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3.68 AVERAGE
3.68 AVERAGE
This was not for me. The way the stories are told were not interesting at all, I got so bored so quickly. I am not that used to nonfiction, maybe that is why, and I am sure there are valuable insights to be gained here about Chinese culture, but the book simply was not appealing.
challenging
dark
reflective
tense
medium-paced
adventurous
challenging
funny
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Chinese culture and people written for a certain audience.
Had to read it for a class. Wouldn't have finished it for any other reason.
Um. So I thought this was going to be a Mulan retelling, but it's actually a book of memoirs! It's about a girl whose mother came to America from China and I think the timing sort of works out so the author is closer to my grandparents' age than my parents' age, which threw me off for a bit because I haven't read many immigrant stories from one generation earlier.
I guess before reading this I’d never really given this sort of thought to the experience of being Chinese American and a woman. I wouldn’t have understood it. I read Amy Tan’s The Bonesetter’s Daughter when I was pretty young, and Mom was always after me to watch Joy Luck Club with her, and I read Adeline Yen Mah’s autobiography, and those are all about Chinese American women. But the fabrics and textures of Maxine Hong Kingston’s work are so much richer and more vivid than anything I can remember reading before. It might have to do with having taken a class on modern China, which gave me a completely new take on being a woman in rural China. Basically? It sucks. Beyond all comprehensible belief. I always heard from Mom that 婆婆 had a crappy life, and then there were the two ghosts of the women from the village, forced into marriages they didn’t want…
It’s also interesting to be reading this alongside Andrea Louie’s Chineseness across Borders (2004), which is all about what’s called roots tourism, heritage tourism, or genealogy tourism. And to be exploring these just as I head into an internship at the Chinese American Museum. I’m excited to start exploring whatever I’m going to be exploring. I don’t know what it is I’ll find out – if the biggest things to learn will be about me, or about museums, or about art, or about the Chinese American community that I have for so long seemed to shy away from. But it begins soon.
Wow. Wikipedia reports that the Modern Language Association has said this is the most commonly taught book in universities – it’s used in “American literature, anthropology, Asian studies, composition, education, psychology, sociology, and women’s studies.” It’s interesting to see the sort of reviews she’s gotten, just from this overview: There are critics who say she’s sold out her people, critics who say she’s misrepresenting Chinese Americans… It’s a little silly to say these things – clearly this work is just one, highly fictionalized, representation of an individual’s life, and so how can you say you’re misrepresenting Chinese Americans as a whole? Any representation is bound to be off, no? Even a representation of yourself can never be what you might mean it to be. As for selling out your people to get better reception from “whites” or other audiences… Perhaps this isn’t the answer, but I’m reminded of Gloria Anzaldúa: “Not me sold out my people but they me” (21). A different context, a different individual, and by no means a good fit… yet entrenched in some similar ideas about gender and social hierarchies, and who is supposed to bear what burdens.
Time to read Kingston’s 1982 essay, “Cultural Mis-readings by American Reviewers.” I’ll let you know how it goes, once I’ve finished Ethington’s essay on Simmel and social distance. Oh, and time to watch something called Americanese (2009).
Oh, actually, I’ve just added this to the reading list: Yung Wing’s My Life in China and America (1909). This guy was seriously cool – first Chinese graduate from an American university (Yale, 1854), also helped bulk up the Chinese military through all these deals with American companies, pushed for reform in China when all hell was breaking loose, and only used his Cantonese name.
June 16, 2012: So I’ve just finished my first week of work at the museum, and I have to say I don’t know very much what I’m still trying to understand. I’m not even so clear on what I’m trying to ask, I don’t think… Is it that there’s some part of me that, when I read these works, I’m trying to learn something about who I am, or what my culture was/is/should be like? And the possessive “my” is questionable anyway. But why do I even feel that need to explore what that is? I’ve talked to other people who don’t feel that same curiosity/tie to their ethnic backgrounds – other Cantonese Americans, too. I don’t know how to express it. Maybe things don’t make sense until they’re put into words – the imagination is stronger than reality, no? Like reading the fictional journal of the plague, versus reading an actual journal – the fiction is so much more powerful, though it shouldn’t be.
It’s also interesting to be reading this alongside Andrea Louie’s Chineseness across Borders (2004), which is all about what’s called roots tourism, heritage tourism, or genealogy tourism. And to be exploring these just as I head into an internship at the Chinese American Museum. I’m excited to start exploring whatever I’m going to be exploring. I don’t know what it is I’ll find out – if the biggest things to learn will be about me, or about museums, or about art, or about the Chinese American community that I have for so long seemed to shy away from. But it begins soon.
Wow. Wikipedia reports that the Modern Language Association has said this is the most commonly taught book in universities – it’s used in “American literature, anthropology, Asian studies, composition, education, psychology, sociology, and women’s studies.” It’s interesting to see the sort of reviews she’s gotten, just from this overview: There are critics who say she’s sold out her people, critics who say she’s misrepresenting Chinese Americans… It’s a little silly to say these things – clearly this work is just one, highly fictionalized, representation of an individual’s life, and so how can you say you’re misrepresenting Chinese Americans as a whole? Any representation is bound to be off, no? Even a representation of yourself can never be what you might mean it to be. As for selling out your people to get better reception from “whites” or other audiences… Perhaps this isn’t the answer, but I’m reminded of Gloria Anzaldúa: “Not me sold out my people but they me” (21). A different context, a different individual, and by no means a good fit… yet entrenched in some similar ideas about gender and social hierarchies, and who is supposed to bear what burdens.
Time to read Kingston’s 1982 essay, “Cultural Mis-readings by American Reviewers.” I’ll let you know how it goes, once I’ve finished Ethington’s essay on Simmel and social distance. Oh, and time to watch something called Americanese (2009).
Oh, actually, I’ve just added this to the reading list: Yung Wing’s My Life in China and America (1909). This guy was seriously cool – first Chinese graduate from an American university (Yale, 1854), also helped bulk up the Chinese military through all these deals with American companies, pushed for reform in China when all hell was breaking loose, and only used his Cantonese name.
June 16, 2012: So I’ve just finished my first week of work at the museum, and I have to say I don’t know very much what I’m still trying to understand. I’m not even so clear on what I’m trying to ask, I don’t think… Is it that there’s some part of me that, when I read these works, I’m trying to learn something about who I am, or what my culture was/is/should be like? And the possessive “my” is questionable anyway. But why do I even feel that need to explore what that is? I’ve talked to other people who don’t feel that same curiosity/tie to their ethnic backgrounds – other Cantonese Americans, too. I don’t know how to express it. Maybe things don’t make sense until they’re put into words – the imagination is stronger than reality, no? Like reading the fictional journal of the plague, versus reading an actual journal – the fiction is so much more powerful, though it shouldn’t be.
emotional
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced