Review from The New York Times Book Review
(http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/08/10/reviews/970810.10gambont.html)
August 10, 1997
Hyphenates
By PHILIP GAMBONE
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This first novel, set in Vancouver's Chinatown, explores
generational and cultural clashes
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[W] hy would a poor boy catch a THE JADE PEONY
hundred fireflies and keep By Wayson Choy.
them in a jar, asks one of the 239 pp. New York:
many uncles in this fine debut Picador USA. $22.
novel set in Vancouver's ---------------------
Chinatown during the late
1930's and early 1940's. His
8-year-old nephew eagerly awaits the answer, expecting
''a story as wonderful as Grandmama used to tell me.''
But the uncle's punch line -- ''So he could have enough
light to study at night'' -- seems disappointingly
didactic to a boy who, unlike his counterparts in old
China, is only interested in playing. This brief moment
underscores many of the prominent motifs in Wayson
Choy's novel: the clash of generations and cultures, a
child's eagerness for wonder, the way learning proceeds
despite contrary expectations.
A co-winner of Canada's Trillium Award for the best book
of 1995, ''The Jade Peony'' describes a world of ''too
much bad memory'' and too much present difficulty. News
of civil war in China and the Japanese invasion hovers
in the background of even the most ordinary
conversations. And as if that weren't enough, there are
always ghosts and malicious gods (including the ever
vigilant ''Immigration Demons'') that must continually
be appeased or tricked. As resident aliens, these
Chinese-Canadians live in ''a hyphenated reality'' in
which everyone is ''waiting for something.'' How best to
proceed? ''Keep things simple,'' admonishes one elder.
But children cannot easily obey such advice. Subtly
demonstrating this truth, Choy divides his novel into
thirds, giving a turn at the narrative to each of three
siblings in a family with ''false immigration stories to
hide, secrets to be kept.''
Jook-Liang, the only sister, is full of movie-star
daydreams, much to the chagrin of her strong-willed
grandmother. ''This useless only-granddaughter wants to
be Shirlee Tem-po-lah,'' she scolds. Through tap dancing
and a deep friendship with an old family acquaintance,
whom she sees as a ''bandit-prince in disguise,''
Jook-Liang realizes that she is, in fact, neither
useless nor ugly. But quite unexpectedly she stumbles
onto another, almost contradictory lesson: that growing
up means sacrificing some of your dreams.
In the second part of the novel, Jung-Sum, the handsome,
adopted second son, with ''hands like silk,'' turns to
boxing in order to overcome his feelings of alienation
and weakness, only to find himself confronting a new,
unexpected weakness -- sexual attraction to his boxing
coach.
For the youngest, Sek-Lung, a sickly child nicknamed
Sekky, who narrates the last third of the novel,
everything is a puzzle. He too loses and then finds
himself through fantasy and play, at first in solitary
war games, later by helping his grandmother fashion wind
chimes from ''splendid junk.'' Like his sister and
brother, Sekky is gradually introduced to a more complex
and disturbing world, in this case when he agrees to
accompany his teen-age baby sitter on secret visits to
''Little Tokyo -- Japtown -- enemy territory'' to
rendezvous with her boyfriend.
''The Jade Peony'' explores themes traditionally
associated with novels about the immigrant experience:
the promise and treachery to be found outside the matrix
of the family, the burden of old ways, the necessity of
learning new ones. But Choy ranges over this familiar
territory with a fresh eye, disclosing universal themes
in the particularities of the Asian-American life of
half a century ago.
With its episodic forward movement and rich period
detail, its delightful set pieces and flashback
interpolations, ''The Jade Peony'' resembles a memoir in
its texture. Yet many of the novel's chapters could also
stand alone as short stories; indeed, the three major
sections present three distinct coming-of-age stories.
What unites them, apart from the relationships among the
narrators, is Choy's keen insight into the way children
come to terms with the diversity of everyday life. In
China, he tells us, a figure called the ''dark
storyteller'' reveals ''hidden things not seen in the
glare of daylight.'' Working in a new country and a new
context, Wayson Choy has deftly continued that
tradition.
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Philip Gambone is the author of a short-story
collection, ''The Language We Use Up Here.''
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