Book Reviews
Message from an Unknown Chinese Mother: Stories of Loss and Love by Xinran
Reviewed in the New York Times.
In 1989, the Chinese writer and broadcaster Xinran was in a remote mountain village in Shandong Province having dinner with the headman when she heard cries from an adjoining room, where his daughter-in-law was giving birth. A while later, as the midwife collected her fee, Xinran noticed a movement in the slops bucket. “To my absolute horror,” she recalls, “I saw a tiny foot poking out of the pail.” But she was the only one who was shocked. “It’s not a child,” the headman’s wife told her. “If it was, we’d be looking after it, wouldn’t we? It’s a girl baby, and we can’t keep it.”[...]
From Casualties of China’s One Child Policy, a book review published on April 1, 2011.
Under Fishbone Clouds by Sam Meekings
Reviewed in the New York Times.
[...] The English writer Sam Meekings’s accomplished first novel, “Under Fishbone Clouds,” is based on the lives of his Chinese wife’s grandparents. An unlikely love story set against the events of the last half-century in China, it’s a tale of terrible suffering that also manages to be a poetic evocation of the country and its people.[...]
From The Kitchen God Dreams of Love, a book review published on December 9, 2010.
Dreaming in Chinese by Deborah Fallows
Reviewed in the New York Times.
When I used to ask my mother about her family village in China, she always said it was three hours from Canton by bus. A hundred years ago, when my great-grandfather left China for good, that couldn’t have been far, but it was certainly no help in locating it. So I was pleased — though still mystified — to read in Deborah Fallows’s charming and witty little book that in China, “if you ask someone where their hometown is, they’ll say it is seven hours by bus. Or four hours by train. They won’t tell you where it is.” …
From Character Building, a book review published on September 24, 2010.
Burmese Lessons: A True Love Story by Karen Connelly
Reviewed in the New York Times.
Karen Connelly’s passionate and poetic memoir begins with her arrival in Burma in 1996 at the age of 27. Brash, naïve and bubbling with confidence, she is enchanted by the country, but also determined to “catch at least a glimpse of the truth — something beyond the beautiful images that are so readily available to the foreign eye.” …
From Border Crossings, a book review published on June 11, 2010.
