#34-#38: Chang, See, Johnson, Smith, Lee
Leslie T. Chang, Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China: Chang investigates the women migrant workers of China, who leave their small villages to work in factories in industrial cities, never settling to one job for long but constantly moving to try to better their situations. The story is told largely through the lives and experiences of two particular young women whom Chang befriended, and she also weaves in her own personal family history. I thought this was exceedingly well-written, compassionate and poignant, telling the women's intimate stories as well as looking at the larger social and economic picture. I especially liked Chang's use of diaries and other written documents which allow the migrant women to speak for themselves throughout the book.
Lisa See, Peony in Love: In seventeenth-century China, Peony is supposed to be entering into an arranged marriage, resigning herself to life with a man she's never met. For her sixteenth birthday, her father puts on a theatrical performance, of Peony's favorite opera, The Peony Pavilion, the story of a maiden who wastes away and die of lovesickness. During the performance, Peony meets a handsome man and becomes lovesick herself, leading her into a mystical world of ghosts and the afterlife.
I liked many elements of this separately, especially the bits about the opera and Peony's response to it, but it never quite cohered into a truly enjoyable read for me. The plot is contrived, and the characters often feel not quite complex enough to support the complicated plot. I enjoyed Snow Flower and the Secret Fan more, because I felt the characters were better realized.
Varian Johnson, My Life as a Rhombus: Rhonda Lee is a math-loving high-school senior, working hard to earn a college scholarship and tutoring other kids in math; she doesn't have time for fun or dating. When she has to tutor popular Sarah Gamble, Rhonda notices Sarah's queasiness and tiredness and figures out that they have something in common. Against her will, Rhonda grows to like Sarah, and her brother David, and realizes that she needs to face her past.
On the plus side, I was impressed with the characterization of Rhonda, which is very vivid and convincing, and with the complex web of relationships she has with her friends and family, and I thought the plot was nicely worked out without being at all preachy. On the minus side, the dialogue often struck me as forced, and I would really have liked more resolution to Rhonda's relationship with her dad. On the whole, though, I did like this a lot and would definitely read more of Johnson's YA (looks like he's got another book coming out next year).
Sherri L. Smith, Hot, Sour, Salty, Sweet: Ana Chen is graduating from eighth grade, which should be a happy day for her. But her Chinese American father and her African American mother have invited both sets of grandparents over to dinner, and her grandparents just don't get along. To make things even worse, her best friend got Ana to invite cute Jamie Tabata and his parents, and Ana is worried that things will blow up with Jamie there. I felt this was a lot slighter than Flygirl. It was fine and reasonably entertaining as far as it went, and I appreciated the biracial heroine and her rich family cultural heritages, but there was a wealth of character background barely touched on in the final chapters, and Smith could have done a lot more with that.
Jennifer 8. Lee, The Fortune Cookie Chronicles: Lee started her quest by trying to figure out how dozens of people across America had won the lottery by using the numbers in their fortune cookies, but she was quickly pulled into the larger world of Chinese restaurants in America and the question of just how Chinese American Chinese food really is. Lee investigates not only the origins of different dishes (like General Tso's chicken) and where fortune cookies came from but also more human-focused stories like the thousands of restaurant workers who make the life-threatening journey to the U.S. from China or the New York delivery people who lead an almost equally dangerous life.
This was a light, fun read, but the lack of organization and scattershot investigative approach really detracted from my enjoyment of the book. The fortune cookie thing is supposed to be the main topic pulling the rest of the book together, but it's often lost sight of for chapters at a time. While I thought the human-focused parts were shocking and eye-opening (for example, the Golden Venture tragedy, which I'd never even heard of), I thought a more intense focus and investigation would have served them much better. Really, even just organizing the book into sections instead of jumping around from topic to topic would have worked better; at least there would have been some thematic unity.