A review by eliza
A Feather on the Breath of God by Sigrid Nunez

3.0

Spoiler

"All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy." (Wilde). Because as much as children only see the flaws and imperfections in their parents, we can never truly separate ourselves from them. My mom used to always say I could never get a tattoo, and when I would protest (that it's my body and my choice) she would say my skin is her skin and I am her creation, literally built out of her essence both physical and spiritual. No matter what happens, nothing changes the fact that I literally come from her. I can understand why the Christa chapter was so long in comparison to the Chang chapter: there is a link between mothers and daughters that will never dissolve, a shared understanding of the journey of girlhood, growing up, and standing your ground as a woman.

And yet for as much as we become like our mothers, we are also our own people, and they are theirs. This is one of the things that scares me about eventually becoming a mother, if I were to: I made the child and it is mine, and still they will be their own free person with their own free will and individual self, over which I will have no true control. This thought scares me and yet forces me to appreciate motherhood so much more: how moms are able to remember their own lives, and balance that with those of their children. On being their own people: There are things that Christa and my mom have experienced that I will never go through and stories that will forever stay hidden behind the curtain. Yet they still tirelessly sew and knit new clothes for their daughters, and always have several warm dishes and rice ready on the table regardless of how late they’ve worked that day. The fact that the mother I know (type A, plans meticulously, stickler for perfection) is the same person as the girl in university who dated around before marrying my father feels inconsistent, but it shouldn’t be. Maybe this novel is a reminder, a message humans are wonderfully rich and complex, that the way we children view our parents isn’t the only reality that exists, that there are so many other stories and lifetimes before, during, and after us, that we can only hope to one day know.

My mom came up to stay with me at my apartment for a few days after our dog passed away and helped me vacuum the floors, ordered takeout for us, and bought me toilet paper from Costco. We slept in my full size bed, not really “fully” sized for two grown adults. In high school I would have scoffed at this, at being seen with my mother in public and making her presence known, and spending so much time with her, who I was constantly at odds with - about her silly traditions and customs that she believed in, about her not-as-progressive-as-my-dad’s worldviews. I have never really been embarrassed of being seen with my dad in public, at least not in the same way. How much of my father’s story has been shaped by my narrative, and how much more deeply has my mother’s been touched by me? How much longer will I have to discover his stories as well? To hear not just about the milestone life events in pictures already, but the day to day memories and habits that he still remembers the most vividly?
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If ballet was for the narrator a place where she had to aspire towards, to rise above the world of the projects to enter a higher one, it was a chaste respite for me, in a different way, but still bred the same anxieties. Ballet class was somewhere I didn't have to worry about white kids laughing at the smell of the dumplings marinating in my red polka-dotted thermos at lunch. Firstly, because the total absence of food hung over our heads, and secondly, because unlike my actual school, everyone enrolled in this ballet academy was a Chinese-American girl whose mom's had enrolled them into it, whether they wanted to or not. Sometimes, yes, we would stop by the frozen yogurt place after a hard class, or hastily shove down a bun down our throats before barre started, but these rituals of snacking were never the focus. It's been years since I last stepped onto that ballet studio floor and tied the ribbons on my pointe shoes. And still every time I watch my younger sister perform in the annual recital or watch the ABT at Lincoln Center I inexplicably end up in tears, sniffling behind my mask and trying to hold back bigger sobs. Out of unprocessed trauma, or regrets that I'll never be up on a stage like that again? It's hard to tell why. The memories are now hazy, but remnants of the body shaming, physical training that bordered violence, and embarrassment of not being as good as your peers in class at such a young age remain under my skin, sleeping unprocessed, waiting to re-manifest every time I have to think about ballet. Somehow, even through all that, I sometimes still find myself aspiring towards those ideals that were beaten into me all those years ago. I probably gained 15 lbs immediately after I quit. I wish I could still do a grand jété or the splits. So I understand.

I found the second half to be not as connected to the previous one, but I know why. Ballet takes up so much headspace. In order to excel, it forces you to not be thinking about anything else, it's easy to let everything else feel secondary. It takes up your whole life, becomes a singular obsession, over food, practice, when you look in the mirror in the morning, shaping the ideas of the crushes you make up as you daydream in class. It changes you as a person, and it's essential in understanding why the narrator is the way that she is, especially in the last part of the book.

The narrator has a certain strength about her. Some of it comes from ballet, and some of it comes from other things. The self control that comes from being able to abstain from food, the physical strength from all the practice and training, the belief that she can survive in this world without having to marry, the ability to survive day to day without everything being prejudiced on her mixed-race identity. But it's exactly those sources of strength that also make her weak: make her want to be protected and cared for, prevent her from seeking a healthy relationship or believing that those even exist, stop her from learning her own native languages, and being empowered by her Chinese side. So it's not a surprise why she stays with Vadim for so long, why she never tells him that she's Chinese until the last time she sees him. She simply isn't strong enough.

This story didn't come to any grand, flourishing climax or have any obvious general moral, but it didn't need to. Rather, even though the book is fictional, it has a memoir-like quality of interweaving moments carefully picked out from times in the past. I think that's where its strengths lie, in painting a portrait of this girl, her family, and showing how she turned out that way. It isn't enough to just live and exist as a woman. Being a woman is a constant battle of knowing when to be strong, when to selectively be weak, when to be more feminine, prettier, and when to be standoffish, tough, and masculine. That's a dichotomy that will never go away.