What a great novel!The story focuses on four immigrant women & their four US-born daughters, & the differences & similarities among them. Though they come from a Chinese culture, I'm sure the story would resonate with anyone who is an immigrant or first generation citizen.
All of the women in the novel are strong in their own ways. At times, however, their strength gets in the way of the daughters being able to truly know who their mothers are, & visa versa.
At the end, I was streaming tears, thinking of my own mother. I have tried many times to get to know my mother, to understand who she was before she married my father (when she was 20 years old), to understand who she is now as an individual. But she resists. She doesn't like to talk about her feelings or her past. I think she must have suffered a lot in her life to keep everything so tightly guarded.
So I continue to think of her merely as half of the pair "Mom & Dad". I call my parents every few weeks to catch up, but our conversations are very superficial: the garden, the dog, their next big trip.
Perhaps I'll try again when I see my parents at my brother's house in December. It will be difficult to find a time for the two of us to be alone. My parents tend to plan every minute of their visits so there is no room for spontaneity. But this will be a longer than normal visit. We'll all be together for 10 days, so if I put my request in early, I might be able to tear her away for a cup of coffee alone. Then I'll have to tackle that wall that she has built in hopes of finding out who is behind it.
This book was passed on to Wendy Quast.
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