Reviews

Home is Not Here by Wang Gungwu

wargwe's review against another edition

4.0

I think this book isn’t for everyone, but those who can come to appreciate this valuable piece of personal history will find it a precious proxy to understanding how our Chinese forefathers, grandfathers, fathers come to be ‘less (China) Chinese’. (A dilutive process? By what?) One that came about as an outcome of a series of individual circumstance and choices against the larger backdrop of the 1940-70s. The idea of being a Chinese (or choosing to be) has always been political. Whether it was in the 1930s, or now, where racial politics is rampant. The storytelling sags slightly two thirds in, but this book’s primary intention is less to entertain than to enrich, and simply to tell.