Fae Myenne Ng

Thank you to NetGalley, the publisher of Grove/Atlantic Inc, and the author Fae Myenne Ng for an ARC in exchange for an honest review. Ng's memoir is illuminating to read. As a fan of her previous work most notably, Bone, readers will be delighted to learn the personal history of the author and her life. Ng writes about how the Chinese Exclusion and the Confession Program affected her family. Ng's memoir manages to accomplish what most memoirs try to do which is humanizing and fleshing out one character within her life. Ng exceeds those expectations by finding a way to characterize the entirety of her whole family within the scope of the memoir. One of my highly anticipated books of the year, and I'm glad I had an ARC of this memoir.… (mais)

nonfiction - memoir/family history by award-winning Chinese-American novelist. The eldest daughter in a family that would become divided over time, she relates her parents' experiences through the Exclusion and Confession periods, how these policies have left so many "orphan bachelors" - Chinese laborers whose wives and families were prohibited from joining them, how they have lived out their lives as solitary men arguing (very colorfully in their Toishanese and Cantonese) over chess boards in 1960s SF Chinatown. The second half of the book deals more with Fae and her siblings' lives as their parents' marriage dissolves along with the overall health of the family and their relationships.

I am doing a poor job of describing the book, but I loved the writing style (another demonstration of the author's skill in building a story) and also learned quite a bit -- Exclusion laws get mentioned a lot in the books I've been reading but not Confession. I also feel like these stories could also easily belong to my family; though the dates and places don't quite overlap, it's easy to imagine similar events happening to my elders. Great book, thank you and more, please!… (mais)

Here's what you need to understand first and foremost. This is a story built around grief. Ona, the middle sister, jumped off the M floor of the Nam. M happens to be the thirteenth floor. Unlucky, unforgivable thirteen. Everything that happens to her surviving family centers on this one fact. Ona jumped. Everything is marked by the time Before Ona Jumped and the time After Ona Jumped. Confessional: I am like that, too. When I hear a specific date, I quickly do the math to determine if it is A.D.D. (after dad's death) or before - B.D.D. Leila is the eldest of three daughters and the one most constrained by old China values versus modern American China. She is aware of the boldness of her actions (eloping when her ancestors had childbride arranged marriages), but she isn't the boldest of the family. All three sisters are responsible for Mah's shame. Her sister Ona committed suicide (shame) and her sister, Nina, had an abortion (shame). Even Mah carries shame (an affair while her second husband was away at sea as a merchant marine). Told from the perspective of Lei, she has to make a decision between dating and duty; between marriage with Mason and Mah. Having both seems impossible.… (mais)

A searing novel about grief, family, and the profound effect our choices make on those who love us told through an odd, though effective, backward spiral in time.

The backward storyline impressed me the most, as I had not read a book told from the end to the beginning. At first, I was startled, but as I continued to read, the more profound and deeply moving the narrative became. Imagine starting out cynical and world-weary and going backward to a time of unconditional love and innocence.

A must-read for anyone coping with loss, family-dynamics... A bonus is the Chinese immigrant and first generation Chinese-American cultural insights.… (mais)