I really enjoyed reading Lien Chao's The Chinese Knot. During her reading yesterday, she mentioned that she focused on immigration and emigration because it demonstrates an exciting process of change and struggle or a loss and gain. This reminded me of De Sa's stories in Barnacle Love and the similar ideas that I am focusing on in my first Letter Assignment. Just as his stories revolved around a family's adjustment to living a new life in Canada from the perspective of two males at different points in their lives, The Chinese Knot tells a similar story but through the eyes of very different single female narrators. This is again an interesting theme to me because I am also a female immigrant living in Canada. Although I have lived here for the majority of my life, I am still an amalgamation of both cultures and my parents' decision to immigrate here was both a loss and a gain, as Chao discussed.
Two of my favourite stories in The Chinese Knot were "Under the Monkey Bars" and Rose.
In "Under the Monkey Bars," Wei Ming is an elderly woman who confronts racism. This story reminded me of Julia in The Other Sister, who is also opinionated, outspoken, and independent, despite what people may expect from her because of her age.
After reading "Rose," I felt a deep sadness. I was bewildered by the story and how a daughter could be able to reject her own mother. Although my mother and I do not always agree on certain issues, I have a close relationship with her, love her, and know that I can always rely on her. I know that the situation told in the short story was different from my own upbringing and that I am not a product of divorce and have never spent time away from my mother, but I cannot imagine not wanting to have a relationship with her. Chao writes with such honesty and frailty that I really felt sympathetic towards the character of Rose. I just imagined how my mom would feel if I did not want to talk to her on a daily basis like I do now and my heart sank. Reading "Rose" made me further appreciate the relationship I have with my mom and made me want to make sure she knows how much I am grateful for her role and constant presence in my life. Although I felt most emotional when I read "Rose", all of Chao's characters are easy to identify with and are recognizable, which must be because they were inspired by real women that the author encountered in her own life. I was able to easily feel sympathy or happiness for her female protagonists, depending on the tone of the story.
Another character that was familiar to me was the city of Toronto. Chao mentioned that it acted not only as a setting, but as another character in her stories. Its streets, parks, and neighbourhoods all shaped and framed her connected narratives. This made her work identifiably Canadian and helped me to relate to the stories, as many of the landmarks she mentioned were familiar to me.
So far this course has already changed my perception of Canadian literature. I previously thought that it was mostly written by Caucasian Canadians and did not tell the stories of the many immigrants that make this multicultural country so diverse. But by reading De Sa and Chao, I know that I have much more to learn about what Canadian literature can be. The rest of the books in the course look to be just as diverse and I know that I will be just as interested in learning about their stories. I also have gained a new opinion of short stories. Previous to this course, I had never been very interested in reading collections of short stories. But after reading Barnacle Love and The Chinese Knot, the format is actually one of my new favourites. It allows for episodic takes on the characters' lives, while still allowing the reader to be emotionally invested in the material. Although I originally read Barnacle Love as a novel, reading it as a collection instead, allowed me to let go of the parts I missed (such as Manuel and Georgina's first years in Canada) and concentrate on why the episodes that De Sa did choose to write about were so important to the narrative and the development of the characters. This is different to Chao, who writes about many different characters. For her book, choosing to write short stories, allowed her to examine the lives of many female characters, without having to intertwine their stories, as she would have been forced to had she written a novel. I look forward to reading the other collections of short stories in the course, and Natasha and Other Stories and Shopping for Sabzi.
