933, when she was 5 (13)
• Stepmother barely twenty when she came to Canada, was 7 when bandits killed her family in China (13)
• Stepmother came to care for Poh-Poh, and became son’s wife (14)
• “Poh-Poh, being one of the few elder women left in Vancouver, took pleasure in her status and became the arbitrator of the old ways.” (14)
• “In Gold Mountain, simple is best.” “There were, besides, false immigration stories to hide, secrets to be kept.” (14)
• Poh-Poh a slave to a wealthy family (15)
• Wong Bak, old friend of Grandmother’s, coming over for supper—family told of his story and warned of his appearance (16-19)
• Old Wong, looks like Monkey King from tales (22-5)
• “First Brother Kiam always argued that Poh-Poh’s stories were just stories, like the stories about the blonde Jesus Miss Bigley told us.” (28)
• Liang tells Old Wong he is twisted, and he asks her if she is scared of him, hugs him (29-30)
• “Jook-Liang, if you want a place in this world,” Grandmother’s voice had that exasperating let-me-remind-you tone, “do not be born a girl-child.” (31)—“A girl-child is mo yung—useless” (32)—How does this cultural assumption/belief affect both Liang and Poh-Poh?
• Baby Brother Sekky always sick (31)
• Old Wong brings Liang satin ribbon, an expensive gift for his “bandit-princess” (32-3)
• Poh-Poh ties her ribbons into flowers: “Teach me, my heart said, but I held back the words.” (34)
• Shirley Temple (36)
• No war in Canada—but Poh-Poh tells her: “You not Canada, Liang…you China. Always war in China.” (37)
• “I hated the Old One: Grandmother never let me get on with my movie-star daydreams.” (37)
• Old Wong: “Jook-Liang,” Wong Suk said to me one perfect day, “you are my little girl, my family.” (39)
• “I was happy. I knew our adopted relationship was a true one: Wong Suk would otherwise have been only one of the many discarded bachelor-men of Chinatown-and I, barely tolerated by Poh-Poh, would merely be a useless girl.” (39)
• Grandmother not deemed important enough to have her feet bound, pronounced ugly upon birth (40-41)—Beauty/ugliness major themes
• “A beautiful girl-child from a poor family is even more useless than an ugly one from a rich family” (42)
• “I’m not ugly, I thought to myself, I’m not useless.” (43)
• “I looked again into the hall mirror, seeking Shirley Temple with her dimpled smile and perfect white-skin features. Bluntly reflected back at me was a broad sallow moon with slit dark eyes, topped by a helmet of black hair.” (43)
• Wears taffeta dress for Wong Suk (44)
• Signs, warnings (45)
• “Beauty and the Beast”—people chide them when they walk by (45)—What does this teach Liang about people? Does this effect her?
• Paper day, Tell her urges Wong Suk (48-9)
• “No grownups ever gave you a plain answer, unless they were saying no.” (49)
• How Wong Suk saved the life of a boss (52-5)
• How Poh-Poh and Wong Suk met, both house slaves (61-2)
• Bone shipment, Wong Suk leaving (63)
• Watches him leave on a ship: “Dear Wong Suk, I never to forget you.”(68)
Jung-Sum, Second Brother
• Lao kwei, turtle, in shed (71-4)
• Naming the turtle—“It’s not a Chinese turtle.”—King George (77)
• Poh-Poh: Jung-Sum is different—more moon (feminine) than sun (masculine)? (81-2)
• Shadowboxing (81-2)
• Fox Lady (83-5)
• Adopted by Poh-Poh and family (85)
• First Parents, both dead, murder and suicide? (88-89)
• “The Depression meant the man whom I now called Father struggled at many jobs to keep everyone at home well nourished.” (91)
• “In the months after I arrived, I nearly forgot my own mother and father, even in my dreaming. As the years went by, they became part of the darkness at night or, on the brightest day, merely shadows.” (92)
• 12th birthday—Joe Louis, boxer, researches all about him, meets Max at Hastings Gym (92)
• Frank Yuen (92)
• Mix blood, mix trouble (96)
• Birthing (97)
• Gods could strike babies dead from jealousy—superstitions, insults rather than compliments (98-9)
• Coat (93-108)
• Frank’s parents, unlucky Father (107)
• Frank at the gym—Frank taunts him tells him that he must win or die (111-116)
• Uses Frank’s knife against him, they wrestle, and afterwards Jung-Sum feels desire mixed with his admiration (117)—Understands the Sun/Moon difference (118)
• Flashback of his violent Father, Frank cradles him (117-118)
• Champ, Champion (118)
• Frank heads to Seattle to join the Marines, gives him is watch (119)
• Frank embraces him, then pulls away: “I thought someone would see inside me. I waited for someone to expose me. I waited for Frank to turn on me, to spit in my face.” (120)
• “I carefully studied the moon in the blue crescent of the gold watch and asked Poh-Poh what else the moon was besides the yin force. She said the moon was the sign of the dark storyteller. In Old China, this was the one who told of hidden things not seen in the glare of daylight. Moon people felt things, as she did, things that others did not name.” (123)—What does Poh-Poh understand about Jung-Sum? What does this explanation mean to him?
• Jade peony—jade made from bone, flesh & blood (123-4)
• Promises the peony to Sekky (125)
• Old ways vs. New (Canadian) ways
• “But I still belonged with Poh-Poh, belonged to her stories and her ghosts, just as Liang and Sekky did.” (125)
Sek-Lung, Third Brother
• 1939, 6 years old, considered “brainless” (129)
• Chen Suling, Stepmother’s best friend in China (130)
• “Stepmother” (131)
• “Every Chinese person, it seemed to me, had an enigmatic status, an order of power and respect, mysteriously attached to him or her.” (131)
• “Liang was always jealous that Grandmama, whom she called Poh-Poh, treated me better; I was the one the Old One had spent the most time caring for since I was a baby. And I was a boy.” (131)
• Step-brothers felt superior, for their age and strength
• “Paper sons” and “paper uncles” (132)
• Chinese or Canadian? (133)
• Old-timers knew about survival: “The tea is bitter, but we drink it.” (134)
• “But born-in-Canada children, like myself, could betray one. For we were mo no children. Children with no Old China history in our brains.” (135)
• “But even if I was born in Vancouver, even if I should salute the Union Jack a hundred million times, even if I had the cleanest hands in all the Dominion of Canada and prayed forever, I would still be Chinese.” (135)—“neither this nor that”
• “For if you were Chinese, even if you were born in Canada, you were an educated alien—never to be a citizen, never a Canadian with the right to vote—“an educated fool” in the words of some old China men, or a “hopeful fool” in the words of those who knew the world would soon change.” (139)
• “Chinky language” (140)—self-loathing
• Chen Suling dies (142)
• Grandmama/Poh-Poh dies, 1940, at 83 (143)—Family waits for her sign
• Windchimes they made together: “Her hands were magical.” (144)
• Jade peony: “This colour is the colour of my spirit”—given to her by acrobat, old love (149)
• Grandmama sees a white cat with pink eyes, sign of her death—dies a few days later (150-1)
• Breathing problems (152)
• “The truth was, the Old One’s ghost was tugging at me and would not let me go.” (156)
• Ghosts: “Whether one was a peasant or royalty, Grandmama said, Old China people took it for granted that these ghosts lived constantly alongside them.” (156)
• Starts seeing his Grandmama, incidents (157-163, 166)
• 1941: “The enemy was everywhere.” (171)
• Advanced Grade Three for immigrants needing ESL help, Miss E. Doyle (173)
• Calls him by his full name, not nickname (174), “A name is a name,” Miss Doyle emphasized. “Always be brave enough to be proud of yours.” (176)
• Miss Doyle reads her brother’s letter to class, even though he died the year before (180)
• “At recess, our dialects and accents conflicted, our clothes, heights and handicaps betrayed us, our skin colours and backgrounds clashes, but inside Miss E. Doyle’s tightly disciplined kingdom we were all—lions or lambs—equals. We had glimpsed Paradise.” (184)
• “The gang and I became neighbourhood terrors.” (186)
• Meiying, Mrs. Lim’s adopted daughter—yells at poor girl all the time (190)
• Father’s worries—war, Canada, Stepmother’s anger, etc.: “And thing he worried about, he wrote about in the newspaper, and then worries about what others would think.” (191-2)
• “dog-shit Japs”—father instructing them in the atrocities at the dinner table (195)
• “Behind all the grown-up war talk, my tanks and planes roared, killing every Japanese in sight. I absorbed Chinatown’s hatred of the Japanese, the monsters with bloodied buck teeth, no necks, and thick Tojo glasses; I wanted to kill every one of them.” (196)
• Hatred plays out on the playground (196-7)
• Discouraged from playing war, sent to Mrs. Lim’s: “There was a war on, and boys needed to practice the arts of war. No one was on my side. I was surrounded by traitors and enemies.” (197)
• Meiying takes him to the park, then Japtown, introduces him to her Japanese friend in baseball uniform, Kaz (208-211)
• “The whole adventure was inexplicable and deeply exciting. I wanted to shout, to give my Tarzan yell. I had expected to be tortured by Mrs. Lim today; instead, I had become a soldier and confronted the enemy.” (214)
• Meiting/May, a traitor?: “Everyone knew the unspoken law: Never betray your own kind. Meiying was Chinese, like me; we were our own kind.” “There was no getting around it. She must have known Kazuo for a long time. She was a traitor. Her boyfriend was a Jap, a monster, one of the enemy waiting in the dark to destroy us all.” (214)
• Still, he promises to go back with her (215-7)
• “I AM CHINESE” button (219, 223)
• Sek-Lung asks his Father if all Japanese are the enemy, even those in Canada (224)
• 8th birthday (226, 229)
• Pearl Harbor (227)
• Kiam keeps asking to join Canadian Army, even though he isn’t a citizen (228)
• May doesn’t come to Sekky’s party, sick (229)
• May appears, and Stepmother seems to understand that something is amiss, although Sekky protects their secret (230)
• May says goodbye to Kaz (232)
• Japanese Internment camps (234)
• Protests the title Stepmother: “and all these years, where was the tongue of my husband?” (235)
• May bleeding in her bed, given herself an abortion, dies (237)
• Gives his mother the jade peony (238)
Part One: Jook-Liang, Only Sister
• Old man visited house in 1933, when she was 5 (13)
• Stepmother barely twenty when she came to Canada, was 7 when bandits killed her family in China (13)
• Stepmother came to care for Poh-Poh, and became son’s wife (14)
• “Poh-Poh, being one of the few elder women left in Vancouver, took pleasure in her status and became the arbitrator of the old ways.” (14)
• “In Gold Mountain, simple is best.” “There were, besides, false immigration stories to hide, secrets to be kept.” (14)
• Poh-Poh a slave to a wealthy family (15)
• Wong Bak, old friend of Grandmother’s, coming over for supper—family told of his story and warned of his appearance (16-19)
• Old Wong, looks like Monkey King from tales (22-5)
• “First Brother Kiam always argued that Poh-Poh’s stories were just stories, like the stories about the blonde Jesus Miss Bigley told us.” (28)
• Liang tells Old Wong he is twisted, and he asks her if she is scared of him, hugs him (29-30)
• “Jook-Liang, if you want a place in this world,” Grandmother’s voice had that exasperating let-me-remind-you tone, “do not be born a girl-child.” (31)—“A girl-child is mo yung—useless” (32)—How does this cultural assumption/belief affect both Liang and Poh-Poh?
• Baby Brother Sekky always sick (31)
• Old Wong brings Liang satin ribbon, an expensive gift for his “bandit-princess” (32-3)
• Poh-Poh ties her ribbons into flowers: “Teach me, my heart said, but I held back the words.” (34)
• Shirley Temple (36)
• No war in Canada—but Poh-Poh tells her: “You not Canada, Liang…you China. Always war in China.” (37)
• “I hated the Old One: Grandmother never let me get on with my movie-star daydreams.” (37)
• Old Wong: “Jook-Liang,” Wong Suk said to me one perfect day, “you are my little girl, my family.” (39)
• “I was happy. I knew our adopted relationship was a true one: Wong Suk would otherwise have been only one of the many discarded bachelor-men of Chinatown-and I, barely tolerated by Poh-Poh, would merely be a useless girl.” (39)
• Grandmother not deemed important enough to have her feet bound, pronounced ugly upon birth (40-41)—Beauty/ugliness major themes
• “A beautiful girl-child from a poor family is even more useless than an ugly one from a rich family” (42)
• “I’m not ugly, I thought to myself, I’m not useless.” (43)
• “I looked again into the hall mirror, seeking Shirley Temple with her dimpled smile and perfect white-skin features. Bluntly reflected back at me was a broad sallow moon with slit dark eyes, topped by a helmet of black hair.” (43)
• Wears taffeta dress for Wong Suk (44)
• Signs, warnings (45)
• “Beauty and the Beast”—people chide them when they walk by (45)—What does this teach Liang about people? Does this effect her?
• Paper day, Tell her urges Wong Suk (48-9)
• “No grownups ever gave you a plain answer, unless they were saying no.” (49)
• How Wong Suk saved the life of a boss (52-5)
• How Poh-Poh and Wong Suk met, both house slaves (61-2)
• Bone shipment, Wong Suk leaving (63)
• Watches him leave on a ship: “Dear Wong Suk, I never to forget you.”(68)
Jung-Sum, Second Brother
• Lao kwei, turtle, in shed (71-4)
• Naming the turtle—“It’s not a Chinese turtle.”—King George (77)
• Poh-Poh: Jung-Sum is different—more moon (feminine) than sun (masculine)? (81-2)
• Shadowboxing (81-2)
• Fox Lady (83-5)
• Adopted by Poh-Poh and family (85)
• First Parents, both dead, murder and suicide? (88-89)
• “The Depression meant the man whom I now called Father struggled at many jobs to keep everyone at home well nourished.” (91)
• “In the months after I arrived, I nearly forgot my own mother and father, even in my dreaming. As the years went by, they became part of the darkness at night or, on the brightest day, merely shadows.” (92)
• 12th birthday—Joe Louis, boxer, researches all about him, meets Max at Hastings Gym (92)
• Frank Yuen (92)
• Mix blood, mix trouble (96)
• Birthing (97)
• Gods could strike babies dead from jealousy—superstitions, insults rather than compliments (98-9)
• Coat (93-108)
• Frank’s parents, unlucky Father (107)
• Frank at the gym—Frank taunts him tells him that he must win or die (111-116)
• Uses Frank’s knife against him, they wrestle, and afterwards Jung-Sum feels desire mixed with his admiration (117)—Understands the Sun/Moon difference (118)
• Flashback of his violent Father, Frank cradles him (117-118)
• Champ, Champion (118)
• Frank heads to Seattle to join the Marines, gives him is watch (119)
• Frank embraces him, then pulls away: “I thought someone would see inside me. I waited for someone to expose me. I waited for Frank to turn on me, to spit in my face.” (120)
• “I carefully studied the moon in the blue crescent of the gold watch and asked Poh-Poh what else the moon was besides the yin force. She said the moon was the sign of the dark storyteller. In Old China, this was the one who told of hidden things not seen in the glare of daylight. Moon people felt things, as she did, things that others did not name.” (123)—What does Poh-Poh understand about Jung-Sum? What does this explanation mean to him?
• Jade peony—jade made from bone, flesh & blood (123-4)
• Promises the peony to Sekky (125)
• Old ways vs. New (Canadian) ways
• “But I still belonged with Poh-Poh, belonged to her stories and her ghosts, just as Liang and Sekky did.” (125)
Sek-Lung, Third Brother
• 1939, 6 years old, considered “brainless” (129)
• Chen Suling, Stepmother’s best friend in China (130)
• “Stepmother” (131)
• “Every Chinese person, it seemed to me, had an enigmatic status, an order of power and respect, mysteriously attached to him or her.” (131)
• “Liang was always jealous that Grandmama, whom she called Poh-Poh, treated me better; I was the one the Old One had spent the most time caring for since I was a baby. And I was a boy.” (131)
• Step-brothers felt superior, for their age and strength
• “Paper sons” and “paper uncles” (132)
• Chinese or Canadian? (133)
• Old-timers knew about survival: “The tea is bitter, but we drink it.” (134)
• “But born-in-Canada children, like myself, could betray one. For we were mo no children. Children with no Old China history in our brains.” (135)
• “But even if I was born in Vancouver, even if I should salute the Union Jack a hundred million times, even if I had the cleanest hands in all the Dominion of Canada and prayed forever, I would still be Chinese.” (135)—“neither this nor that”
• “For if you were Chinese, even if you were born in Canada, you were an educated alien—never to be a citizen, never a Canadian with the right to vote—“an educated fool” in the words of some old China men, or a “hopeful fool” in the words of those who knew the world would soon change.” (139)
• “Chinky language” (140)—self-loathing
• Chen Suling dies (142)
• Grandmama/Poh-Poh dies, 1940, at 83 (143)—Family waits for her sign
• Windchimes they made together: “Her hands were magical.” (144)
• Jade peony: “This colour is the colour of my spirit”—given to her by acrobat, old love (149)
• Grandmama sees a white cat with pink eyes, sign of her death—dies a few days later (150-1)
• Breathing problems (152)
• “The truth was, the Old One’s ghost was tugging at me and would not let me go.” (156)
• Ghosts: “Whether one was a peasant or royalty, Grandmama said, Old China people took it for granted that these ghosts lived constantly alongside them.” (156)
• Starts seeing his Grandmama, incidents (157-163, 166)
• 1941: “The enemy was everywhere.” (171)
• Advanced Grade Three for immigrants needing ESL help, Miss E. Doyle (173)
• Calls him by his full name, not nickname (174), “A name is a name,” Miss Doyle emphasized. “Always be brave enough to be proud of yours.” (176)
• Miss Doyle reads her brother’s letter to class, even though he died the year before (180)
• “At recess, our dialects and accents conflicted, our clothes, heights and handicaps betrayed us, our skin colours and backgrounds clashes, but inside Miss E. Doyle’s tightly disciplined kingdom we were all—lions or lambs—equals. We had glimpsed Paradise.” (184)
• “The gang and I became neighbourhood terrors.” (186)
• Meiying, Mrs. Lim’s adopted daughter—yells at poor girl all the time (190)
• Father’s worries—war, Canada, Stepmother’s anger, etc.: “And thing he worried about, he wrote about in the newspaper, and then worries about what others would think.” (191-2)
• “dog-shit Japs”—father instructing them in the atrocities at the dinner table (195)
• “Behind all the grown-up war talk, my tanks and planes roared, killing every Japanese in sight. I absorbed Chinatown’s hatred of the Japanese, the monsters with bloodied buck teeth, no necks, and thick Tojo glasses; I wanted to kill every one of them.” (196)
• Hatred plays out on the playground (196-7)
• Discouraged from playing war, sent to Mrs. Lim’s: “There was a war on, and boys needed to practice the arts of war. No one was on my side. I was surrounded by traitors and enemies.” (197)
• Meiying takes him to the park, then Japtown, introduces him to her Japanese friend in baseball uniform, Kaz (208-211)
• “The whole adventure was inexplicable and deeply exciting. I wanted to shout, to give my Tarzan yell. I had expected to be tortured by Mrs. Lim today; instead, I had become a soldier and confronted the enemy.” (214)
• Meiting/May, a traitor?: “Everyone knew the unspoken law: Never betray your own kind. Meiying was Chinese, like me; we were our own kind.” “There was no getting around it. She must have known Kazuo for a long time. She was a traitor. Her boyfriend was a Jap, a monster, one of the enemy waiting in the dark to destroy us all.” (214)
• Still, he promises to go back with her (215-7)
• “I AM CHINESE” button (219, 223)
• Sek-Lung asks his Father if all Japanese are the enemy, even those in Canada (224)
• 8th birthday (226, 229)
• Pearl Harbor (227)
• Kiam keeps asking to join Canadian Army, even though he isn’t a citizen (228)
• May doesn’t come to Sekky’s party, sick (229)
• May appears, and Stepmother seems to understand that something is amiss, although Sekky protects their secret (230)
• May says goodbye to Kaz (232)
• Japanese Internment camps (234)
• Protests the title Stepmother: “and all these years, where was the tongue of my husband?” (235)
• May bleeding in her bed, given herself an abortion, dies (237)
• Gives his mother the jade peony (238)
For some reason I remember laughing more when I read this for the first time. I remember the content being funnier. But I didn't laugh as much or as hard this time around. This is the second time I've read "The Jade Peony". Even though I didn't laugh as much, I still thoroughly enjoyed it but felt like the stories all ended too abruptly. I wanted more. I guess that's not a bad thing, is it?
This is one of my favourite Asian Canadian (Chinese Canadian, specifically) stories of all time! I highly recommend it. Not only does it highlight the struggles that Chinese itinerant workers who came over during the gold rush and the construction of the CPR (Canadian Pacific Railway) experienced but it also shows the differences and problems between Chinese and Japanese immigrants who were both connected to their native lands and also to Canada. The complexity of the relationships among Chinese family members, with their classmates/colleagues and with people from different cultures must have been so difficult and confusing for second and third-generation Chinese (Asian) children. These three stories are so wonderful. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in Asian Canadian literature!
(Ebook)
This is one of my favourite Asian Canadian (Chinese Canadian, specifically) stories of all time! I highly recommend it. Not only does it highlight the struggles that Chinese itinerant workers who came over during the gold rush and the construction of the CPR (Canadian Pacific Railway) experienced but it also shows the differences and problems between Chinese and Japanese immigrants who were both connected to their native lands and also to Canada. The complexity of the relationships among Chinese family members, with their classmates/colleagues and with people from different cultures must have been so difficult and confusing for second and third-generation Chinese (Asian) children. These three stories are so wonderful. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in Asian Canadian literature!
(Ebook)