Concubine's Children: The Stor [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

Her curiosity piqued by a few old photographs, Chong retraced a family history that spanned an ocean and linked two continents. The epic tale she unearthed was that of her grandmother's life. Sold as a concubine to a Chinese man trying to make his fortune in the New World, May-ying became the fellow's second wife, working the tea house circuit in the greasy Chinatowns of Canada's west coast to support her husband's first wife and family back in South China. After an extended return to China, May-ying left two of her daughters with the first wife, never to see them again, and returned to Canada to give birth to her third child. The stories of a family on two continents that Chong subsequently tells reflect the impacts of such historical events as World War II, the reign of Mao Zedong, and changes in China's immigration policies. Carefully balancing cool observation and compassion, Chong writes extraordinary history and gives voice to the Chinese immigrant experience as China made its dramatic twentieth-century reentry upon the world stage. Mary Ellen Sullivan -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine vergriffene oder nicht verfügbare Ausgabe dieses Titels.

In her first book, Chong reconstructs the story of her mother's Chinese and Chinese-Canadian family, skillfully mixing social history with family biography. Using letters, public archives, interviews, and her mother's own memories, Chong creates a history rich in physical detail and emotional nuance. She begins in 1924, in Canton, when her grandmother, May-ying, a 17-year-old servant, was sold into concubinage to Chan Sam, a Chinese laborer in Vancouver. Chan Sam (Chong's grandfather) already had a wife back in Kwangtung, but he was lonely living abroad. To pay off the cost of May-ying's passage to Canada, Chan Sam indentured her to two years of work as a waitress in a teahouse in Vancouver's Chinatown. Though at first this was a sharp indignity to May-ying (waitresses were regarded as little better than prostitutes), it taught her a skill, and throughout her life she was able to find work, which Chan Sam often could not. This economic independence gave her a measure of control over, and eventually a way out of, her unhappy concubinage. Chong takes us through the couple's brief stay in China and return to Vancouver; May-ying's separation from her two oldest daughters, Nan and Ping, who were left with Chan Sam's first wife to be educated in China; the estrangement of Chan Sam and May-ying; youngest daughter Hing's often-neglected girlhood with May-ying; and the eventual reunion of Hing and Ping in China. Chong provides clear historical context. We understand Hing's painful childhood in terms of Chinese culture's ancient contempt for girl children; a seer had predicted that Hing would be a boy, and her mother was always openly disappointed. Despite her meticulous historicism, though, Chong is always attuned to the complexities of individuals, never wholly reducing anything to politics or economics. An eloquent, unsentimental act of love, prompted by the writer's contagious desire to make sense of her origins. (16 pages b&w photos, not seen) -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine vergriffene oder nicht verfügbare Ausgabe dieses Titels.

Formerly a senior economist for Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, Chong also is a writer of essays and articles. The subject of his first book is a true-life family history, beginning in about 1920 and ending in 1980. Its main character is Chong's maternal grandmother, May-ying, described as an unusually beautiful woman who came to Vancouver, Canada, to serve as a concubine. While May-ying's life was determined for her (i.e., to make money to send back to her "husband's" family in China), in the process she became an alcoholic, a gambler, and a prostitute. Her vices had a tremendously negative affect on her relationship with her husband, who eventually divorced her, and her daughter, Chong's mother, who grew up in rooming houses with no one to care for her. Told in a compassionate and forthright manner, this book makes sense out of the lives of many Chinese who came to the West to search for gold. In this respect, it is even better in form and content than the fictionalized works of Amy Tan. Recommended for all collections.
Peggy Spitzer Christoff, Oak Park, Ill.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine vergriffene oder nicht verfügbare Ausgabe dieses Titels.