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abookishaffair's review
4.0
"Good Chinese Wife" is the memoir of Susan, who goes to study in Hong Kong and China as a young woman. She is fascinated with the people and the culture. She meets a man who is much older than she is, Cai. He is worldly and debonair and she falls for him. They get married quickly in order to sightsee around China and almost immediately, they begin having problems. Cai becomes very controlling of everything Susan does. Cai also seems to be hiding a lot of big secrets of his own. When the couple have a child, the stakes are even higher. This memoir is about one woman's struggle with trying to break away from an abusive relationship and how hard it is to do the right thing.
Blumberg-Kason recounts her relationship with Cai from the very beginning. He seems very different from a lot of the other men that she met in China. She sees him as worldly and smart. She can't help but to be attracted to him. I really felt for her. Yes, there were some warning signs but as the author shows us, it was really hard to see those warning signs at first. In fact, any of the signs that she noticed, she made up excuses for (it is so easy to think that things are going to get better and that you shouldn't worry about whatever is going on. This is definitely a classic case of someone being too scared to do what they know that they need to do. It really takes until Susan has her son for her to realize that she needs to do something to make the situation better for her child and her. You really feel for her in this book!
The writing of the book is good. This book gives the reader an unflinching look at how someone can be drawn and really paralyzed by the fear of leaving an abuser. We get a first row seat to see how the author stayed for so long. I think that she really captured her helplessness in a clear cut way. This memoir was often hard to read at times because of the subject matter but I really think that it would be a good pick for those who don't mind hard subjects who really want to understand more about why it is so difficult for people to get out of abusive relationships!
Blumberg-Kason recounts her relationship with Cai from the very beginning. He seems very different from a lot of the other men that she met in China. She sees him as worldly and smart. She can't help but to be attracted to him. I really felt for her. Yes, there were some warning signs but as the author shows us, it was really hard to see those warning signs at first. In fact, any of the signs that she noticed, she made up excuses for (it is so easy to think that things are going to get better and that you shouldn't worry about whatever is going on. This is definitely a classic case of someone being too scared to do what they know that they need to do. It really takes until Susan has her son for her to realize that she needs to do something to make the situation better for her child and her. You really feel for her in this book!
The writing of the book is good. This book gives the reader an unflinching look at how someone can be drawn and really paralyzed by the fear of leaving an abuser. We get a first row seat to see how the author stayed for so long. I think that she really captured her helplessness in a clear cut way. This memoir was often hard to read at times because of the subject matter but I really think that it would be a good pick for those who don't mind hard subjects who really want to understand more about why it is so difficult for people to get out of abusive relationships!
vegancleopatra's review
2.0
If only Good Chinese Wife was what it was intended to be, a book about two individuals from rather different cultures which ultimately makes their marriage fail. But that is not what this memoir is about. Good Chinese Wife is about one woman who fails to listen to her gut and two people who never belonged together in the first place.
The author repetitively blames situations/issues on cultural differences, seemingly to make herself feel better some of the time and other times to blame the relationship on this alone. The book summary stating that this is about the "hazards of intercultural marriage" does a disservice to intercultural marriages and people in general. The issues between the author and Cai were not her being American and him being Chinese. The actual issues were:
-She was naive and never bothered to listen to her gut or speak up for herself until well into the relationship
-Cai had issues, including potentially being gay in a culture that would fully shame him for it.
-The "love" between the two never rang true, I honestly never understood why the author was even in love with Cai. We never get much more from her than his attractiveness being a reason to like him when they are hanging out. Then they are suddenly engaged and she is listing reasons she loves him, reasons mind you that we never really were privy to leading up to this point. Ultimately the reasons to loved Cai never really surface during the book, in fact many many reasons not to love him continually surface. I think had the author been more clear on why she seemed to love this man at any point in their relationship it would have been easier to accept why she stayed with him and wanted to be with him at all. But it really just comes across as being pointless.
-And one of the biggest issues? Cai is simply a major ass. I do not know how it took the author so long to see this.
Only a few times during the memoir did the author note any situation in which the issue was a cultural difference. These include the strange "no bathing after giving birth" issue, the grandparents potentially raising the child and the one scene where he apparently first threatens her and then says she is not like a good Chinese wife. This "good Chinese wife" statement was not a running theme in their relationship, at least not shared with us in the book. Really it just felt like a random comment by a jackass.
There were some additional issues, such as the author often assuming we knew specific elements of Chinese or Hong Kong culture and therefore did not explain them. It was also honestly not very well written, but I could have easily overlooked this if the book had better content. The book also suffered from repetition, which I noted earlier as well.
Overall it was an interesting topic and situation, but I hate that the author seems to blame it all on "cultural differences" when their issues were so obviously due to them as individuals, mentally and emotionally, inside or outside their specific cultures.
The author repetitively blames situations/issues on cultural differences, seemingly to make herself feel better some of the time and other times to blame the relationship on this alone. The book summary stating that this is about the "hazards of intercultural marriage" does a disservice to intercultural marriages and people in general. The issues between the author and Cai were not her being American and him being Chinese. The actual issues were:
-She was naive and never bothered to listen to her gut or speak up for herself until well into the relationship
-Cai had issues, including potentially being gay in a culture that would fully shame him for it.
-The "love" between the two never rang true, I honestly never understood why the author was even in love with Cai. We never get much more from her than his attractiveness being a reason to like him when they are hanging out. Then they are suddenly engaged and she is listing reasons she loves him, reasons mind you that we never really were privy to leading up to this point. Ultimately the reasons to loved Cai never really surface during the book, in fact many many reasons not to love him continually surface. I think had the author been more clear on why she seemed to love this man at any point in their relationship it would have been easier to accept why she stayed with him and wanted to be with him at all. But it really just comes across as being pointless.
-And one of the biggest issues? Cai is simply a major ass. I do not know how it took the author so long to see this.
Only a few times during the memoir did the author note any situation in which the issue was a cultural difference. These include the strange "no bathing after giving birth" issue, the grandparents potentially raising the child and the one scene where he apparently first threatens her and then says she is not like a good Chinese wife. This "good Chinese wife" statement was not a running theme in their relationship, at least not shared with us in the book. Really it just felt like a random comment by a jackass.
There were some additional issues, such as the author often assuming we knew specific elements of Chinese or Hong Kong culture and therefore did not explain them. It was also honestly not very well written, but I could have easily overlooked this if the book had better content. The book also suffered from repetition, which I noted earlier as well.
Overall it was an interesting topic and situation, but I hate that the author seems to blame it all on "cultural differences" when their issues were so obviously due to them as individuals, mentally and emotionally, inside or outside their specific cultures.
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