Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life by Yiyun Li

Source of book: Borrowed from the library

I have loved Yiyun Li ever since I first read Gold Boy, Emerald Girl back in 2013. I followed that up with the eviseceratingly tragic yet beautiful The Vagrants about a year ago. It is hard to believe that English isn’t her first language - she shares Conrad’s ability to make amazing art in a language she didn’t grow up speaking. As this book reveals, she intentionally chose to write only in English, and never in her native Chinese. 

Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life was published in 2017, five years after Yiyun had a serious mental breakdown, attempted suicide twice, and landed in the hospital for her own protection. The book itself is a series of essays wherein she explores her own psyche, her breakdown, her past, and her relationship to literature and writing. At least, that is the best I can do to explain the book, because it isn’t really like anything I have read before. And it is really, really good. Her writing is so luminous, and simultaneously oblique and devastatingly revealing, it draws you in. 

Yiyun has said in the past that she is “not an autobiographical writer.” That is, her stories are not about her or people she knew. But, as she admits in this book, that was a lie. I don’t think it was a lie in the sense of being actually untrue. She doesn’t write stories with her as a character. But if I am reading her essay on this issue correctly, her story is told through the psyches of her characters, not their situations, plots, or choices. And that feels right, after reading this book. She is a very private person, and her characters tend to keep their emotions mostly out of sight. But, just as her stories reveal the emotions of her characters in such flayed reality that you want to look away, her essays in this book are as introspective and self-revealing as anything I have ever read. I mean, you can see the viscera and throbbing arteries of her emotional experiences. It is hard to take at times, which is why I read the book slowly. The reality is just too real to be looked in the face. 

In an interesting coincidence, this is the second book I have read in as many months that had autobiographical explorations of depression and suicide. The other was a fictional work, Akwaeke Emezi’s Freshwater. While the two are very different - psychologically different too - the share that uncomfortable look into mental illness. As an example, Emezi’s character has multiple personalities, tends to be loud and act out, and seems like a being on fire more often than not. It is a violent vision of suicide, of self destruction, and inner torment. Yiyun’s on the other hand, is that of a person who is quiet, pleasant, polite, thoughtful, ridiculously erudite - but who is dying internally, filled with a rather quiet self-loathing and distaste for living. It’s really spooky the way she writes it. 

As I noted in the former review, I am not particularly prone to either depression or suicidal thoughts. I’ve been in a few dark places, but they tend to be connected to circumstances, not major depression. And also, I joke that I am more homicidal than suicidal. (Don’t worry, I’m not homicidal. I’m not a violent person, but more of a fuzzball with a smart mouth. I just tend to get angry rather than depressed.) So these books were really more about seeing into the mind of someone else, and recognizing some of the darkness, if not its manifestations. It is an indication of how good the writing is that these books felt so real and familiar - and how deeply they messed with my emotions while reading. 

Yiyun takes an interesting approach to things in the book. For the most part, she doesn’t talk directly about what happened or what she did. Rather, she talks about other writers. Some of these are ones I might have guessed: Turgenev, Chekhov, Marianne Moore, Stefan Zweig. But some were a bit surprising, such as Thomas Hardy. Wait, what?? And some others which I haven’t read, and were not that familiar with, such as Elizabeth Bowen, John McGahern, and William Trevor. (The last of which she formed a friendship with, and who gets most of a chapter to himself.) Yiyun traces her love affair with literature from her childhood through the present, and you can see exactly how she ended up going from a promising career in science to taking the leap into writing. 

Rather than try further to explain the book, let me mention a few quotes that I wrote down as particularly insightful. 

After years of living in America, I still feel a momentary elation whenever I see advertisements for weight-loss programs, teeth-whitening strips, hair-loss treatments, or plastic surgery with the contrasting effects shown under before and after. The certainty in that pronouncement--for each unfortunate or inconvenient situation, there is a solution to make it no longer be--both attracts and perplexes me. Life can be reset, it seems to say; time can be separated. But that logic appears to me as unlikely as traveling to another place to become a different person. Altered sceneries are at best distractions, or else new settings for old habits. What one carries from one point to another, geographically or temporally, is one’s self. Even the most inconsistent person is consistently himself. 

Cue a bit of Clint Black? What makes this a particularly great insight is her understanding of the American mythos, and the way we built an economy on the lie that we can become fundamentally different people if we consume the right way.  

There is another moment when Yiyun recalls a visit to Ireland during a heat wave, and notes that, like music, weather can be a crucial part of a memory - and trigger it. 

Children, unlike their elders, do not converse about the weather. It is a fact to them, connected to the present only. Is it because weather can represent too much that it is often reduced to small talk? Weather gives experiences a place in time: a mood in which to inset a memory, a variable or a constant when comparing now and then. 

It’s bits like that which separate competent writers from the best, and I can only dream of being able to write - and observe - like that. Or how about this recalling of what reading meant to her during her deeply unpleasant time in the Chinese Army? 

I did not see myself in Scarlett O’Hara; or Anna Karenina, or Tess Durbeyfield or Jane Erye; nor did I look for myself in Jean-Christophe or Nick Adams or Paul Morel or the old man fighting the sea. To read oneself into another person’s tale is the opposite of how and why I read. To read is to be with people who, unlike those around one, do not notice one’s existence. 

That last sentence is amazing. And I think that, while I am not so inwardly turned as Yiyun, I get that feeling. Perhaps it is how introverts tend to read? 

Running through the book is Yiyun’s own history, which certainly contributed to her breakdown. Her mother was, to put it mildly, abusive. And probably mentally ill. Yiyun was the favorite child, so her sister probably had it worse, but the things Yiyun tells of her childhood make it clear that her mother abused everyone in the family, including her father. Some of the things said and done are just horrifying, such as her mother telling her that she “deserved the ugliest death” because she didn’t love her mother enough, and on the day she got married, telling her that she had left her with only the hope for Li’s divorce. I mean, it’s bad, and yet Yiyun remains haunted and drawn to her mother. In this context, and the fact that her parents’ memories - even though she doesn’t share them - still affect her in unexpected ways, she quotes Ralph Ellison: “Things were not supposed to be this way.” 

One of the chapters is largely about Turgenev, who had a similarly abusive and possessive mother. How about this fact? After disowning Turgenev’s brother for marrying, and then acting indifferent when the children of that marriage died in the same year, she told Turgenev, “I alone conceived you. You are an egoist of egoist. I know your character better than you know yourself...I prophesy that you will not be loved by your wife.” 

Ouch. But Yiyun’s mother said something similar to her: “I don’t even need to lay my eyes on you to know everything about you because you came from my body.” Apparently, she said this to the young Li regularly. She then asks, “How do we live with what we have, unhaunted?” And the answer is clearly that we cannot. We remain haunted. 

I must admit, a good bit of this resonated with me. My mother was not even in the same class as these controlling and abusive mothers, but she was damaged by her own childhood, and never really was able to transition from the mother of children to the mother of adults in a healthy manner. I did hear all too often during my teens that she feared I would marry a sweet girl and run roughshod over her. In the actual event, I married a strong, confident, and assertive woman, and I am pretty sure my mom was disappointed, which is why she eventually antagonized my wife until she was unwilling to waste time on my parents at all. So yes, I am very much haunted, and have to live with what I have. Things were not supposed to be this way. 

Returning again near the end of the book to her mother, Yiyun gives yet another facet of the issue. 

Writing is the only part of my life I have taken beyond my mother’s storytelling. I have avoided writing in an autobiographical voice because I cannot bear that it could be overwritten by my mother’s omniscience. I can easily see all other parts of my life in her narrative: my marriage, my children, my past. Just as she demands to come into my narrative, I demand to be left out of hers. There is no way to change that; not a happy ending, not even an ending is possible.

Perhaps the most difficult and haunting part of the book is Yiyun’s description of her never-ending quest to be invisible, to not matter, to prove that nothing matters. And it is clear that she wants to be visible, to be loved, to matter, and to prove that everything matters. There is a line in which she perhaps allows herself a glimpse of why. 

Nothing matters. The belief was fallible, but I knew from experience that absence is more reliable than presence, and a lie sustains life with absoluteness that truth fails to offer. 

There are layers to unpack in that one. Most obvious is that Yiyun finds that reality leads her toward suicide, and that some form of self-delusion appears necessary to prevent that. This is some crazy philosophical stuff, to be sure, and it isn’t just her. (As the book makes clear.) But I think too that she hits on a truth about...truth. Truth is complicated and messy and human and ambiguous. A lie is absolute. Lies tell you that everything can be summed up in one rule, one statement, one “truth.” And this is why cults thrive and hate multiplies and people embrace obvious untruths. It is far easier - and simpler because it is absolute - to say “my problems are the fault of those people,” than to look at the complexities of life. Far easier to exterminate the Jews, or deport immigrants, than to address the layers of kludge and rules and laws and systems which have choked the average person. Finding true solutions is always hard work - it is the work of reformation, not revolution - while “solutions” are easy to find. They have an absoluteness that truth cannot offer. On a related note, this observation is interesting, particularly in the context of whether wishing to escape suffering is selfish or not. (Many consider suicide selfish, but are other methods of escape likewise selfish?) 

It is easier to take something away than to give. Giving requires understanding and imagination; taking away requires only resolution and action.

This too ties back: giving - like truth - is complicated, and requires understanding the one to whom one gives, and imagination in finding a mutual good. That’s the complexity of truth. And the lie is easier - just take things away from other people. Send them back. Lock them up. Tell them to shut up. 

In the same chapter is an unexpected insight, which caught me off guard. I mentioned that I was not expecting Thomas Hardy to make an appearance. I was doubly not expecting to find a quote from Phillip Larkin about Jude the Obscure and the ensuing discussion to change my perspective on that book. Yiyun points out something that bothered me about the book: 

Sue is so incoherent that she raises in my mind the question of believability. Not that I don’t believe her as a character--a complaint one sometimes hears as a criticism of a less successful character--but I don’t believe a character can achieve inexplicability as she has. “Really too irritating not to have been a real person” was Larkin’s conclusion, and some biographers have suggested Hardy’s first wife as a model. 

This is true. Characters in stories are not allowed the luxury of being inexplicable. They have to do things for reasons, and Sue seems to have no reasons behind her behavior. She makes no sense. But this is, perhaps, the way a lot of people in real life are, if you think about it. Not everyone, clearly, but enough. The whole passage on Jude and Sue in particular, is really insightful. Even though I still dislike what Hardy did with her, I can understand it better. 

The chapter on language was also fascinating. Yiyun essentially “abandoned” (her words) three key things: her mother, her motherland, and her mother tongue. She compares herself to Nabokov, who likewise had to write in a non-native language. He did it for different reasons, though, and with reluctance. Yiyun did it intentionally, for rather complex reasons (although the fact that her mother cannot read English is one of them.) I can’t even begin to duplicate the extended exploration of this, but I think this line is a good start:

I feel a tinge of guild when I imagine Nabokov’s woe. Like all intimacies, the intimacy between one and one’s mother tongue can demand more than one is willing to give, or what one is capable of giving. If I allow myself to be honest, I would borrow from Nabokov for a stronger and stranger statement. My private salvation, which cannot and should not be anybody’s concern, is that I disowned my native language.

There are eight chapters, but also an “afterword” which seems in many ways to be its own chapter. I guess that is a matter of perspective. In any case, it has an amazing paragraph that I think makes a good way to finish this post. 

One cannot be an adept writer of one’s life; nor can one be a discerning reader of that tale. Not equipped with a novelist’s tools to create plots or maneuver pacing, to speak omnisciently or abandon an inconvenient point of view, to adjust time’s linearity and splice the less connected moments, the most interesting people among us, I often suspect, are flatter than the flattest character in a novel. Not only do we not have any alternatives, we discredit them. It has to be so--this indisputable conviction is often at the foundation of our decisions, including the most impulsive or the most catastrophic. It is easier to be certain of one thing than to be uncertain of a hundred; easier for there to be one is than many might have beens.

Yiyun Li has written one short story collection and two novels that I have yet to read. I was reminded again with this book why I love her writing so much. I definitely have her other works on my list, and I truly hope that she stays with us for a long time. 

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This interview in The Guardian in relation to this book is pretty fascinating. 

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A tragic footnote: soon after this book was published, Yiyun's teenaged son committed suicide. The amount of pain in this family of generations is lacerating. I wish I had a cure to offer, but life and humans are too complicated for simple answers.

The Garlic Ballads by Mo Yan

Source of Book: Borrowed from the library

This is another of those books that has been on my list so long, I honestly don’t remember who recommended it or when.

What I do know is this: Mo Yan won the Nobel Prize for literature in 2012 for his body of work, including this book, Mo Yan is a pen name - it means “don’t speak,” the book was banned in China, and yet Mo Yan is unusual in that he won the prize and yet did not find himself in prison in China.

Mo Yan wrote quite a number of books prior to and after this one, and, like this one, most were translated into English by Howard Goldblatt, who also abridged some of them. It is not at all clear if that happened in this case - a quick internet search didn’t turn up anything definitive. In any case, it is fairly certain I will never read it in the original language, so what I read is what I had available.

 

 The Garlic Ballads was written in 1995, but is set in 1987, during a historical event - the “garlic glut.” The characters are fictional, but very much of the rest is quite historical. The basic events went down like this: officials of the local Chinese government order the local farmers to plant only one crop - garlic - and promise to pay a fixed rate for it. When the crop matures, there is a glut, and the same officials refuse to buy the garlic, it rots, causing a stink and ruining many of the farmers. They revolt and trash the office of the local commissioner, who hides in his home and refuses to respond. The government cracks down on the protesters, arresting many, who are then subjected to brutal conditions and abuse. Against this backdrop, Mo Yan writes a doomed love story, a tale of prejudice, and several episodes of corruption and oppression by the authorities.

Let me say at the outset that this book is brutal. And I don’t use that term lightly. It is thoroughly violent, with every kick and punch from the police landing with full force. Bodily fluids are everywhere, and if you can’t take people being forced to eat their vomit and urine, you probably shouldn’t read this book. I know our own law enforcement here in the United States has serious issues - and I wouldn’t want to be a young man of color here. But this is on a whole different level, where cattle prods and torture are considered a matter of course, and “justice” is not even an illusion - “confess or we make it harder on you” from everyone from the judge on down. So if you are looking for anything pleasant in this book, I warn that they are very, very few and far between.

The book focuses on two main characters - we see the events mostly through their eyes. The first is Gao Yang, a farmer who is socially disadvantaged because of his descent from people who were landlords before Communism. He is the recipient of much of the abuse in the book, despite his natural submissiveness and puzzlement at what is happening to him. (He got involved in the protests because he got caught up in the crowd, but is singled out as a “ringleader” apparently because of his social standing.) If anything “good” can be said to happen in this book, we assume it will happen in the future after he serves his time. And, to a large degree, we can hope things work out for him because of his wife, who is one of the truly decent people in the book. Perhaps because she is crippled (and therefore undesirable for marriage), she has both compassion and a resilience that other characters lack. The second is Gao Ma, another farmer, who has personal issues of his own, and who actually is a ringleader in the revolt. A smaller portion is told from the perspective of Fourth Aunt Fang, the matriarch of the Fang family.

Mo Yan doesn’t write a sequential story. We are plunged into the aftermath of the revolt with Gao Yang’s arrest, and it takes all of the book before we actually get back to the circumstances of the revolt itself. The characters essentially tell the back story through flashbacks, which are also interspersed with stories from legend and conversations with other characters. To top it off, part of the narrative is carried by short poetry excerpts at the beginning of the chapters, by the blind balladeer who sang the story of the garlic glut and revolt. (The title comes from these songs.) Thus, I would not say that the plot thread is easy to follow. Particularly at first, one can see glimpses of the past and future, but everything is so unclear. I would say that I was able to piece together the outline about halfway through, but many details were still not in place until near the end.

A couple of things really stood out to me about the book. The first is this: a lot of what we here in the West have been taught about Communism - particularly the Chinese version - is a big pile of excrement. It is particularly egregious on the part of the Right in their intentional oversimplification of Communist regimes to an economic system. I have written about this before in the past, specifically how systems like Communism and Nazism are united by their totalitarianism. Not so much religion or philosophy or economics, but by a belief in the necessity to exert absolute control over a population. Thus, it is the existence of the secret police - those above the law and answering only to the corrupt bosses - that define these regimes. I have read a number of books written by those who lived in these assorted countries during totalitarianism, and the universal theme is the lack of political, not economic freedom, which defines them. (One recent example is The Vagrants, by Yiyun Li, also about Communist China, from an insider.)

In this book, this is apparent from the outset. By 1987, at least, the rural Chinese farmers appear to own their land. It certainly seems that way. And, despite the “grow garlic and we’ll buy it,” edict, just about everyone still grows other foods for their own use. A few even hedge their bets, and don’t seem to suffer a consequence. The main way we can tell this is still a communist system is that there is a single buyer for the crops. Which, come to think of it, isn’t that far off from how some markets work here in the West. So no, it isn’t a truly free market, but it isn’t a full command economy, and “capitalism” exists in a recognizable form. After all, the farmers sell their crops and keep the proceeds. If they work harder and grow more, they get more money. So it isn’t somehow that people are too equal that is the problem. (And in practice, they aren’t that equal.) It is the totalitarianism.

What is striking, however, is the way that the totalitarian system readily adapts to the looser economic system - and becomes less a doctrinaire communism, and more like a corrupt kleptocracy, where those in power cheat and steal and take bribes and enrich themselves at the expense of others. And because absolute authority is accepted, they can get away with it.

This leads me to the second observation. In some ways, the Communism of Mao was a radical change from tradition. (Which is one reason why the Cultural Revolution led to mass starvation and other horrific results.) In this book, the past and present cultures both co-exist and fight for dominance.

The best example of this is at the heart of the doomed love story. Gao Ma is in love with young Fang Jinju, the only daughter of Fourth Aunt Fang. However, he is just a poor farmer and former soldier, so her family rejects the idea. Rather, what they want to do is marry her off to a much older and connected man with money...who hasn’t been able to marry before because he is gross and undesirable. But, in this case, there is a sweetener. If Jinju marries him, then Jinju’s deformed eldest brother will get a wife in exchange, which will allow the second brother to marry as well. So her body is basically sold in exchange for social and economic advantage.

Contracts like these are illegal under Communism, which has tried - with some success - to shift society to a more egalitarian view of the sexes. But out here in the rural districts, the law is not enforced, both because of the strength of misogynistic tradition and the universal fact that the wealthy and connected can do whatever the hell they want. The spirited Jinju is not okay with this and refuses, then runs off with Gao Ma and gets pregnant, throwing a huge wrench in the works. And then her family brutally beats her. This does not end well, alas. The greed and cruelty in the Fang family cause them to unravel when things start to go badly wrong.

It is interesting that there are signs of gender equality here and there in the story. Many of the police are female - and they are more likely to act compassionately and justly than the often vulgar and cruel men. The doctor who delivers the children in the village is female and highly educated. She pushes back against the rural parents who celebrate the birth of males, and mourn the birth of females. (As she correctly points out, the very same people then whine about how hard it is to find wives for their beloved sons. On a macro scale, this misogyny has led to a serious lack of females in China.)

Whatever else this book contains, it certainly does not fit an easy “socialism good, capitalism bad” narrative. Instead, it looks at the problems of corruption, of the ugly side of “tradition,” the challenges of forced change, and the human propensity toward violence and brutality. The problems seem rather more universally human than specific to one culture or government. The cure seems not “unrestrained capitalism” but a need for freedom, compassion, and decency. And really, all of those are bound up together. When we recognize others as human and treat them with compassion and empathy, we tend to give them freedom. It is when we dehumanize that enforcing rules and authority becomes more important than everything else. (Hey, didn’t the founder of a major religion talk about that a bit?)

I can’t say I really “enjoyed” this book. It was a tough read. But it also had some amazing writing - although I can’t say how much is in the original versus the translation. The descriptions are evocative, the emotional connection with the characters solid, and the language beautiful. I would be curious if all of Mo Yan’s books are this dark, because it would be interesting to see what he would do with characters in a world in which they could thrive, rather than be brutalized.

The Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu

Source of book: I own this.

This book is part of a single-volume set of the “Classics of Eastern Thought.” I read The Art of War a couple years ago, and now returned to read the next work in the book. The version is this book is a translation by James Legge, which includes an extended introduction giving background information on the work and the history of Taoism.

Like Confucius, whose life overlapped that of Lao Tzu (who was older by roughly 50 years - the two met multiple times according to Confucius’ writings), Lao Tzu lived during the 5th Century BCE. Thus, these writings are quite old, representing some of the earliest religious and philosophical traditions. Furthermore, both Lao Tzu and Confucius claimed that their treatises were the distillations of oral traditions dating back a couple thousand years earlier. (In this sense, they are similar to the Bible, which is believed by scholars to have been written down between the 8th and 2nd Centuries BCE, but which references much older oral traditions.) The Tao Te Ching is a short, unified work, and the evidence that a single author wrote it is strong. The exact identity of Lao Tzu - and whether this was a title or a proper name - is debated, but his authorship is widely accepted. This book is the first in a series of works by Taoist authors - the introduction mentions a number of the later works and how they refer to this book. 

Depiction of Lao Tzu (aka Laozi) by Zhang Lu (Ming Dynasty)

I wasn’t particularly familiar with Taoism before reading this book. Eastern religions in general are not that familiar to me, I must confess. Part of my learning process since I started this blog has been to expand my knowledge beyond the bubble in which I grew up (we all grow up in bubbles of various sizes…) and learn new ideas.

Because of my limited knowledge, let me be quick to say that my thoughts on Taoism, such as they are, are likely to be at best, incomplete and uninformed. They come from my small experience, my own biases and frames of reference. The point of this post is not to denigrate or judge a philosophical or religious viewpoint so much as it is to engage it. My intent is to weigh what I read, learn things, and dialogue with other ideas.

The “Tao” means essentially “the way,” or “the path.” I found this interesting because the early Christians referred to themselves as “followers of the way,” a very similar term. (“Christian” was a derogatory epithet - a “little Christ.”) In some 19th Century translations, “Tao” was translated as “nature,” with the additional meaning that “nature” was a personification of “God’s laws.” Later translators would point out that this was imposing a rather Western view on the text: following Aquinas and Enlightenment thinkers and their concept of “Natural Law” and so on.

In reality, Taoism doesn’t fit even the idea of being a thing, let alone a deity. As Chuang Tzu (a later Taoist luminary - who is quoted extensively in the introduction) wrote, “Tao cannot be regarded as having a positive existence; existences cannot be regarded as non-existent. The name Tao is a metaphor used for the purpose of description. To say that it exercises some causation, or that it does nothing, is speaking of it from the phase of a thing - how can such language serve as a designation of it in its greatness? If words were sufficient for the purpose, we might in a day’s time exhaust the subject of the Tao. Words not being sufficient, we may talk about it the whole day, and the subject of discourse will only have been a thing…”

I think that the translation as “way” or “path” fits better for that reason. Tao isn’t a thing, it is a journey, a phenomenon, a mode of being. There is no true English equivalent, but so what? Words are too clumsy to pin it down anyway.

It occurred to me after reading this section of the introduction that this is one idea that has sadly been lost within my own faith tradition. Our own conception of God has been reduced to a collection of words about God - that is, we limit our experience and conception of God to an ancient collection of words about the Divine. We think that our scriptures - and particularly our ossified interpretations of that text - are a perfect, infallible, unchanging, scientific description of God and the divine laws. Thus, any chance for change, growth, mysticism, or personal experience (or even empathy these days) is precluded, because the words are the important thing, not the thing itself.

There were some other intriguing parallels in thought that stood out to me. The first was another line from Chuang Tzu’s book: “Before there were Heaven and Earth, from of old, there It [the Tao] was, securely existing.” There is a parallel there with John 1, where Christ is said to have existed “from the beginning.” (On a related note, John 1 also makes clear that Christ is the “Word of God” - not the scripture. Similar to how the writings about the Tao are not that Tao.)

Another one was the description - again from Chuang Tzu - of the early state of mankind. It is a lot like our own Eden, a time before knowledge and desire ruined everything. A time when there was no need for thought or non-instinctive action. As the translator points out, this is a defect common to many religious traditions (and specifically to Taoism and Confucianism), namely, an unrealistic view of the past, and a tendency to discount the progress in virtue and ethics which has been made over the millennia. (Again, let me recommend Steven Pinker’s outstanding book, The Better Angels of Our Nature, which, among other things, notes certain wars in Ancient China as having the highest death rates in history.) The translator does note that the Taoist opposition to knowledge ultimately became its downfall, giving Confucianism and later Buddhism the opportunity to capture minds and imaginations. Thus, at this time, Taoism is a shadow of the influential, vibrant tradition it was for centuries.

Having read the Tao Te Ching, I would say that it has a lot of interesting ideas, some great lines, and some food for thought. But it also - like any ancient text - has problematic passages, and ideas that seem rather harmful if taken too literally.

As I read it, central to the idea of the Tao is a certain passivity. It is rather the polar opposite of the Western (particularly the American) ideal, which is action. One can see an almost direct opposition to, say, Nietzsche. In the one sense, there are some parallels with the teachings of Christ - the use of paradoxes, and losing one’s life to gain it - but in another, the idea seems to be to do nothing and expect that problems will solve themselves. It seems to me to be a dangerous idea to apply to solving problems of oppression, for example.  

Here are some of the lines which I found most interesting.

Book III - Keeping People at Rest

Not to value and employ men of superior ability is the way to keep the people from rivalry among themselves; not to prize articles which are difficult to procure is the way to keep them from becoming thieves; not to show them what is likely to excite their desires is the way to keep their minds from disorder.

Okay then. Of the three adages, the last seems useful (I rather deplore most advertising), the second depends on the interpretation (yeah, if we didn’t value gold, maybe, but people will steal to eat), and the first is hogwash. If anything, our current administration is an illustration of what happens when you don’t value or employ people of superior ability: the idiots and the malevolent end up running things.

The next couple, however, I thought were quite good.

VIII - The Placid and Contented Nature

The highest excellence is like (that of) water. The excellence of water appears in its benefiting all things, and in its occupying, without striving (to the contrary), the low place which all men dislike. Hence (its way) is near to (that of) the Tao.

Definitely a parallel there with the concept of humility and the upside-down Kingdom that Christ taught.

IX - Fullness and Complacency in Success Contrary to the Tao

2. When gold and jade fill the hall, their possessor cannot keep them safe. When wealth and honors lead to arrogancy, this brings its evil on itself. When the work is done, and one’s name is becoming distinguished, to withdraw into obscurity is the way of Heaven.

That certainly seems to be a good antidote to the American obsession with wealth and celebrity.

XI - The Use of What Has No Substantive Existence

The thirty spokes unite in the one nave; but it is on the empty space (for the axle) that the use of the wheel depends. Clay is fashioned into vessels; but it is on their empty hollowness, that their use depends. The door and windows are cut out (from the walls) to form an apartment; but it is on the empty space (within), that its use depends. Therefore, what has a (positive) existence serves for profitable adaptation, and what has not that for (actual) usefulness.

This is a distillation of the concept of passivity, emptiness that characterizes much of the Tao.

Another one that I rather disagree with is this one, rendered initially in poetry.

XII - The Repression of the Desires

Color’s five hues from th’ eyes their sight will take;

Music’s five notes the ears as deaf can make;

The flavors five deprive the mouth of taste;

The chariot course, and the wild hunting waste

Make mad the mind; and objects rare and strange,

Sought for, men’s conduct will to evil change.

2. Therefore, the sage seeks to satisfy (the craving of) the belly, and not the (insatiable longing of the) eyes. He puts from him the latter, and prefers to seek the former.

I’m not feeling that one, I’m afraid. If you are starving, sure, eat. But if your existence is reduced to filling your belly, that is mere existence, not transcendence. It strikes me that this one is the sort of thing the wealthy have all too often said to those they oppress - say, slaves.

On the other hand, the idea that you cannot attain the Kingdom (of God or the Tao) by grasping rings true.

XXIX - Taking No Action

If anyone should wish to get the kingdom for himself, and to effect this by what he does, I see that he will not succeed. The kingdom is a spirit-like thing, and cannot be got by active doing. He who would so win it destroys it; he who would hold it in his grasp loses it.

There are a couple of paragraphs on the subject of war, which I found interesting.

XXXI - Stilling War

Now arms, however beautiful, are instruments of evil omen, hateful, it may be said, to all creatures. Therefore, they who have the Tao do not like to employ them.

And then later:

LXIX - The Use of the Mysterious (Tao)

2. There is no calamity greater than lightly engaging in war. To do that is near losing (the gentleness) which is so precious. Thus it is that when opposing weapons are (actually) crossed, he who deplores (the situation) conquers.

Honestly, I really feel that the recurring mistake that the United States has made since our victory in World War Two has been to lightly engage in war. That is why we have caused calamity and destruction with little if anything to show for it. The Tao isn’t fully pacifist - defensive war is provided for. But war without justification, or undertaken without careful thought, leads to suffering.

Another passage which was interesting was the one on government. In many ways, it reads as a statement of libertarian principles. As with all things libertarian, I have mixed feelings. Certainly laws can be used to oppress. But the cure isn’t the absence of laws, which lets the rich and powerful plunder everyone else (and destroy the earth in the process.) Also, as with The Wealth of Nations, I think statements that appear libertarian need to be seen in context. In a 6th Century BCE world, or a Feudalist or Mercantilist society, there is bound to be a reaction against laws written to protect entrenched interests. That doesn’t mean that the cure is to eliminate laws against pollution, discrimination, or wage theft, as modern libertarians seem so eager to do. Anyway, here is the passage:

LVII - The Genuine Influence

1. A state may be ruled by (measures of) correction; weapons of war may be used with crafty dexterity; (but) the kingdom is made one’s own (only) by freedom from action and purpose.

2. How do I know that it is so? By these facts: In the kingdom the multiplication of prohibitive enactments increases the poverty of the people; the more the implements to add to their profit that the people have, the greater disorder is there in the state and clan; the more acts of crafty dexterity that men possess, the more do strange contrivances appear; the more display there is of legislation, the more thieves and robbers there are.

3. Therefore, a sage has said: “I will do nothing (of purpose), and the people will be transformed of themselves; I will be fond of keeping still, and the people will of themselves become correct. I will take no trouble about it, and the people will of themselves become rich; I will manifest no ambition, and the people will of themselves attain to the primitive simplicity.

So, yeah, kind of, right? Paragraph 2 does fit with regulation aimed at rent-seeking. And it seems a good description of that whole process, whereby people find it more profitable to game the system than to contribute to it. But the cure seems pretty useless. Sitting back and watching the rich plunder the poor doesn’t lead to an automatic correction. (Unless you mean a violent revolution, which would not be my preference.)

Let me end with a series of three quotes, which I think make an interesting progression.

XLVIII - Forgetting Knowledge

He who devotes himself to learning (seeks) from day to day to increase (his knowledge); he who devotes himself to the Tao (seeks) from day to day to diminish (his doing).

LVI - The Mysterious Excellence

He who knows (the Tao) does not (care to) speak (about it); he who is (every ready to) speak about it does not know it.

LXXI - The Disease of Knowing

To know and yet (think) we do not know is the highest (attainment); not to know (and yet think) we do know is a disease.

We are back to the idea (alluded to earlier) that Taoism - particularly the later works - aren’t in favor of increasing knowledge. That first one seems to lean that direction, particularly if you omit the filled in words. However, in the later passages on knowledge, there seems to be a shift not toward “don’t know,” but toward “don’t be too sure you know.” And that is an excellent lesson.

In the second one, Lao Tzu hits on a vital truth: those who actually know things aren’t all that busy yelling about it. Whereas those who loudly trumpet their knowledge generally don’t know jack shit.

And finally, in the last one, we have the source of the problem. As has been said, the greater part of knowledge is knowing what we don’t know. The more you learn, the more you realize you don’t know, and the less eager you are to spout off to everyone else. This has, alas, become an epidemic in our “post-intellectual” age - as in “my ignorance is as valid as your verified facts.” It is truly a disease. This is how you get people thinking that their theological opinions (or political theories) determine reality. That they can somehow “know” exactly the meaning of everyone else’s genitals and what they do with them. That they can “know” that the cause of poverty is always and only laziness. That ignorant tweets are somehow as valid as decades of actual experience.

Lao Tzu offers a cure:

2. It is simply by being pained at (the thought of) having this disease that we are preserved from it. The sage has not the disease. He knows the pain that would be inseparable from it, and therefore he does not have it.

In order to avoid this, you have to be pained at the thought of being wrong, not at the thought of being shown to be wrong. If you are open to learning new things, to changing your mind, to seeing a different perspective, you won’t have the disease of thinking you know when you really don’t. That has been my goal for a long time. I want to be right. Which means I have had to change my mind in response to additional evidence. If you read early posts on this blog, you can see that I have changed, philosophically, theologically, and politically. I think that is a positive thing.

The Tao Te Ching was an interesting book. I obviously disagree with parts of it, agree with others, yet throughout found it a fascinating look into a different perspective.

The Vagrants by Yiyun Li

Source of book: Borrowed from the library

It’s hard to believe it has been over five years since I read Gold Boy, Emerald Girl - Yiyun Li’s second collection of short stories. Since then, I have recommended them to a number of literary sorts, and I still think they have a unique and moving voice. I grabbed this book, her first novel, on a whim at the library. 

For better or worse, this is a difficult book. It begins with the execution of a young woman for political dissent, and ends with plenty of tragedy and betrayal. But it is also moving - and important - as well as fascinating and well written. Yiyun Li immigrated from China in the 1990s, and her experiences - and those of her parents - shape her writing. The trauma of the Cultural Revolution, the “Great Step Forward,” and particularly Tiananmen Square left impressions on her, and her fiction is set during these turbulent times.

The Vagrants is a novel, but it feels much like a set of interconnected short stories. The execution of Gu Shan reverberates through the lives of various people in the fictional small city of Muddy River, for better or worse. The stories all connect through that nexus (and others) despite their separate threads.

The theme in my view, is the way that a totalitarian society puts ordinary people in impossible situations, so that they predictably betray each other to save themselves. It is Game Theory in action. The game is rigged so that individuals gain - or at least lose less - if they turn each other in, even if that means fabricating “crimes” against the state in their neighbors. By banding together, it is more likely that they could force change, but the risk to any one person is too great, and the likelihood of betrayal practically inevitable.

Yiyun doesn’t write one-dimensional characters. There aren’t many heroes, and few true villains in this book. Rather, people have complicated and ambiguous motives and actions. In what has to be one of the best reversals I have read, the “golden boy” - the little boy with the good heart - ends up with one of the least comfortable futures, with his desire for approval leading to questionable actions and results. The flip side is the malignant idler Bashi, who starts off trying to find a girl he can screw - or rape if necessary. Except that once he finds the vulnerable crippled girl, he finds he can’t follow through on his plans, and ends up discovering a purpose outside his own selfishness. Both of these results are unexpected, and Yiyun makes the changes utterly convincing.

Like in Gold Boy, Emerald Girl, the overwhelming feeling one gets is one of aching loneliness. The system - particularly in combination with the old patriarchal beliefs that never went away - isolates everyone from each other. When you can’t trust your neighbor or your family, how can you have intimacy? And yet, there are some people and some moments where this occurs, and the scenes are total gems of character writing. The title characters, the two childless old people who take in the infant girls abandoned to die at the edge of town - they are bright spots of love. The moment when old Teacher Gu, whose wife has been arrested, finds an unexpected friend in a neighbor below his social circle. And this, after the man’s wife tries to destroy Teacher Gu.

As fair warning, I do need to say that this book is plenty traumatic. Yiyun throws a glaring light on one of the most sickening human rights violations of the Regime: dissidents would be held in prison, given genetic tests, then executed when their organs matched the needs of a powerful person. In some cases, the organs were removed while the person was still alive. This is pretty well documented, actually. Unsurprisingly, the most common victims were ethnic and religious minorities. (Human nature sucks so much, a lot of the time.) There are also some disturbing sexual elements, such as the creepy old man who saves corpses for burial (rather than cremation, as mandated by the Regime.) And severs the breasts and genitals of female corpses for his collection. But perhaps the worst is finding such a connection with characters that you just know are going to suffer.

Yiyun’s writing isn’t just good, it’s beautiful. I kept going back and re-reading passages just for the loveliness of the phrasing. It seems like a paradox, for the story to be so horrifying even as the writing is gorgeous.

I also want to talk a bit about totalitarianism, as this book really brought together a lot of my own thoughts on the subject.

In the right wing circles I used to run in - and to which a good number of friends and family still belong, Communism is used as a political weapon, a shibboleth of orthodoxy, and above all as a conversation ender when it comes to political discussions. The problem is that the essential core of Communism is misunderstood - or perhaps misrepresented.

In essence, as the argument goes now, the only two options are the totalitarian communism of Stalin or Mao on the one hand; or the anarcho-capitalism, the economic libertarianism (better described as social darwinism) of Ayn Rand. Thus, anything that smacks of wealth redistribution, a public sector, or regulation, is tarred as “Communism,” or at least “Socialism,” and the horrors of Mao and Stalin dragged out as the argument why we can’t have, to choose a common example, single payer health care. (Or fill in the blank with, say, a higher minimum wage, stronger unions, food stamps, or even Medicare and Social Security.) As soon as you start talking about inequality and the common good, clearly the Gulags are inevitable.

Suggest that maybe things might look more like, say, Sweden (or fill in the blank with another first world country…) rather than the Soviet Union, and you get called a pinko rather fast.

The same thing happened, of course, to the leaders of the Civil Rights movement. Desegregation meant death camps for whites, right?

Of course, for those of us with a Fundie background, “atheism” (with the biggest of scare quotes) was blamed for both Communism and Nazism. But also in there is the idea that the core of Communism is economic. That is, Communism is synonymous with any attempt to address inequality. Touch inequality, and you end up with the Gulag.

I think this very much misses the point. There is a reason why certain nasty regimes resemble each other so much, despite totally different economic philosophies. To give some examples, Nazism (a nasty right wing movement based on racial hatred, religious supremacy, reactionary gender roles, and militant nationalism) turned out to be strikingly similar to Stalinism (a nasty left wing movement based on class hatred, atheism, egalitarian gender roles, and militant nationalism.) And both are strikingly similar to the military dictatorships of Pinochet and Gaddafi. Or the far-right Islamist dictatorships like the Taliban or ISIS - and Iran and Saudi Arabia. Or the kleptocracies of South America. Or even the Roman Empire. The connecting thread for all of these isn’t economic theory - it’s totalitarianism.

Which is ALL about power.

It is about the power to control people’s lives, and deprive them of human rights. You can see in all of these the naked fact that speaking out against power is forbidden, and results in severe punishment, including death. The central idea is that one must never question authority, and that one should surrender one’s personhood in favor of the whims of those in power.

That’s why both hard right and hard left regimes resemble each other more than they resemble the democracies of the first world. That’s also why life in a fairly right wing democracy like the United States is fairly similar in many ways to life in a fairly left wing democracy like Sweden. Sure, there are differences, for better or worse. But in both, we can count on being able to speak out politically without getting whacked.

This is why it is pretty absurd to say that we will be one step from the gulags if we raise taxes so we can have universal health care. (And for that matter, tax rates on the wealthy are far below where they were in the 1950s, often held up as the zenith of American society by the right.) It’s also absurd to say that expecting employers to pay a living wage and provide benefits (like many of those 1950s corporations did - thanks to unions) will lead to the secret police. And also why it’s absurd to say that regulations keeping large companies from destroying the environment will lead to executions for political beliefs. It’s naked scare tactics divorced from any truth of history or even the present.

The Vagrants really brings this home.

In the Chinese society if the 1970s - after the disaster of the “Great Step Forward,” which led to mass starvation, and after the purges of intellectuals during the Cultural Revolution - the economic system actually looks a lot like it did before, just with different people at the top. Class differences haven’t gone away. “Capitalism” still mostly exists in a slightly different form - for the people at the bottom. After all, the upper classes (Communist leaders) are still fabulously wealthy, the middle classes have secure jobs, while the lower classes must find a way or starve. Hey! That sounds not that much unlike, say, every human society in history. Funny how that works. In that sense, Yiyun portrays a thoroughly recognizable society.

But things do look different from another perspective. Because of the totalitarianism, dissent is dangerous at best.

In what has turned out to be an interesting (and to some, surprising) development, modern China has become rather more economically free, while remaining politically repressed. Who knew? You actually can have capitalism and billionaires and stuff - and still have a totalitarian society. It really isn’t primarily about economics...

What struck me most about this is just how right Raymond Aron was. I have mentioned it before, but one of the best books I have read is Aron’s The Opium of the Intellectuals, wherein he points out that both Communism and Nazism are - above all - religions. Sure, they lack the traditional Supreme Being™, but the substitute impersonal forces. In Communism’s case, The End of History™.

In The Vagrants, this really comes out. Early in the book is the “denunciation ceremony” for Gu Shan. Attendance is mandatory for most people - and children. The stadium is filled, and there are hours of motivational speeches (sermons!), patriotic songs (hymns!), and praise of the Communist Party. “Without the Communist Party, we would have nothing!!”

Perhaps the most chilling moment comes in the propaganda delivered by a teacher to the children.

“[O]ur party has never been wrong and will never be wrong.”

That’s a cult.

That’s the sort of shit that you hear from toxic religions of all sorts. “We are always right and have never been wrong and will never be wrong.” The beginning of the end for me with Evangelicalism (in retrospect), came with a smug and self-congratulatory sermon from our former pastor. In which he basically made this argument.

This is how you get to “kill anyone who disagrees.” It’s when your dogma - whatever the hell that dogma is - is viewed as infallible. As Solzhenitsyn pointed out, to kill by the millions you need an ideology.

It doesn’t matter what that ideology is. It could be Marxism. It could be Aryan Supremacy. It could be anarcho-capitalism. It could be religion, whether radical Islam, or radical Christianity.

Steven Pinker, in his excellent book (which has been a huge influence on me), The Better Angels of Our Nature, described how ideology leads to genocide:

Utopian ideologies invite genocide for two reasons. One is that they set up a pernicious utilitarian calculus. In a utopia, everyone is happy forever, so its moral value is infinite. Most of us agree that it is ethically permissible to divert a runaway trolley that threatens to kill five people onto a side track where it would only kill one. But suppose it were a hundred million lives one could save by diverting the trolley, or a billion, or - projecting into the indefinite future - infinitely many. How many people would it be permissible to sacrifice to attain that infinite good? A few million can seem like a pretty good bargain. Not only that, but consider the people who learn about the promise of a perfect world yet nonetheless oppose it. They are the only things standing in the way of a plan that could lead to infinite goodness. How evil are they? You do the math.

The Vagrants brings this out one hundred percent. Including the part about those opposed to the Communist Party being vermin. In the same section, the school children are instructed that “counterrevolutionism” is a infectious disease, and that it must be cleansed by the strongest disinfectant. Which means killing a few people, but whatever.

You will see this in every totalitarian system. And that includes the white nationalism of Donald Trump, where immigrants and refugees are referred to as contaminants, vermin, disease, and so on.

It ultimately comes down, not to economic theories, but human rights. Do all humans, regardless of race, national origin, religious belief, political belief, sex, gender, sexual orientation, and so on, deserve human rights? Or not. That’s why universal health care, or tax rates, aren’t a slippery slope to the gulags. But calling the press the “enemy of the people” is. It’s why Social Security isn’t some nefarious plot to enslave workers. But eliminating workplace protections is. It’s why telling billionaires that they can’t have an increasing share of the world’s wealth isn’t one step away from show trials for dissidents. But calling for violence against protesters is.

I am a conservative (in the traditional sense) by temperament. I am not a risk taker, generally. I prefer a quiet life, with my books and music and kids and cat. Because of that, I am not at all interested in starting a revolution. I prefer reform and correction and incremental change. I prefer data and facts and evidence over theories, for the most part. Sure, try stuff, but do it carefully, and make corrections as you see what does and doesn’t work.

Yiyun has some similar ideas about revolutions, and I truly loved how she put them. First is what I believe is a Chinese proverb. It is fantastic, if cynical as hell.

“The one who robs and succeeds will become the king, and the one who tries to rob and fails will be called a criminal.”

This fatalistic proverb recurs throughout the book. It guides the actions of many characters - if they can just succeed, whether through theft of through betraying their neighbors, they will be king in their own way. But if they fail, it is catastrophe.

The last one I will mention comes from Teacher Gu when he is talking with his neighbor Guosheng near the end of the book. Liberated from his filters by some booze, he goes on a rant against revolutionaries in general. I don’t agree with all of it - Teacher Gu is a reactionary in his own way, wishing women were more submissive, and that the world was like it was before the Revolution. (I sympathize with him on the second point - life was better for him when he had his freedom, his books, and the respect his intelligence and education deserved.) But this line stood out:

“[B]ut what is revolution except a systematic way for one species to eat another alive? Let me tell you - history is, unlike what they say on the loudspeakers, not driven by revolutionary force but by people’s desire to climb up onto someone else’s neck and shit and pee as he or she wants.”

Dang. That’s both depressing, and all too true. Our current racist right wing movements are driven in some part by legitimate grievances. But they are also driven by the prurient desire to be “better” than someone else. “We may be poor, but at least we aren’t [fill in the blank: n-----rs, immigrants, gays, whatever]”

Ultimately, after reading this book, what I longed for more than anything, is the utopia of what I thought America was. And still is from time to time, occasionally, and with some people. I want the freedom that we (mostly) have. But I also long for the community of commitment to the common good. I know that hasn’t really existed for many in our nation, but the idea has existed for a long time.

And, come to think of it, I long for the utopia promised by the teachings of Christ. A world where hierarchy and power are replaced by mutuality. Where there is true freedom to live our lives, because each of us acknowledges the inherent worth of the other. Where we treat the most vulnerable not as infections to be purged, but as worthy of the love and care we would give to Christ himself.

I have, I suppose, gotten off the topic a bit. But I think it fits. Yiyun’s chilling tale isn’t just about “those Commies over there,” but about us as humans. Our tendencies toward ideological thinking, the ease in which we humans can be motivated to hate each other, and the way that power is a destructive force, no matter what its justification.

Yiyun Li is a great writer - one of my favorites I would say - and although her books aren’t necessarily easy or pleasant, they are important, and give a real insight into our world, and our common humanity.

***

I’m pretty sure I have posted this before, but I have to do it again here. This has long been one of my favorite Beatles tunes, and not just because of those gorgeous Epiphone Casinos.

You say you want a revolution

Well, you know

We all want to change the world

You tell me that it's evolution

Well, you know

We all want to change the world

But when you talk about destruction

Don't you know that you can count me out

Don't you know it's gonna be

All right, all right, all right

You say you got a real solution

Well, you know

We'd all love to see the plan

You ask me for a contribution

Well, you know

We're doing what we can

But if you want money for people with minds that hate

All I can tell is brother you have to wait

Don't you know it's gonna be

All right, all right, all right

You say you'll change the constitution

Well, you know

We all want to change your head

You tell me it's the institution

Well, you know

You better free your mind instead

But if you go carrying pictures of chairman Mao

You ain't going to make it with anyone anyhow

Don't you know it's gonna be

All right…

And, no matter how “Christian” you call yourself, if you want me to participate in promoting “minds that hate,” well, you can go to hell.

Where the Mountain Meets the Moon by Grace Lin

Source of book: Audiobook from the library.

I chose this book for our most recent trip after searching for modern books for older kids. Little did I know that my kids were already familiar with the author from a series of picture books like Dim Sum for Everyone. 

This book is geared toward ages 9-12, more or less. Since my kids are used to reading above their level - and because the older kids and I don’t mine well written kid books - this one worked out well. 

Minli is a young girl, an only child, living in poverty at the foot of “Fruitless Mountain.” Her father, the imaginative parent, tells her stories of myth and legend about the Old Man of the Moon, who holds the Book of Fortune, and weaves the future out of red threads. In these stories, Fruitless Mountain is the heart of a dragon who died of a broken heart after alienating her children. Minli’s mother, on the other hand, is ground down by poverty, and sighs so often that Minli decides to set out and look for the Old Man of the Moon and ask how she can change the family’s fortune.

She sets out after receiving information from a talking goldfish she has set free, and heads west toward Endless Mountain, the home of the Old Man of the Moon. Along the way, she frees a dragon who has been captured by monkeys, is befriended by a host of interesting characters, and finally must make a difficult choice between her own desires and the needs of others.

Throughout the book are interspersed the fantastic tales that make up the underlying legend behind the story. It turns out that these stories are true - and connected - and as they unfold, Minli comes to learn the story of the greedy magistrate and how his discontent has destroyed him even as he tries to destroy those who he feels have “wronged” him by their happiness. The underlying theme, both of the myths and the story itself, is that of the root of happiness: thankfulness.

The use of the myths reminds me a great deal of one of my favorite books of all time, Watership Down, which blends adventure, a metaphor for totalitarianism, and the myth of El-ahrairah, which draws from the “monomyth.” In this case too, the “myths” are based on truth, and illuminate the adventures as they happen.

Another book that this one reminded me of was The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland, in that the heroine as accompanied by a dragon. (Okay, a wyvern in the one book, a Chinese dragon in the other…) Both sidekicks are beset by flaws which prevent them from being what they should, and yet each is loyal and good-hearted.

This is a well-written story, with a good balance of danger and heroism, love and compassion. Minli’s parents are neither simple caricatures nor static characters. They too change and grow as the story progresses. I was also impressed by the careful work the author did to weave all of the myths into a coherent and detailed back story. And yet, despite the layers, it doesn’t feel heavy handed either. A light and fine touch.

A bit, perhaps, like the illustrations, also by Grace Lin. We missed out (except for the cover art) because we had the audiobook. However, the art itself has been noted by reviewers as beautiful, and, after searching for some, I agree. 

The audiobook version is narrated by Janet Song, who does a fine job. Whether in audio or paper form, this is a worthwhile and engrossing book.