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kangeikoToday was a bit of a joke as far as days go. Suffice to say it 'ended' with me being locked out and having to call the handyman to let me into my own house. Sigh.
Myfucked-off melancholy mood was not helped by finishing Amy Tan's The Kitchen God's Wife last night, which left me in a furious rage.
The Kitchen God's Wife
by Amy Tan
page count: 415 pages
Every single time I read a Tan book, I am filled with the urge to call my mother and apologise. Not for anything in particular, you understand; just apologise on principle. Tan has this thing where the daughter who doesn't get on with her mother finds out some stuff about the mother's life, and feels guilty for judging her - yes, through The Joy Luck Club, and The Bonesetter's Daugher, and god knows what other books - and has this uncanny ability to make the reader feel the guilt, without even trying. Or maybe it's because I'm a second-gen immigrant girl who also doesn't know much about her parents' lives in Elsewhere, and isn't really filled with the urge to ask. Reading Tan always reminds me why not, and makes me feel guilty for remembering: because our parents had shit happen in their lives, and they're not nearly as simplistic or as quaint as we like to remember them being.
Take Pearl, for instance. Pearl, like me, wanted to be taken in to her adopted culture, and so she was. Her mother - while indulging this - also wanted Pearl to remember a lot about her Chinese background. I hated my mother's attempts to make me remember March Day, or my father telling me something about history - "yes, but that's Communist history, dad; we're learning what actually happened." Like getting it in a British textbook somehow made it more real than my parents living through it! Pearl is the same as me, and maybe that's why I was so easily hooked on her. She's in the middle of her life, with a husband and children, and yet she still doesn't really understand her mother or the rest of the first-gen family. I look at Pearl and I think of how I might turn out, in a few years - too settled to really consider chasing my dream any more, and somewhat dubious that my parents' whispered tales of stealing off in the middle of the night and high-speed secret agent chases actually happened.
And then you see a photograph, or meet one of these people that you somehow doubted actually existed, and all of a sudden things you thought were fairy tales turn out to be true.
Little by little, Weili - now known as Winnie - tells her daughter about her life. She makes no pretenses over the veracity of her recollection, only pointing out that her memories are all that is left. Time and again she is contradicted by 'Aunt Helen', who was there for most of it, yet misremembers - or is it Winnie who is misremembering? Pearl believes her mother's story, but the reader isn't so sure, especially as Winnie herself seems doubtful of her own memory. That said, some of the things she relates - the brutality she experienced - are told so simply, so without frills or any verbal dressings of any kind, that you cannot help but believe her.
Winnie's life in 1920's Shanghai is bright and vivid, and so completely her own tale - so much so that it is sometimes difficult to keep track of why she should feel a certain way, only that she remembers that she did so, and that is all the proof we'll have - that it makes her character come completely alive. It is difficult to match young, pretty Weili to the seventy-five year-old Winnie, concerned about the price of toilet roll and whether her daughter is wearing the right colours for luck.
And then I think - my father does that. And my mother, though young at only just turned fifty, will do that soon. And I, I, too, will do that. I've already changed my name, slight though the change was. But what separates Viktoriya from Victoria, and is it any greater a gulf that separates Weili from Winnie, or Hulan from Helen? And what about my brother, whose birth name is now only used when someone is angry?
I don't know the impact that Tan would have on someone who has less ease connecting with her 'daughter' character. I'm half-tempted to push one of these books my mother's way and see what she thinks on it. I do know, however, how I will feel when I read Tan - upset, horrified, jubilant and guilty, all in equal parts - and I do know that I will phone my mother after each book, and scrape up the courage to ask one of the millions of questions that I have somehow forbidden myself from asking.
*
Yesterday, I also saw Twelfth Night done by an all-male troupe at The Old Vic, courtesy of![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
athena25's magic freebie tickets. I really, really recommend that people go see the play if they possibly can. It's a bright, energetic performance, and very winsomely staged, with some beautiful set pieces. The cast are really quite brilliant, and the resultant performance is very physical, at times disturbingly so. The humiliation of Malvolio, for instance, reduced me to tears, and Sir Toby brought quite a bit of fabulous slapstick. Also brilliant was the Fool, who was a cross between a narrator and minstrel and all-actor, bridging the scenes effortlessly.
Having a boy play Viola was interesting - and his body languages was definitely more deferential - although I'm not quite certain that I fully bought him as a girl. That said, the similarities between Viola and Sebastian - deftly handled by some clever casting and a good use of costumes and props - was undeniable, and the mistaken identity worked well. Go, see, laugh.
My
The Kitchen God's Wife
by Amy Tan
page count: 415 pages
Every single time I read a Tan book, I am filled with the urge to call my mother and apologise. Not for anything in particular, you understand; just apologise on principle. Tan has this thing where the daughter who doesn't get on with her mother finds out some stuff about the mother's life, and feels guilty for judging her - yes, through The Joy Luck Club, and The Bonesetter's Daugher, and god knows what other books - and has this uncanny ability to make the reader feel the guilt, without even trying. Or maybe it's because I'm a second-gen immigrant girl who also doesn't know much about her parents' lives in Elsewhere, and isn't really filled with the urge to ask. Reading Tan always reminds me why not, and makes me feel guilty for remembering: because our parents had shit happen in their lives, and they're not nearly as simplistic or as quaint as we like to remember them being.
Take Pearl, for instance. Pearl, like me, wanted to be taken in to her adopted culture, and so she was. Her mother - while indulging this - also wanted Pearl to remember a lot about her Chinese background. I hated my mother's attempts to make me remember March Day, or my father telling me something about history - "yes, but that's Communist history, dad; we're learning what actually happened." Like getting it in a British textbook somehow made it more real than my parents living through it! Pearl is the same as me, and maybe that's why I was so easily hooked on her. She's in the middle of her life, with a husband and children, and yet she still doesn't really understand her mother or the rest of the first-gen family. I look at Pearl and I think of how I might turn out, in a few years - too settled to really consider chasing my dream any more, and somewhat dubious that my parents' whispered tales of stealing off in the middle of the night and high-speed secret agent chases actually happened.
And then you see a photograph, or meet one of these people that you somehow doubted actually existed, and all of a sudden things you thought were fairy tales turn out to be true.
Little by little, Weili - now known as Winnie - tells her daughter about her life. She makes no pretenses over the veracity of her recollection, only pointing out that her memories are all that is left. Time and again she is contradicted by 'Aunt Helen', who was there for most of it, yet misremembers - or is it Winnie who is misremembering? Pearl believes her mother's story, but the reader isn't so sure, especially as Winnie herself seems doubtful of her own memory. That said, some of the things she relates - the brutality she experienced - are told so simply, so without frills or any verbal dressings of any kind, that you cannot help but believe her.
Winnie's life in 1920's Shanghai is bright and vivid, and so completely her own tale - so much so that it is sometimes difficult to keep track of why she should feel a certain way, only that she remembers that she did so, and that is all the proof we'll have - that it makes her character come completely alive. It is difficult to match young, pretty Weili to the seventy-five year-old Winnie, concerned about the price of toilet roll and whether her daughter is wearing the right colours for luck.
And then I think - my father does that. And my mother, though young at only just turned fifty, will do that soon. And I, I, too, will do that. I've already changed my name, slight though the change was. But what separates Viktoriya from Victoria, and is it any greater a gulf that separates Weili from Winnie, or Hulan from Helen? And what about my brother, whose birth name is now only used when someone is angry?
I don't know the impact that Tan would have on someone who has less ease connecting with her 'daughter' character. I'm half-tempted to push one of these books my mother's way and see what she thinks on it. I do know, however, how I will feel when I read Tan - upset, horrified, jubilant and guilty, all in equal parts - and I do know that I will phone my mother after each book, and scrape up the courage to ask one of the millions of questions that I have somehow forbidden myself from asking.
*
Yesterday, I also saw Twelfth Night done by an all-male troupe at The Old Vic, courtesy of
athena25's magic freebie tickets. I really, really recommend that people go see the play if they possibly can. It's a bright, energetic performance, and very winsomely staged, with some beautiful set pieces. The cast are really quite brilliant, and the resultant performance is very physical, at times disturbingly so. The humiliation of Malvolio, for instance, reduced me to tears, and Sir Toby brought quite a bit of fabulous slapstick. Also brilliant was the Fool, who was a cross between a narrator and minstrel and all-actor, bridging the scenes effortlessly. Having a boy play Viola was interesting - and his body languages was definitely more deferential - although I'm not quite certain that I fully bought him as a girl. That said, the similarities between Viola and Sebastian - deftly handled by some clever casting and a good use of costumes and props - was undeniable, and the mistaken identity worked well. Go, see, laugh.
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no subject
Date: 2007-01-18 09:37 pm (UTC)And yeah, the treatment of Malvolio always makes me a little ill.
no subject
Date: 2007-01-21 02:07 am (UTC)