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sina 's review for:
The Tenth Muse
by Catherine Chung
“Like the world got larger,” I said. “No, like my mind expanded. Like my mind was holding the world, and the world was holding me.”
“Your mind beheld the mind of the world,” my mother said. “And it recognized yours in return.”
Catherine Chung’s “The Tenth Muse” is an engaging, informative, and heart-wrenching novel about an exceptional woman’s life. It is told from the perspective of a much older and wiser Katherine, who speaks of her life from early childhood in post-WWII small-town America, through her years as a Maths major at university, covering her awakening to the wonders of nature and science, her struggle to be respected in a male-dominated field, and her ongoing search for identity and belonging, whilst also giving short introductions to important women in the field of mathematics, and highlighting lesser known parts of WWII history. The scope is mindboggling, but Chung expertly weaves all these strands into a thought-provoking page-turner.
As a child of an interracial relationship (her father is American, her mother Chinese) with an unusual aptitude for maths and science, Katherine experiences a feeling of otherness from early on. From her primary school teacher shaming her for being too quick-witted in the classroom, to being underestimated by professors, both her race and gender only serve to increase the bias people approach her with:
“Even now, I feel impatient when asked about what being these things mean to me—the expectation that because my race and my gender are often the first things people notice about me, they must also be the most significant to me.”
However, Katherine doesn’t get bogged down by this – she is a natural-born fighter, stubborn and proud:
“I began to speak out of turn in classes, not waiting to be called on, but anticipating, jumping in, and asking for clarification. I had learned that if I waited to be called on, my turn would never come.”
Don’t let the theme of maths deter you from picking up this novel: Chung’s descriptions make the field approachable, and even fascinating – and this is coming from someone with barely any understanding of maths. The maths theme aside, this novel covers a wide range of aspects: questions of identity and belonging, abandonment, betrayal, a woman’s place in academia, family secrets, and individual ways of dealing with a difficult historical past. A thoroughly enjoyable read – highly recommended!
Thanks to NetGalley and Little, Brown for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.