Snow Flower and the Secret Fan

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan (2006) a novel by Lisa See is an underwhelming tale of life in nineteenth century China. Its main character Lily fails to arouse our interest in her life. She is portrayed as a shallow woman, who despite her claim that she longs to be loved ruins her one promising female relationship. Lily, who later becomes the powerful Mrs. Lu, is an ugly person who never really deserves her loutang, or best friend.  She is spiteful, insensitive and abusive. In fact, the women in this novel with the exception of one servant loyal to Lily are despicable, constantly backstabbing and looking out only for themselves. Snow Flower, the one promising character in the novel, is at first portrayed as a fun, loving, beautiful and inquisitive girl.  She supposedly awakens a lust for life in Lily that never goes beyond talk. Snow Flower, used to highlight Lily’s social success, becomes a pathetic woman more interested in having many sons than with life “in the outer realm”. I kept hoping she would join the Taipings and become a revolutionary, and yet she dies after a miserable existence married to an abusive man who belongs, lo and behold to the butcher caste. Being a butcher is somehow seen as one of the more disgusting low-level jobs in a rather non-convincing caste system. (Maybe that was the way it really happened but Lee’s narrative and justification lacked credibility.) Is Lee a vegetarian?

The novel begins with the promise of an exciting tale of secret writings between women.  However, the writings—although the men either ignore the practice or despise it-- are not really secret and there is no true secret within the things they write, in this novel at least, that must be revealed at the end.  The fan, that contains the secret nu shu writing the sworn sisters share, is full of platitudes and romantic dribble from two seven year old girls who think it’s cool to have a pen pal.  As one critic I read said, this novel would have been better off as a book of non-fiction recreating the tradition of the foot binding—a barbaric Chinese tradition that I am sure had its detractors even in nineteenth century China.  As a matter of fact, the Taipings, that the novel calls on for some historical drama were vehemently opposed to the ritual, but See fails to mention any kind of rebellion (except for the children’s fear of pain) over this practice that made women practically useless for anything but sitting in the women’s chamber, sheltered from the real world. I wonder if it had anything to do with a distorted sense of solidarity with Chinese history??

Lisa See is no Amy Tan (The Joy Luck Club ***) or Anchee Min (Katherine***). Not a novel I would recommend; not even the history behind it makes it compelling.  If you are interested in footbinding, nu shu, or the practice of loutang, better to read the Wikipedia entry. Although I pride myself in not reading anything that does not carry me all the way through, (too many books to read, too little time), I felt obliged to finish this novel because a friend I respect recommended it.  

Otra lista

Aquí incluyo la lista del colega y amigo JJ. En ella el colega aclara que no ha incluido "las relecturas de libros por diversos motivos: preparar mis cursos, obsesiones, etc."

La novelabingo, Manuel Ramos Otero. Esta es una novela de 1976.  En esa época se vendió tan rápido que no alcancé a conseguirla.  Ahora se acaba de publicar una segunda edición.  Es un texto fuera de lo común por el tratamiento del lenguaje, la ironía, la parodia.  A veces se torna desesperante, pero cuando damos con la intención nos encontramos ante un texto único. 

Esa antigua tristeza, José Borges.  Novela que trata un tema poco común en la narrativa puertorriqueña.  Un hombre que procede de la época de Jesucristo y ha alcanzado la vida eterna. Le precede el personaje de Perpetuo en Póstumo el transmigrado de Alejandro Tapia y Rivera. A propósito de este tema, otra novela que trata temas en que se transgrede las leyes del tiempo es El envés de la frontera de Margarita Maldonado Colón.

La música de las esferas, Reinaldo Marcos Padua.  Novela de aprendizaje de un adolescente puertorriqueño.  La encuentro útil para motivar a los estudiantes a leer.

Gabriela Mistral en Puerto Rico, edición de Luis de Arrigoitía.  Textos en prosa y verso de esta escritora.  Lo compré con la intención de ampliar mi investigación sobre literatura infantil puertorriqueña.

Desde Lares, Carlos Gallisá.  Libro sobre aspectos poco conocidos de la historia de Puerto Rico. Muy interesante para iniciarse en el conocimiento sobre este tema.

La represión contra el independentismo puertorriqueño: 1960-2010, Che Paralitici.  Aun los que hemos seguido de cerca este tema por los pasados 40 años nos sorprendemos por las revelaciones de este estudio.  Es lectura obligatoria para quienes desconozcan este parte de nuestra historia.

“We the People”. La representación americana de los puertorriqueños, 1898-1926, Rodríguez y Cancel, editores.  Aspectos históricos sobre el periodo del título. Interesante para los que amamos la historia.

Fiel fugada. Antología poética de Luis Palés Matos, edición de Noel Luna. Una de las mejores antologías de este poeta por la organización de los poemas.

María Félix. 47 pasos por el cine, Paco Ignacio Taibo.  Estudio sobre cada una de las películas protagonizadas por esta actriz mexicana.

¿Quién mató a Pinto Gandía?, Carlos Quiles. Estudio investigativo sobre la desaparición del nacionalista puertorriqueño Julio Pinto Gandía. El lector llega a sus propias conclusiones.

El cuerpo de la patria: intelectuales, imaginación, geografía y paisaje, Carlos Altagracia.  Interesante estudio para adentrarse en el actual conflicto dominico-haitiano.  Otra investigación de tema complementario es el de Myrna Herrera: Mujeres dominicanas 1930-1961 antitrujillistas y exiladas en Puerto Rico.

Mi tecato favorito, Rima Brusi- Gil de Lamadrid.  Son una recopilación de “crónicas sobre la realidad puertorriqueña” como las llama la autora desde un punto de vista antropológico.

Palabras perdidas/Lost words

I really liked this post by David Sirota for NationofChange. It is to some extent related with my entry on Orwell.

Commemorating our soon to be lost vernacular

By far, the lazi­est, most vapid ar­ti­cles an­nu­ally pub­lished dur­ing this post-hol­i­day sea­son are lists of the past year's top 10 words and apho­risms. Ad­mit­tedly, the sloth of such an en­deavor tempts me. But as a new dad ob­sessed with my 1-year-old son's fu­ture, I think I've got a more wor­thy list to add to the pile — one of cur­rent words and phrases that my kid may never know be­cause they might end up as relics of a lost ver­nac­u­lar.

Here are those har­row­ing 10. I hope I'm wrong but fear I'm not.

10. "Civil lib­er­ties" My son will surely read the U.S. Con­sti­tu­tion in civics class, and he'll see stuff about rights to jury tri­als, due process and pro­tec­tion from un­rea­son­able searches. But these free­doms have been ex­tin­guished by pres­i­dents suc­ces­sively claim­ing pow­ers of in­def­i­nite de­ten­tion, war­rant­less sur­veil­lance and as­sas­si­na­tion of Amer­i­can cit­i­zens with­out charge. As­sum­ing there's still an ACLU that sends me mail and as­sum­ing my son sees the mail, he might ask, "What are civil lib­er­ties, Dad?" My re­sponse: "Good ques­tion."

9. "Pub­lic school" With for-profit forces suc­cess­fully push­ing to pri­va­tize pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion, I pray there's a de­cent pub­lic school left for my son to at­tend -- at least then there's a chance he'll know what one is.

8. "Bud­get sur­plus" This term will be in the Bill Clin­ton foot­note of my son's his­tory text­book. But with our re­fusal to cut bloated de­fense bud­gets, em­brace sin­gle-payer health care and pre­serve Clin­ton's tax rates, he'll prob­a­bly have no idea what the term means.

7. "Potable water" No doubt in the shadow of ubiq­ui­tous oil and gas rigs, I'll tell my son of the hal­cyon days when drink­able H2O was widely avail­able. I'll also tell him that when he was a tod­dler, law­mak­ers ig­nored warn­ings that oil and gas drilling threat­ened to con­t­a­m­i­nate ground­wa­ter. Granted, I'll sound like the Lorax. Un­for­tu­nately, my story won't be a Dr.Seuss tale — it will be real. 

6. "Union" Even as states limit col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing rights and cor­po­ra­tions bust or­ga­niz­ing dri­ves, my son will some­how still know this word. The prob­lem is that he'll in­sist it's a Civil War-era syn­onym for "north" — and that's all.

5. "Peace" The Afghanistan War presses on un­abated. Mean­while, Wired mag­a­zine notes that a per­ma­nent pres­ence of pri­vate se­cu­rity con­trac­tors means our "mil­i­tary ef­forts in Iraq aren't com­ing to an end," and covert op­er­a­tions con­tinue in Pak­istan, Yemen and So­ma­lia. My son might en­counter "peace" when he reads Or­well and sees the phrase "War is peace," but he'll prob­a­bly take that phrase lit­er­ally in what the Pen­ta­gon now deems "the era of per­sis­tent con­flict."

4. "Democ­racy" "How can a pres­i­den­tial can­di­date win with­out the most votes?" my son will ask as he ap­proaches vot­ing age. "How can 40 Sen­a­tors fil­i­buster every­thing? Why are cor­po­ra­tions al­lowed to buy politi­cians? What's 'democ­racy,' dad?" Dead si­lence will fol­low.

3. "We're all in this to­gether." I'll try to teach my boy the val­ues in­her­ent in that slo­gan of sol­i­dar­ity. But in this Gilded Age of avarice, I fear I'll hear in re­turn that Amer­i­can motto: "Greed is good, daddy."

2. "News­pa­pers" Uni­ver­sity of South­ern Cal­i­for­nia re­searchers pre­dict that within five years, "only four major daily news­pa­pers will con­tinue in print." Trag­i­cally, that sug­gests that when I ex­plain my ca­reer and I show my kid a news­pa­per, I'll be point­ing at a mu­seum's glass case.

1. "Jour­nal­ism" At that mu­seum, if I found the very news­pa­per in which you're read­ing this col­umn, I'd show my son the sur­round­ing ar­ti­cles re­port­ing on real is­sues in local com­mu­ni­ties. I'll tell him that he's look­ing at the lost art of jour­nal­ism — and I can only hope he doesn't re­spond by ask­ing me if it was "fair and bal­anced."

Copy­right Creators.​com 

Published on January 8, 2012

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