Kinfolk

Kinfolk. Pearl S. Buck. 1945/2004. Moyer Bell. 408 pages. 

The theater in Chinatown was crowded to the doors. Every night actors brought from Canton played and sang the old Chinese operas. If Billy Pan, the manager, announced a deficit at the end of the lunar year, businessmen contributed money to cover it. The theater was a bulwark of home for them. Their children went to American schools, spoke the American language, acted like American children. The fathers and mothers were not highly educated people and they could not express to the children what China was, except that it was their own country, which must not be forgotten. But in the theater the children could see for themselves what China was. Here history was played again and ancient heroes came to life before their eyes. It was the only place in Chinatown which could compete with the movies. Parents brought their children early and stayed late. They talked with friends and neighbors, exchanged sweetmeats and gossip, and sat spellbound and dreaming when the curtain went up to show the figures who were contemporary with their ancestors.

As much as I just loved and adored East Wind: West Wind--my very first Pearl S. Buck novel--I just LOVED, LOVED, LOVED Kinfolk. It is so very different from The Good Earth and Sons. While I struggled to find anyone sympathetic in The Good Earth and Sons, I could name half a dozen characters (if not more) that I liked, loved, respected, or admired in Kinfolk. And here's the thing, even the characters that I didn't necessarily "like", I found them to be well-developed, complex. Unlike the often nameless one-dimensional characters in The Good Earth and Sons. And the language, the style. It wowed me. It really did! So much to love and appreciate.

Kinfolk is about the Liang family. Dr. Liang, the father, is a scholar who fled China because it was getting to be too harsh, too ugly, too dangerous, too uncertain. He's a scholar, a teacher, a thinker, a philosopher. He needs peace and quiet and rest. He needs to be surrounded by people who appreciate his intellect, his superiority. (And does he ever think he's superior to just about anyone who's ever lived.) His wife, well, she "appreciates" him as best she can. Knowing that he can be oh-so-difficult to live with. But knowing that it is her place to bring out the best in him. To calm him when he gets furious or frustrated. But this isn't always easy since he doesn't respect her or see her as someone worthy of love and respect. She's the mother of his children. But. That's about it. He doesn't feel like she's intellectually or emotionally his soul mate. And he doesn't see any need to treat her as if she was the love of his life. It's her job to appreciate him, not the other way round.

So the Liangs have four children--two of the children were born in China, two of the children were born in America--James and Mary are the oldest, Peter and Louise are the youngest. James and Mary have a deep longing to return to China, to make their home, their future in China. They know it won't be easy. They know it will require sacrifice and hard work. But neither James or Mary would want to live anywhere else. They wouldn't trade the hardships, the uncertainties for anything because they feel like China is where they belong. James is already having to sacrifice his first love, Lili, because she doesn't share his dream, his vision. She wants to be American, a rich American. James, a doctor, is the first to make the trip. He'll be working in Peking in a hospital. While James knew that Mary was planning on coming to China herself--at some point. He never expected to be joined by Mary and Peter and Louise. But Louise, unfortunately, has a love affair with an American. A love affair which her father found out about. (Louise and Peter are--at least in their parents' opinion--too American.) So Mary, Louise, and Peter are sent away--Louise in disgrace, Mary because that is where she most wants to be, and Peter because his father is afraid of any of his children becoming too American that they begin to lose who they are or who they are supposed to be. Their morals, their values. (It's fine for Americans to act that way, they're American, what do you expect? But you--you shouldn't be acting like that.)

Each responds differently to their new lives in China. Mary loves it but wants even more--she wants to return to their family's ancestral village, she wants to be among the people--the commoners, the peasants, the people that live on the land, work the land, depend on the land for life itself. She wants to bring change, she wants to bring education, she wants to teach them to read and write. Louise is absolutely miserable. Doesn't see any reason why she should have to be in China when she could be living the good life in America if her parents weren't so unreasonable and old-fashioned. But she becomes hopeful when she meets an American man! Could this be her big chance? Peter. Well. Peter sees China and is shocked. The real China is so very far-removed from anything his father has ever told him, taught him, he can only see his father as a big liar, a man out of touch with reality, a man living in his own little dream world. So the real China makes him angry at his father, angry at himself, angry with the whole world. Nothing is as it should be. And he's going to be angry about it for a long, long, long time.

And James, our hero, the man who may just be the most important in Kinfolk, well, he loves China. He shares his sister's dream of returning to their ancestral village, and living with their Uncle Tao and his family. He knows it won't be easy to convince these villagers, these peasants, these farmers that Western medicine is good. That he can heal them, cure them, give them a chance to live life well and healthy. And Uncle Tao may be the one that needs the most convincing. Since James knows that his uncle needs surgery to remove a tumor. But. He knows that China is where he belongs. That China is his destiny, his future. For better or worse. For richer or poorer. James is going to be with the people of China.

We also meet Chen, a fellow doctor, a man who becomes very close with the Liang family. (He's a character that I found so easy to love!) And then there's Young Wang, another man James meets when he's new-to-China. A man that becomes a servant but so much more than a servant. A true friend and guardian to the family. 

Much of Kinfolk is set in China. But. We never quite lose touch with the parents in New York. Even separated by all those miles, there's tension between the parents and children.

I absolutely loved James and Mary and Chen and Young Wang. I just LOVED them. And even the characters that I didn't love, I found them to be well-developed and human. I think they could even be studied perhaps. (Kinfolk was one of the novels that I read it and found myself thinking, I could write a dozen papers about this one. It's just that good, that rich, that well-written, that interesting.) It was compelling. It was thought-provoking. It was a marvelous book.

So if the only Pearl S. Buck you've ever read was The Good Earth, I'd urge you to please pick up one of her other books. A book like Kinfolk or East Wind: West Wind. Because you need to give her another try.

Favorite quotes:

James on why he needs to return to China now:

He had never said even to Mary that in some deeply repressed corner of his being he grieved that his own father had chosen to live in exile during the years of the their country's hardship. He knew all the arguments, that a scholar could not work in the midst of turmoil and war. He believed these arguments were true. He knew that his father's delicately balanced mind needed safety and quiet and security in order to do its work. But he had long ago determined that he would work where he was most needed, in the midst of turmoil, even in war. He would not allow his mind to be delicate nor his heart remote. (40)

James trying to convince Lili to join him in China:

"Try to understand how I feel. Our people are good--our people are wonderful. China is great. She is not really weak. She is only in distress. All the great strength is simply waiting until we come to her help. She has lived in an old, old world and she needs to be born into the new one. I am a doctor and I think naturally in terms of birth--of bringing forth life--" (44)

James trying to decide if he's ready to make the leap:

The city was full of such brawls. There were too many starving people, and policemen treated them as criminals. Perhaps they were. There was no line between starvation and crime. He felt himself torn in the division of reality. The world, the whole world, was divided into two parts, the island of the rich and the ocean of the poor. Where would he live? He still had his feet on the island, but he was facing the rough dark waters. He must go back--or else he must leap. (65)

James speaking to Louise about her disappointing love affair:

"All this," he said after a moment, "is because you have let yourself fall in love with an American. At your age love shapes the universe."
She continued to sob, and he went on gently. "I know, too, what it is to love someone. I think I loved Lili with all my heart. Even now when I know we shall never marry, when I think of her, or someone speaks her name, the world trembles. But it does not crash about me. I know there is a life that must be lived happily without Lili. (166)

On differences between the generations, the 'war' between old and new:

There was a world of difference between themselves and these kinfolk, centuries of difference, space and time crowded into a single generation. (209)

Dr. Liang (the father) on the necessity of having peasants:

People, he reflected, must live at these different levels. Some must work with the hands, some with the mind. The peasants should not be lifted from their places as workers with the hands, or the higher ones would starve. He himself would, if he lived in China, be quite helpless without the peasants. Even here, he supposed, there were the workers with hands, men on American farms who had to do the crude work of producing food. Such persons must not be taught falsely that they could or should do other work. (228)

And this is just one of the reasons why he can't understand his children, and why his children can't understand him.

One of the reasons why I loved Chen:

"It takes a certain kind of person to live in China now," Chen mused.
"What kind of person?" Mary asked.
"Someone who can see true meanings, someone who does not only want the world better but believes it can be made better, and gets angry because it is not done, someone who is not willing to hide himself in one of the few good places left in the world--someone who is tough!" (251)

Dr. Liang reflecting on the past:

But he had wanted the children to understand the glory of China, the honor, the dignity of an ancient race and country. He himself purposefully dwelled upon these things. It was necessary to do this in order to have a perspective upon the disagreeable present. The present was always transient. It faded away. Only the past and future were eternal. Therefore he had done well to teach his children of their people's greatness. It was what Confucius himself had taught. Confucius too had lived in troubled and divided times, and he had not allowed himself to be troubled or divided. Instead he had gathered together all the greatness of the ancients and he had put this greatness into a book which had lived through the ages. (303)

James and Mary and Chen reflecting together:

The weight of their country, vast and old, lay heavy upon them all, and they were of such conscience that they could not escape.
"What Peter could not see," James said at last, "was that destruction does not heal. For what can be destroyed except people? Yet the people are the treasure store of the nation."
"And our people are good," Chen said.
"I tell you ours are the best people in the world..." (315)

© 2011 Becky Laney of Becky's Book Reviews

East Wind: West Wind

 East Wind: West Wind. Pearl S. Buck. 1930/1995. Moyer Bell. 288 pages.

These things I may tell you, My Sister. I could not speak thus even to one of my own people, for she could not understand the far countries where my husband lived for twelve years. Neither could I talk freely to one of the alien women who do not know my people and the manner of life we have had since the time of the ancient empire. But you? You have lived among us all your years. Although you belong to those other lands where my husband studied his western books, you will understand. I speak the truth. I have named you My Sister. I will tell you everything.

I loved this one. I just LOVED, LOVED, LOVED it. As in I think I may have found (another) author to become obsessed with.

East Wind: West Wind was Pearl S. Buck's first novel. It's set in China. Our selfless heroine, Kwei-lan, finds herself in a troubling position. She's been raised in a very traditional home. She's been raised--some might even say trained--from a very, very young age to please her future family--her future mother-in-law, her future husband. As a daughter, her mother has always, always kept in mind that she is not truly of their family. Kwei-lan's marriage has been arranged--set in place--since the time she was a baby. The first few chapters chronicle her childhood, her bringing up. Readers get a glimpse of the culture. How women lead very separate lives from the men. How women are to be silent and obedient and always willing to please their husbands, their masters. Readers get a glimpse of this culture. Of what made a woman beautiful, attractive, desirable. And one of the things that made a woman beautiful are incredibly tiny feet which led of course to the practice of binding feet. (Being able to cook well also helped a woman please her husband. And you HAVE to know how to pour tea for your elders.)

But our heroine, our narrator, is in for quite a shock. For her husband has spent time in the West. He has become educated; he's a doctor. He prefers to break with some of the traditions, to live a more modern life. He wants his wife to be more of an equal and less of a slave. He wants his wife to be his companion. He wants to share his life with someone. He doesn't want a silent shadow, an obedient slave. He wants more. The first step may just be the hardest--for he is asking his wife to unbind her feet.

East Wind: West Wind is all about tension and drama. For though our heroine wants to please her husband, although she is fascinated by some of these new ideas, she finds it difficult to forget everything she's grown up believing. It's not something that can be done in one week, one month, or one year.

But. This isn't her story alone. No. Some of the most dramatic scenes in the novel focus on her brother. Like her husband, her brother has been educated in the West, he has spent time in foreign countries. He's learned to adapt to new ways of life. And he does NOT want to return to China to marry the woman he's been betrothed to since he was a young child. He wants to marry for love. He wants to marry an American girl, Mary. He wants to live life on his terms--not having to obey every decree of his father and mother. He does marry the girl of his dreams. He does bring her back to China. But can he make anyone in his family accept her? love her? Will he regret marrying for love? Will she? Can they find a place for themselves in China? 

East Wind: West Wind is an intense family drama. It's simple yet emotional. I loved the style of this one. How it's told in story format. She's telling her story directly to "My Sister." It's a beautiful, beautiful novel. Bittersweet, in a way, yet very compelling.

I would definitely recommend this one!!!

Have you read Pearl S. Buck? Do you have a favorite novel? Which would you recommend?!

Other reviews: Hot Cup of Coffee. The Wu Way.


© 2011 Becky Laney of Becky's Book Reviews

The Disappeared

The Disappeared. Kim Echlin. 2009. Grove/Atlantic. 224 pages.

Mau was a small man with a scar across his left cheek. I chose him at the Russian market from a crowd of drivers with soliciting eyes. They drove bicycles and tuk tuks, rickshaws and motos. A few had cars. They pushed in against me, trying to gain my eye, to separate me from the crowd.

When Anne Greves, our heroine, was sixteen she met the love of her life, Serey, a Cambodian student and musician. The relationship is intense from the start. One of the many reasons why Anne's father objects--that and the age difference between the two. But. Her father can't keep these two apart. But where her father might fail--a war-torn country just might. For Serey is determined to return to Cambodia as soon as the borders open. He is determined to return to his country, to try to find his family. While he loves Anne, he doesn't always understand her. And she doesn't always understand him either. She wants him to remain safe in Montreal. She wants for him to be hers. She wants a happily-ever-after.

But. He does leave her. And for a decade, she hears nothing from him. But he is not easily forgotten. (She even learns his language.) And when she sees him--or thinks she sees him--on television, well, her mind is made up. She will go to Cambodia to find him, to be with him. He still has her heart.

The Disappeared is her story of how powerful and enduring love is. Of how heartbreaking it is. How the loss of it can overwhelm you, shape you. It's an emotional story--beautifully written.

Here are a few passages I'd like to share:

People do not like to think of love as a crucifixion but I know now, thirty years later, that if a person is tough enough for love nothing less than rebirth will be required (21)

The ocean has one taste and it is salt. (25)

There were those who could not reveal themselves, the torturers, the prison guards, the soldiers. For them there was no exhilaration in language. Virtue is terror, terror virtue. Without slogans, they found themselves speechless. (116)

I see your long silence as I see war, an urge to conquer. You used silence to guard your territory and told yourself you were protecting me. I was outside the wall, an intoxicating foreign land to occupy. I wondered what other secrets you guarded. Our disappeared were everywhere, irresistible, in waking, in sleeping, a reason for violence, a reason for forgiveness, destroying the peace we tried to possess, creeping between us as we dreamed, leaving us haunted by the knowledge that history is not redeemed by either peace or war but only fingered to shreds and left to our children. But I could not leave you, and I could not forget, and I did not know what to do, and always I loved you beyond love. (120)

Why do some people live a comfortable life and others live one that is horror-filled? What part of ourselves do we shave off so we can keep on eating while others starve? If women, children, and old people were being murdered a hundred miles from here, would we not run to help? Why do we stop this decision of the heart when the distance is three thousand miles instead of a hundred? (172)

Memory is a bit of light on a winter wall. (176)

False of heart, light of ear, bloody of hand. Is man no more than this? (207)

I found The Disappeared to be compelling. I didn't want to put it down. It was beautiful. It was powerful. It was haunting. I thought the writing was incredible. It gets ugly in some places--because war, terror, death, and hate are ugly. The Disappeared is definitely a novel I'd recommend.

And at the moment I'm writing this review, this one is clearanced at Barnes & Noble.


© Becky Laney of Becky's Book Reviews

CFBA: The Passion of Mary-Margaret

Samson, Lisa. 2009. The Passion of Mary-Margaret. Thomas Nelson Publishers. 313 pages.

"My sisters, if I began this tale at the end, you would know my heart is full of love even though nothing went as planned. I could tell you God's ways are not ours, but you probably know that already. And I could tell you that his mercy takes shape in forms we cannot begin to imagine, but unless you walked in my shoes for the past seventy years, you could not feel the mercy I have been given."

I'll be honest, I was skeptical about this book right from the start. While it hooked me--intrigued me enough to keep reading--I wasn't sure I was liking what I was reading. It had this other-ness to it. This off-putting (to me) flavor where I wasn't quite sure what to think of it, what to make of it. It is a roughly told story that is all-a-scramble. Within a chapter, the narrator might have touched upon four different years with little or no transition. She might be seven, fifteen, forty-two, and seventy-three all in the same chapter. Which, as a reader, I just found confusing. But the story, while its framework may have left me desiring something more straightforward, was without a doubt compelling the majority of the time. The story of Mary-Margaret from birth to death was an interesting one, a compelling one. Raised by her grandmother, she knows that her mother was raped and died giving birth to her. She's known from childhood that she wants to be a religious--a sister. She grew up believing that Jesus was her husband. That she was his bride. Her faith in Jesus is one thing that's undeniable. How she goes about it, well, that's up to you to decide. (You see, Mary-Margaret sees Jesus, hears Jesus, talks to Jesus, has tea with Jesus.) But despite all that otherness about it, part of me liked The Passion of Mary-Margaret. Mary-Margaret was told by Jesus to marry Jude, a drug addict, a prostitute (sleeping with men and women, whoever will pay), a diseased man. A man she more-than-liked as a kid, but a man whom she doesn't trust or respect much since he's taken a different path as an adult. But Jesus tells her he has a plan. She needs to marry this man one way or another. And so she goes about wooing a man who's seen and done it all. What is God's plan in all this? Mary-Margaret finds out one day at a time. What I loved about this one--probably the thing that surprised me most--was how this woman stepped out in faith and chose to see a man as God sees him. Not as all the mistakes he has made, not all the ugliness of his sins, not all the brutality and rawness of his attitude and character. But as a man whom God had chosen to redeem. She saw him through Jesus' eyes. And through Jesus' eyes, he was beautiful. Not that God was done with him, not that God was content to let him stay addicted to drugs, walking the streets, selling his body and soul for a cheap or not-so-cheap fix. But Jesus saw what the man would be. And that is something. So for that alone, I recommend this book. This book looks at hard issues in life--drugs, sex, sexual abuse and molestation, shame, pain, suffering--and it does so as honestly as it can be done.

© Becky Laney of Becky's Book Reviews
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