As I mentioned in a previous review — I've read quite a few books over the past few weeks, but did not get around to writing reviews on any of them. I have a little more time now so I'm trying to "catch up" on those reviews. This, then, is catch up review #2.
One of the books I read during this time period is Amy Tan's The Kitchen God's Wife —originally published in 1991, this is Tan's second novel after The Joy Luck Club (which I also read and will review at a later date). As most readers familiar with Tan probably know, many of her works contain autobiographical elements (to an extent) either from her own life or from her family's background. In this case, the story is based on her mother Daisy's history and while many of the details were changed, the essence of her mother's backstory remained — specifically the depictions of how women were treated in China during that time period (1920s to late 1940s) as well as some of the things she had to endure and survive. At its heart though, this is also a historical novel that chronicles the changes in China from the 1920s (when the vestiges of its feudal past were especially apparent) leading up to WWII and its aftermath (one of the things I appreciate most is that Tan tells this history from the Chinese perspective, rather than from the Western perspective).
Interestingly enough, the story actually starts in the 1980s, in San Francisco, and the first few chapters do feel a little like The Joy Luck Club with its exploration of mother/daughter relationships and the generational as well as cultural gap that causes seemingly insurmountable tensions between them. The mother is Winnie Louie, who is forced to tell her daughter Pearl about her past when her sister-in-law Helen (who believes herself to be dying) wants to "come clean" and confess all the secrets they've been hiding for decades. Winnie tells her story starting in chapter 5 through to the end (with the exception of the very last chapter, which brings everything full circle back to 1980s San Francisco).
To me, this book was more grim and harder to get through than Tan's other works — which, in a way, isn't too surprising given its subject matter. Though there are certainly light-hearted moments (especially in the "modern-day" sections of the story) and the fact that the story starts with Winnie telling her own story 40 years later (so we already know she survives all the hardship from her past) lightens things a little with the message of hope and resilience, but the events that happen in the past leave such an impression that I couldn't help feeling like a dark shadow had been cast and couldn't be lifted. The character of Wen Fu (Winnie's husband in China) was so deplorable and despicable that after some point, I honestly didn't want to read about this god-awful person anymore (though of course I finished all the way through to the end).
Overall, I did like this one and would definitely recommend it (though trigger warnings abound), as Tan's writing is, as usual, wonderful. I've always admired Tan's style of writing — how she is able to synthesize everything she and/or her family experienced and combine it with the skills she learned (she majored in English and Linguistics in school) to manipulate language in a way that conveys cultural nuance and meaning. To this point, The Kitchen God's Wife is especially significant in that, not only does she pull out her entire literary toolkit (I actually did a deep dive analysis of Tan's writing but I won't get into that here), but she also employs meticulous research to weave lesser known historical elements into a story inspired by her mother's background — all of this combined has the effect of paying tribute to her mother and her own culture and background, while at the same time, educating readers on aspects of China's history. Trigger warnings aside, this one is definitely well worth a read.
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