So sorry for the absence - this time of the year seems to fly by, even though I'm not particularly busy. I have been reading though - I just finished Dreams of Joy by Lisa See. This book is the sequel to Shanghai Girls. I read that last year - to give you some back story:
Pearl and May Chin are Beautiful Girls - they pose for Z.G., a famous artist for his political posters and advertisements. But when their father arranges marriages for them to pay back his own debt, the girls are thrown into a world they never imagined. May becomes pregnant with Z.G.'s child, but must give it to Pearl to protect her virgin reputation. The girls escape China and move to Los Angeles to start a new life with their husbands and their family. China Town in America is very different from their lives as Beautiful Girls in Shanghai. The book narrates their struggles to adapt to new customs while trying to teach their daughter about China. At the end of the book, when Joy, their daughter is a young woman, Pearl and May finally tell her the truth about who her biological parents are. Joy is thrown into a tailspin and runs away to China to find Z.G. and to help build the People's Republic of China.
That's where Dreams of Joy picks up the story. Joy, traveling to China, denouncing America to the Chinese government and looking for Z.G., her biological father. She finds him fairly quickly, and they travel to the countryside to teach the peasants the joy of art and painting. Joy falls in love with Tao, a peasant boy, and with country life as well. Tao's family is a part of a commune working the fields to produce crops and food for the PRC. Joy sees socialism as an ideal way of life and becomes more involved with the government and the culture of working together for the good of the whole country.
Pearl follows Joy to China to convince her to come home. She does find Joy and Z.G., and begins to travel with them, horrified that her daughter is so immersed in the culture. Shanghai and China have changed so much since she left 20 years before. Finally, Pearl sees that Joy is happy, and allows Joy to marry Tao. Joy becomes a member of the commune. Pearl returns to Shanghai with Z.G., so she is close to Joy if she changes her mind and wants to return home.
As soon as she marries Tao and is bound to him, Joy knows she has made a mistake. She and her new husband live in a two-room shack with ten other people. Crops in the commune had not done well that year, and there is a shortage of food. The author writes in great detail of the starvation these people went through because the government was telling them how to live - how to farm. Finally, when they government officials buried her husbands younger brothers and sisters alive to minimize the number of mouths to feed, she secretly sends messages to her mother for help.
I'd never learned much about China's history or read anything about Mao's leadership of China. It was very interesting to me, and See does a brilliant job of creating the picture of this society. It shows how the people were brainwashed into thinking the government was all they would ever need. It was also shocking to read about the travel permits, work permits, everything went through the government - even the most personal things.
Even in the midst of the political turmoil in this book, the love between a mother and a daughter is evident. Joy learns that even though Pearl did not give birth to her, she is her mother and loves her more than anything else.
I highly recommend these two books, especially if you're like me and love the drama of a story tied in with actual historical events.
Happy Reading!
