|
|
Read the reviews...
Return to main book page...
|
|
|
|
|
Salon.com – February 8, 2007 -- Long way home --
San Francisco-born William Poy Lee went through college, law
school and a high-powered job before he discovered the wealth of his
Toisan heritage. -- By Meredith Maran -- It's a poignant story, many
times told. Immigrant family arrives in America, begins lifelong tug
of war between assimilation and cultural identity, struggles to find
a foothold on the economic ladder, establishes a flow of
information, cash and visa sponsorships (and/or arranged marriages)
between those left behind in the old country and those busily
becoming citizens of the new. Kids come home from school speaking
English; parents answer in Spanish or Farsi or Cantonese. Parents
eat menudo or lavash or jook for breakfast; kids slurp milk pinkened
by Fruity Pebbles. Kids grow taller and more cynical than their
parents, refuse to attend church or mosque or temple, leave home,
marry or intermarry...
|
San Francisco Chronicle -- Sunday, February 4,
2007 -- The mother becomes American -- the son, Chinese --
Reviewed by Marianne Villanueva -- The Eighth Promise by William Poy
Lee, RODALE; 315 PAGES; $23.95 -- This rich, double-stranded memoir
follows a familiar narrative arc: a family comes to America from
(fill in the blank). Family members encounter myriad adversities.
These, however, only serve to test the family's resolve. In the end,
the immigrants triumph, and readers may rest assured America has
worked its wondrous assimilating magic yet again. Whatever our level
of familiarity with the main ingredients of this story, it
nevertheless continues to exert a powerful allure. After reading
William Poy Lee's "The Eighth Promise," we are reminded why: Each
family has its own emotional landscapes, its own idiosyncrasies and
neuroses. In the end, it is observing the way particular families
respond to stress that makes such narratives so compelling. Lee has
chosen to tell not one, but two immigrant stories, told in
alternating chapters: There is Lee's own story...
|
Publishers Weekly Starred Review -- November 20,
2006 -- The Eighth Promise: An American Son’s Tribute to His
Toisanese China-Born Mother -- WILLIAM POY LEE. Rodale, $23.95
(336p) ISBN 978-1-59486-456-8 -- While many immigrants are focused
on assimilation, Lee’s mother, Poy Jen Lee, came to America with a
different agenda. In 1948, Poy Jen agreed to leave Suey Wan, her
Toisan village in the Pearl River delta of China, to come to America
as the wife of a Toisanese-American man. Before leaving, she made
eight promises to her mother, among them that she’d find good
husbands for her sisters and arrange immigration papers for her
mother and brother; teach her children Chinese and Toisan customs,
so they’d know their heritage; keep clan sisterhood strong; and cook
traditional medicinal soups. The eighth promise bound Poy Jen to the
fundamental Toisan ethos, “to live her life in complete compassion”
for all people—her family, her Chun clan sisterhood and her larger
community. In this remarkable memoir, mother and son, in alternating
chapters, tell the story of their life in San Francisco’s Chinatown
from the 1950s to the present. Between American racism and power
struggles in the Chinese...
|
| |
|
