Tuesday, Apr 7, 2009

Book Review: Shanghai Girls

Author:        Lisa See

Publisher:     Random House

Website:      www.lisasee.com

ISBN:           978-1400067114

Pages:         336 Hardback

Type:          Fiction: Historical

Purchase:    $16.50 Amazon.com (HERE)

Publish Date:    May 26, 2009  

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

The Storyline:

Two sisters, Pearl and May, are the beauties of Shanghai.  Born to what they believed was a life of privilege, they loved their life in Shanghai and modeled as “Beautiful Girls” for local artists.  They enjoyed the nightlife, the culture and their family.  All of this is taken from them when the Japanese invade China and Shanghai is brought to its knees.  Simultaneous to this disaster, the girls discover that their father has gambled away all of the family wealth which came from a once-thriving rickshaw business.  The only means to pay the debt and save everybody’s well-being was for the girls to participate in arranged marriages to two sons of a wealthy Chinese Man from San Francisco.  The arranged marriages were to include Pearl and May’s passage to Los Angeles via San Francisco shortly after their wedding ceremonies to join their husbands in America.  To appease their parents, the girls participate in the ceremonies, however have no intent to get on the boat to America. 

With disaster looming around them and debt overcoming their family, the gangsters come to collect on their father’s debt.  They are aware that the girls missed their boat to San Francisco.  Again, the father makes a deal and the girls have promised to exchange their previous tickets to San Francisco for new ones and go to the United States right away.  In this deal, their father still loses the family home.  With no alternatives, poverty and surrounding war, this was the most sound decision.  The girls had no other choice but to travel to avoid even worse consequences that they faced if they didn’t follow through with the deal.

After a dangerous and disastrous escape, the girls land at Angel Island in San Francisco,  It is there that they are held by immigration and forced to prove their legitimacy to live with their husbands in the United States.  After many months, the girls are permitted passage to Los Angeles to meet up with their new American family.

The remainder of the book details the lives of Pearl and May and all that they encounter in their lives as now American-Chinese women.

The Review:

I am a huge LISA SEE FAN!  I loved Snow Flower and The Secret Fan and Peony in Love.  I didn’t know what to expect when I started reading this book and I avoided the back-cover synopsis to keep my mind completely open to the words that my eyes would encounter.  I’m glad that I did!  This story was MUCH DIFFERENT than the prior two.  It had a totally different feel with equally impressive story lines!  It was a more modern book and held me just as spellbound as See’s other works.

One of the things that I love the most about Lisa See’s books is that I learn something about history in the midst of reading an incredible story.  Once again, I learned more about Chinese History as well as World History.  I felt like I was experiencing, first hand, life in America through the eyes of immigrants whose choices were stripped of them. 

The reader gets  detailed insight into the early years of Chinatown and China City in Los Angeles in the pre and post WWII era.  Truthfully, it makes me want to take the kids to Chinatown this week and visit just to get a greater feel of what it’s like.   Some other interesting components of the book included Hollywood’s history of great epic war films which included the Chinese-Americans as extras. 

Overall, for me this book is about tough choices that people have to make to survive.  For Pearl and May, their choices were limited and like us women today, they wanted nothing more but to live a life for the betterment of the children. 

I remembered such phrases as “Chink” and “Fresh off the Boat” from my early childhood and feel a sense of remorse that I didn’t know how degrading those terms were to those who bore them.  In Shanghai Girls, I learned that many of the immigrants had limited choices but to immigrate otherwise face horrendous conditions or certain death.  How difficult these peoples’ lives must have been in a foreign country, with no rights, no money, and an unknown future.  It’s heartbreaking on so many levels.

Here are some pictures I wanted to include that derive from my interest in the book:

Building of Old Shanghai

Shanghai

Beautiful Shanghai Girls

Chinese Zodiac: I’m The Rooster & The Twins are The Ox

Shanghai Calendar Girls

Rickshaw

Book on China City

Chinatown, Los Angeles 1925

On Sher’s “Out of 10 Scale:”

Like all of the other Lisa See books that I’ve read, I loved this book.  What I most enjoyed is that it was a different twist on the historical fiction, yet kept the “Lisa See Flavor” to it.  I like how much more I know about China from reading her books.  In fact, Cole and I are building The Great Wall of China for a Social Studies assignment!  I like the way that I feel when I’m reading her books and when I’m finished with them.  For one of my favorite authors, I rate this book, genre: Fiction:Historical, a 9 out of 10!

15 Comments