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A review by daumari
The Fortunes by Peter Ho Davies
4.0
Not so much a novel as four novellas in one (though weirdly, Leland Stanford does get mentioned in all of them I believe...), three historical fiction and one contemporary.
An overall theme with all is personal identity vs the perception of those around us and how congruent or dissimilar they may be. With the Perpetual Foreigner stereotype persisting, it's impossible to simply exist as a person; race may be a construct but its structural impacts are concrete. And how DO you measure identity? There is no metric for "Chineseness"; as I will periodically argue in community online blood quantum metrics are gross because I don't think I'm any more or less entitled to my heritage than a mixed race individual who has actual fluency with our heritage tongue, or an adoptee cutoff from knowing any family history. Having various heritage threads is not mutually exclusive either- being fourth generation American doesn't mean relinquishing a sense of standing on the shoulders of ancestors before me, or that I should let go of our generational poem. I also think considering your identity and sense of self should be for more than just those visually clocked as Other- I think about these things for the strangers who ask, "but where are you really from?" even though they're often not considered by the majority, and I'm curious about what it'd be like to move through spaces without being palpably self-conscious.
I do wish the novellas had more connective tissue between them, but that's more about my expectations coming in to this as a novel than the works themselves.
Gold- a mixed-Tanka boy named Ling is sold to work in a California laundry, eventually becoming manservant to a railroad baron where he has some realizations about what success means.
Silver- A series of vignettes, as actress Anna May Wong embarks on a trip to China to see her father while considering her film career so far. Some of these entries were very short.
Jade- the Vincent Chin murder, from the perspective of a fellow ABC friend who grew up with him and was present for the beating. A pondering on how death tends to turn memory into hagiography, but a victim's imperfections do not justify the violence.
Pearl- John is mixed race (Chinese and... Scandinavian-American iirc?), and his Irish-American wife Nola are in Beijing to adopt a baby girl. He ruminates on desirability, and what exactly the other adoptive parents in the group aim to achieve by planning on culturally educating their new children versus his own experiences- something that resonated with me as I recall a local Lunar New Year celebration where white Mormon families with their adopted girls dressed in full cheongsam/outfits while I, a grungy preteen had a graphic tee and jeans on. An unexpected event occurs and John & Nola must make a quick choice. This one might be my favorite, if only because I'm currently expecting our first child, and while they might share some experiences with me, they'll navigate the world perceived differently than either me or my spouse.
An overall theme with all is personal identity vs the perception of those around us and how congruent or dissimilar they may be. With the Perpetual Foreigner stereotype persisting, it's impossible to simply exist as a person; race may be a construct but its structural impacts are concrete. And how DO you measure identity? There is no metric for "Chineseness"; as I will periodically argue in community online blood quantum metrics are gross because I don't think I'm any more or less entitled to my heritage than a mixed race individual who has actual fluency with our heritage tongue, or an adoptee cutoff from knowing any family history. Having various heritage threads is not mutually exclusive either- being fourth generation American doesn't mean relinquishing a sense of standing on the shoulders of ancestors before me, or that I should let go of our generational poem. I also think considering your identity and sense of self should be for more than just those visually clocked as Other- I think about these things for the strangers who ask, "but where are you really from?" even though they're often not considered by the majority, and I'm curious about what it'd be like to move through spaces without being palpably self-conscious.
I do wish the novellas had more connective tissue between them, but that's more about my expectations coming in to this as a novel than the works themselves.
Gold- a mixed-Tanka boy named Ling is sold to work in a California laundry, eventually becoming manservant to a railroad baron where he has some realizations about what success means.
Silver- A series of vignettes, as actress Anna May Wong embarks on a trip to China to see her father while considering her film career so far. Some of these entries were very short.
Jade- the Vincent Chin murder, from the perspective of a fellow ABC friend who grew up with him and was present for the beating. A pondering on how death tends to turn memory into hagiography, but a victim's imperfections do not justify the violence.
Pearl- John is mixed race (Chinese and... Scandinavian-American iirc?), and his Irish-American wife Nola are in Beijing to adopt a baby girl. He ruminates on desirability, and what exactly the other adoptive parents in the group aim to achieve by planning on culturally educating their new children versus his own experiences- something that resonated with me as I recall a local Lunar New Year celebration where white Mormon families with their adopted girls dressed in full cheongsam/outfits while I, a grungy preteen had a graphic tee and jeans on. An unexpected event occurs and John & Nola must make a quick choice. This one might be my favorite, if only because I'm currently expecting our first child, and while they might share some experiences with me, they'll navigate the world perceived differently than either me or my spouse.