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Lien Chao
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Fiction works when it
has a unique perspective, and Lien Chao’s slim
volume certainly has that.
All these stories
are told from the point of view of single
Chinese-Canadian women, who make up an
intriguing demographic. Many of them came to
Canada in the 80s and 90s only to experience
painful family conflict – usually ending in
divorce – once they got here.
In African Lion
Safari, a single mother struggles with feelings
of loneliness, to the point that she’s close to
accepting a relationship with a man who’s nice
but kind of dreary.
In another story, a
woman discovers that an old friend in China
could be much more.
The title tale, the
strongest, is about an English teacher who keeps
getting hit up by her students for false
documentation so they can stay in Canada. Here
Chao uncovers the fascinating culture clash
between desperate immigrants and those people
comfortable with their landed status.
Chao needs a
stronger editorial push, however. A good editor
could extract a few more descriptives – at times
the prose is too lean – and would have asked key
questions so that threads wouldn’t hang. African
Lion Safari, for example, is a satisfying story
vis-à-vis main character Katherine, but what
happens to her daughter?
There is good
energy in these stories, and they give insight
into experiences that might be new to many
readers.
—
Susan G Cole
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Find love, face
loneliness, and confront death in The Chinese
Knot
“If you plant a
melon seed, you will harvest melons; but if
you plant a thorn, you may have roses, or
you may have only thorns,” Rose’s husband
chides her after years of separation.
This line
from the short story “Rose” evokes the
acidic relations between husbands and wives
during times of migration and upheaval, a
recurring theme in Lien Chao’s new
collection The Chinese Knot.
Based on
real-life accounts by Chinese immigrants
whom Chao has met in Canada, the stories
weave together vignettes of their experience
in present-day Toronto, redrawing these
encounters and building characters who find
love, face loneliness, confront death, and
deal with racism.
The
protagonists are disillusioned females who
have spent years struggling to adjust to a
new home only to see their marriages
dissolve. While Rose’s husband and daughter
distance themselves from her after they
arrive in Canada, Katherine’s husband, in
“African Lion Safari”, walks out on her
despite years of hardship together.
In “A Wanton
Woman”, Yi Mei and Ai Hua’s disappointment
with marriage becomes not only a bonding
experience but the source of a romantic
relationship between the two women.
The final
story in this collection, “The Chinese
Knot”, ties all of the book’s themes
together and is the most memorable piece of
all. Its central character, a teacher and
divorced single mother named Luanne Lu,
faces a slew of moral dilemmas when her ESL
students, out of desperation to stay in
Canada, request one by one that she help
them cheat the Canadian immigration system.
When Mr.
Zhong, her brightest pupil, asks for her
hand in marriage for the sole purpose of
obtaining citizenship, “Teacher Lu”, as she
is affectionately known, comes to an impasse
in which she searches for her own reasons to
be proudly Canadian and yet dutifully
Chinese.
Chao is
already an eminent figure in Asian Canadian
literary circles, particularly for editing
2003’s Strike the Wok. With The Chinese
Knot, she has established herself as an
emerging author in her own right.
—
Allan Cho
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Life as an immigrant is filled with challenges–learning a new language,
living in a different culture, being far away from home. The
Chinese Knot is
a series of short stories by writer Lien Chao, focusing on Chinese
immigrants in Canada. Chao’s own experiences as a Chinese-Canadian in
Toronto is one major influence on these stories, although for the most
part she based the stories on the experiences of the people within her
community.
The Chinese Knot offers
the reader a realistic view of the Chinese immigrant, making it a great
resource as either a study guide or a way to find a sympathetic voice
for anyone who has ever moved their entire life to new surroundings.
Heartfelt and provocative, it opens the way for discussions on
multicultural issues and racial stereotypes.
—
Diane
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This collection of short stories focuses on
single Chinese women living in Canada as immigrants.
In Under the Monkey Bars, Wei
Ming finds alone ina public payground, where she observes the racial
prejudices at work between parents and children. In
Rose, the main character Rose
reflects on what brought her from China to Canada as an immigrant and
the strained relatiosnhip with her family afterwards. In
African Lion Safari, Katherine
reflects on the possibility of spending a lonely life or marrying a
Chinese suitor whose food tastes are from a different region. In
A Wanton Woman, Yi Mei, after
making an impulsive phone call to China discovers her love for "wanton
woman" Ai Hua. In Water and Soil,
Shirley mulls over her relationship to the Chinese and the Canadian
soil. In Neighbours, Sally
observes her neighbourhood in Toronto's multiracial environment. In
The Cactus, Judy recounts her
friendship with Mark and Pierre. In The
Chinese Knot, Teacher Lu is an advisor, refuge, and even a
prospective bride to her various students.
The female protagonists of these stories are all single women who find
themselves in Canada as strangers. They find love, overcome crises, face
loneliness, and confront racial stereotypes as they grow in Canada's
increasingly multiracial scenario.
I rarely read collections of short stories, but I found this book
appealing and interesting. The characters are taken in significative
moments of their lives, in which they must resolve a problem or discover
something new about themselves. Author Lien Chao explores their lives as
they face prejudice, loneliness or life crises.
I would recommend this book to those who want to know more about Chinese
immigrants in Canada, or more in general about the condition of being an
immigrant in Canada.—
Alessandra
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