fannywrites

Haenyeo, the Sea Women of Korea: Published in the June issue 2021 of Skipping Stones magazine.

Discrimination against Asians in the United States: Published in the April 2022 issue of Skipping Stones magazine.

The Internment of Japanese Americans During WWII: Published in the April 2022 issue of Skipping stones magazine.

Issac’s New Life published in Cricket, April 2021l

A Chinese-American Pioneer for Suffrage

I just finished reading Zhang’s much praised debut novel How Much These Hills Is Gold. It is original, deep, cruel and lyrical. I wonder if she has a second book coming out soon.

I was disconcerted about some of the Mother’s dialogue in Chinese, without translation. A reader without knowledge of Chinese may miss something. I am mainly a Cantonese speaker with passable Mandarin. I read aloud the romanization of the dialogue and it turns out to be Mandarin. I understand that in that era right at the tail end of the gold rush, the Chinese who came to seek their fortune as prospectors were from south China, where the dialect is Cantonese (different versions according to which village they come from. ) I was surprised that she spoke Mandarin. Perhaps the Chinese did come over from provinces north of south China.

In her acknowledgement, she thanked the Vermont Studio Center where she developed or wrote this novel. I was at the studio for two weeks several years ago. The novel I was revising there is still in limbo. Maybe I’ll work on it again, but I have other projects on going. An author has to learn when to stop a project at some point.

The 1982 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, A Soldier’s Play will end its run on Broadway in mid March. Catch it if you’re close to NYC. It lasts only 90 minutes, plus a 15 minutes intermission, but it proves a play doesn’t have to be long to pack a punch. This play, by Charles Fuller about a Black lawyer sent to a segregated regiment in the in the early 1940s to invest the murder of a Black sergeant. It was tense as soon the play opens. It explores tensions between the lawyer and the White captain and between the Black soldiers. I didn’t want it to end.

Hadestown was a best musical winner and it lasted three hours. For the first time, I waited for it to end and I’m one who wants my money’s worth. The ancient Greek story of Orpheus and Eurydice , set in modern times, had a few songs that didn’t move the story along. I didn’t connect with Orpheus from the first moment he appeared, mainly because I found him, as directed, a little wimpy. Most of the musical was about their courtship, rather than on how he tried to bring her back from the underworld. I didn’t find the courtship convincing either.

Title: Grandmother’s Vsit

Author: Betty Quan

Publisher: Groundwood Books, House of Anansi Press 2018

Word count :518

This is a warm story of a grandmother who teaches a young girl how to measure water for rice with a finger.  Grandmother tells stories from her childhood and walks the granddaughter to and fro from school. They have a special relationship.

Grandmother’s key ring hangs on a hook  so she won’t forget to take it when she leaves the house. Grandmother dies and after she is buried, the girl’s mother tell her that the spirit of a dead person can find the way home to say the final goodbye on the third day.

The girl waits and listens. She hears the jangle of a key against a jade key ring. She finds the missing key is no longer on its hook. It’s in a photo album, like a bookmark. The photo marked is a picture of the grandmother holding a little baby on her lap. The baby is the girl.

While I love the story, I question the part about the dead grandmother coming back to say good bye. I’m Chinese and have heard that the dead can come back on the third night. My grandparents died in Hong kong when I was a young woman in the U.S. I did not have the experience of feeling scared and waiting for their  return.

This book is a picture book, for children 6-9. Would a child be scared when they come to the end of the book.? The girl in the story is not scared. But I imagine a lot of children may be.