work in progress
it's been a strange and tumultuous two weeks...I feel very...unrooted.
my schedule has been a bit funked up (a new term i've invented!), and again, I had penned in too much for me to handle...even when those things are supposed to be "fun". :)
perhaps that's why I haven't been writing! hahaha...but I'm excited to tell the world about what I'm working on right now...so tell the world, I will! (Or, you know...the 10 people who read this blog...)
last week, I was telling my producer/host/mentor extraordinaire about my childhood frustrations with amy tan's "the joy luck club". I suppose I went into it expecting to relate to the characters...after all, I thought - this was MY story, in a sense...being a Chinese North American immigrant.
But alas, I hated it. It felt so fake and overdramatic...I thought: these are not my stories, my parents' stories, or my grandparents' stories...
From then on, I would look at every novel about Chinese immigrants in North America with a particularly critical eye...and I have yet to find something that relates to me. The closest I've come is Ruth Ozeki's My Year of Meats...and her portrayal of Jane as a "hybrid" of sorts...not quite Japanese, but not quite American either. A bit of a mess.
This whole discussion sparked an idea for radio...I'm going to try and put together a panel of authors who write about Asian immigrants in Canada/U.S, and talk about how they go about conceptualizing cultural identity in their books. During the creative process, are there fears of just fostering stereotypes? How do you go about determining how your characters speak and act in this very specific context?
Needless to say, I'm excited. And for those of you who loved "The Joy Luck Club", feel free to express your anger towards me in the comments section. :)
posted by vespertine @ 4:57 PM
6 comments
6 Comments:
i always pictured melissa ng playing the main role in the joy luck club.
i only read the book for reading points.
i didn't love it. i liked the part about mother-daughter relations, but not so much the portrayal of chinese-american immigrants. perhaps it's the time-lapse between then and now. this will be interesting. good job ellie :)
I liked the Joy Luck Club, but not necessarily because I related to all of the stories....I think it's really because most of the stories involved China, and most of my relatives are from HK. But, it did make me think - what hardships did my grandparents go through that they never told me about?
hey anonymous...care to let me know who you are? ;) (I think I know...but pls confirm!)
I, too, thought that Joy Luck Club was a little too dramatic, but my own mom didn't live in the same era as the movie moms lived in; however, my dad and grandmother had interesting "When I was your age..." type stories from back in the 1920's to 1970's.
Try reading Banana Boys -- I've heard that it's a pretty realistic description of the Cdn/Chinese fusion.
i enjoyed The Joy Luck Club mainly because back when i was in high school it was one of the few books of its kind, one that i could relate to partially (i went to a high school where i was one of 3 asians in my grad class of nearly 200). the movie made me cry every time there was a mother-daughter scene....yes, i cried through almost the entire movie. it's kind of depressing but i have a weird attraction to tear-jerking books/movies.
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