Book Review: The Bridge by Kay Bratt

Title: The Bridge
Author: Kay Bratt
Enjoyment Rating: 5/10
Referral: I'm a fan of Kay Bratt's facebook page (based on her book Silent Tears) and saw that this book was on sale for $.99 or $1.99 or something
Source: Kindle for iPad
Books I've read this year: 5

I feel bad even counting this book as a book since it took me about half an hour to read-- it's definitely more novella than novel, and I wonder if that plays a part in my slightly lower rating. Bratt tells the story of an old woman living in Suzhou, China who frequently finds abandoned children on the "lucky" bridge near her home. One morning, she finds a young blind boy waiting on the bridge, and although she tries to leave him at the orphanage like all of the other children she has found, she finds herself too attached to him to leave him.

When I read Silent Tears, I remember Bratt making the point that she did not want to reveal the name or the location of the orphanage she volunteered in, but reading The Bridge and Chasing China made it seem very likely that the orphanage was somewhere in southern Jiangsu province or in Shanghai. It hit very close to home for me since my daughter is also living in Jiangsu province. Bratt's novels are engaging, dramatic, simple, and very heartfelt. If you'd like to read a fictionalized account of a finder, I think this is the first one I've come across, and Bratt does a nice job getting into the head of that finder. Sometimes I felt like I was being taught or preached to, but overall nice work.

Book Review: Factory Girls by Leslie T. Chang

Title: Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China
Author: Leslie T. Chang
Enjoyment Rating: 9/10
Referral: This book came up in my Audible queue
Source: Audible for iTunes
Books I've read this year: 4

I've read a whole bunch of books about China in the last year. Some have been instructive for what our experience might be like (many of the adoption memoirs, for example), and others have been less relevant (The Man Who Loved China). But Factory Girls is the first book that's given me some insight into what Rose's life might have been like if she'd stayed in China (if she'd stayed with her birth family). Chang originally started her project, following several girls working in the factories in Southern China, while working as a reporter for the Wall Street Journal. She followed two girls over the course of years, from their first jobs on the factory floor, moving up the ranks and switching factories, always angling for a way to get ahead.

As an American of Chinese descent, Chang also took the opportunity to track her own family history in China. At first, these two storylines don't seem related enough to work together, and I listened to the first part of Chang's family history, which was interesting in and of itself, wondering if this was a gratuitous sidetrack, but eventually it felt that Chang's grandfather, who came to America to get trained as a mining engineer and then returned to China and was ultimately murdered by the communists served as both a guide and a counterpoint to the girls who are making it in the shoe and cell phone factories of Guangdong.

While we in America tend to look down on products made in China and on Chinese labor laws, one of the most interesting things that Chang shows is how migrants, especially young, single women, have gained a lot of power through their work experience. Yes, the hours are long and the conditions are inhumane by US standards, but one of the most poignant parts of the book for me was when Min goes home for her first Chinese New Year and she suddenly has enough clout to call the shots around the house. She requests that her parents purchase a hot water heater. She tells her younger sister to do well in school because Min is her support. Rather than receiving money in red envelopes from her elders (a Chinese New Year tradition) in recent years it's become customary for the young migrant girls to give money envelopes to their elders. It's interesting that hundreds of years of tradition is being completely turned around by the migrant economy. While the book didn't address adoption directly, it did show me a lot about what modern China is like, and showed a much more nuanced portrait of Chinese factories than I'd come to expect.

Test

I'm testing out blog press before I go gallivanting off to China without a laptop. Does this work?

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Location:E 3175 S,Salt Lake City,United States

Location:Salt Lake City,United States

Book Review: The Year of the Boar by Anneke Majors

Title: The Year of the Boar
Author: Anneke Majors
Enjoyment Rating: 6/10
Referral: I saw that there will be a review in the upcoming issue of Irreantum and decided to read it
Source: Kindle for iPad
Books I've read this year: 3

I was so excited to read The Year of the Boar because it combines my love of "serious" LDS literature with a bunch of stories about Chinese people. We always talk about how we're a world church, but so many of our stories take place in the mountain west, and I loved the idea that there was a book that didn't just take the story out of Utah, but it took much of it out of the United States. I was also intrigued when I heard that the book worked as sort of a fiction/nonfiction hybrid, because I'm really interested in genre-blending.

Majors has set an ambitious goal for herself in juggling the elements of story and a setting all over the world (there are scenes in Texas, Montana, China, Japan, France, and Africa, and I don't think that list is complete). I think her writing is clear and concise throughout, but I ultimately found the stories very hard to follow. If I'd read them as individual vignettes, I think my expectations would have been different, but I was expecting the stories to tie together, to be more novelistic, and I think there's enough evidence that there is supposed to be some kind of cohesive message from the piece as a whole, but it was hard for me to glean what it was. As a very well-written series of family stories, I think the piece succeeds (although I'm not sure the final chapter works, much as I would like to see Majors's vision come to fruition), but as a novel with appeal beyond a small audience, I think the connections between the sections need to be a little clearer. Even a list of characters on the opening pages would have helped me immensely.

I hope this isn't seen as a negative review, because I really, really applaud Majors for choosing to tackle a Mormon history that isn't a Utah history. I love the places that this book points in our shared future as Mormon writers, and for that reason I think it's an important book.

Book Review: Maui Revealed by Andrew Doughty

Title: Maui Revealed: The Ultimate Guidebook
Author: Andrew Doughty
Usefulness Rating: 9/10
Referral: I can't remember
Source: Ordered from Amazon
Books I've read this year: 2

I recognize that reviewing a guidebook may be pushing the limits of what constitutes "books I've read" but I'm counting it anyway, since I read basically everything. I found the book very helpful in finding a snorkeling trip and in where to stop and what to do on the drive from the airport to Ka'anapali (we took the north lobe drive, which is rarely traveled, one lane, and pretty crazy). I was also gratified to see that the hotel I'd already booked was labeled "a real gem" (and it was one). The restaurant stuff was less helpful, mostly because I was traveling with four kids and we didn't eat out much. I think that if you had a long time to spend in Maui, this book would be even more insightful and helpful. I appreciate the authors' "cut the crap" approach.

Book Review: The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee

Title: The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer
Author: Siddhartha Mukherjee
Enjoyment Rating: 7/10
Referral: This was considered one of the best nonfiction books of 2011
Source: I bought it for Eddie for his birthday and he finally finished it
Books I've read this year: 1

This book has been sitting on my bedside table or Eddie's bedside table, for the last nine months. I gave it to him for his birthday and expected both of us to read it. Reviewers were showering it with praise and I figured that since I'm a reading omnivore and he's a doctor, it's exactly the kind of book we would both really love.

But it sat and sat and sat on our bedside tables, and neither of us picked it up. It doesn't have a sexy cover, it's true, and the subject matter is inherently kind of depressing, but it wasn't the C-word that kept me from reading, it was the fact that the book is 608 pages and the book feels more like a doorstop than like something you want to curl up in bed with. Also, I knew that the book would take me a couple of weeks to read, and one of the downsides of keeping track of how many books I read is that I sometimes shy away from reading awesome books that might require more time and investment because I want to keep my numbers high. Shallow, much?

Then Eddie decided to read the book over the holidays and when he finished, several weeks later he told me that he didn't think I could get through it. I do like a challenge so I decided to start off 2012 by finally tackling The Emperor of All Maladies.

The book chronicles some of the historical highlights in the fight against cancer, as well as some of the more interesting personalities who played pivotal roles. Mukherjee, who began writing the book while he was an oncology fellow at one of the Harvard hospitals, is a fantastic writer who intersperses his own experiences with a roughly chronological account of the history of the disease. The stories he chooses to highlight really are interesting, and the medical terminology is accessible to a layperson. My enjoyment rating reflects the fact that since the story was more about disease, treatment and lab experiments, it's inherently less interesting than a story about people. But Mukherjee did an admirable job making the story less about history than about the significant players, challenges, and successes.

A letter to Rose-- January 24

Dear Rose,

It's Chinese New Year. Your first. My 38th, but also my first. Last year at this time, we'd just started thinking about adoption, and we switched countries on a weekly basis (China? No, Korea. No, Ethiopia. Just kidding-- back to China). Chinese New Year must have passed when we were in an Ethiopia phase, because we certainly didn't celebrate. This year, whenever I thought about Chinese New Year, I only thought about the delays-- we'd have to wait an extra week for our Article 5 pickup because everyone over in your part of the world would be celebrating instead of working.

And then your brothers and sisters realized that Chinese New Year was just around the corner and they decided we needed to have a party. They've been reading all about the holiday in their bedtime stories and wondered if we had enough people in the family to wear a lion dance costume. I needed something to take my mind off the fact that we could be in line for our travel approval already if not for all the holidays, so it didn't take much convincing. You also had a party at your orphanage. We saw pictures of all of the bigger kids with cakes and piles of candy. You and your besties must have been napping because you weren't in any of the pictures, but next year we're going to go crazy snapping pictures of you in a shiny red Chinese dress.

On Saturday, I showed Annie a picture of a dragon cake and she got all excited. One thing you need to know about the women in this family is that we're extremely determined and goal-oriented. Annie decided she was going to make that cake, and there was no stopping her. She baked both cakes, made the frosting, and decorated the whole thing. Now that she's got it down, I suppose she'll let you help.


And then, yesterday, the power went out and threatened to darken our party. It was dark all afternoon and when the sun went down, your mom and siblings sat in the cold, dark house and thought we might all have to sleep in the same bed. And then, just when our stomachs started growling for some food, the power came back on. Within minutes, Daddy came home bearing dumplings, wonton soup, beef with broccoli, sesame chicken and kung pao chicken. We ate with chopsticks and laughed over our terrible skills. For some reason I just can't figure it out. Everyone says to hold the bottom chopstick just like a pen, but I hold my pen weird, so that doesn't help. I'm going to need to bring those baby chopstick helpers with me to China. We figured out what Chinese year we're born in (tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, monkey, dog, rabbit) and got ready to cut into the cake when the doorbell rang, and it was my friend Emily, recently returned from Taiwan, bearing Chinese New Year decorations.

So here I sit, eating leftover dragon cake among the red and gold banners. I hope I hung them right side up. I realized how pitifully underprepared I am to be your teacher about Chinese culture, but I hope you don't mind too much. We'll do our best, and from now on, we'll always celebrate Chinese New Year.

Love,

Mommy

A Letter to Rose-- January 17

Dear Rose,

I'm writing this letter sitting on the lanai of our hotel in Ka'anapali Beach, looking out at the Pacific Ocean. It's lovely. We planned this trip way back before we knew you were YOU, and we've been having a great time. On Saturday we drove around the island, on Monday we went out for a fancy seafood dinner, yesterday we woke up at 3am and stood in the driving, freezing rain as we waited in vain for the sun to wow us, and today we went on a snorkeling and whale watching trip. When we haven't been climbing mountains and hitting the waves, we've been lying around, eating lots of chips and gelato, and lazing around the pool. Sounds like heaven, unless you're nine months old.

This trip may have started out as just another family vacation, but it's turned into a valediction to this stage of our lives. We're traveling without a stroller, snacks or sippy cups. Everyone carried her own bag and I enjoyed a six hour flight with no one sitting on my lap. It's also been a dry run for China-- we used the same bags we plan to use in china, and traveled without a computer to see if we could get by. I haven't figured out how to post pictures on my blog from the phone, which will be absolutely essential for our next trip, but I think we're getting more and more ready.

But you managed to assert your presence on this baby moon. As we were speeding across the water this morning, I pulled out my phone and saw that Elizabeth at WACAP had called. Pretty soon I had an email with an update, including four new totally adorable pictures. So instead of focusing on the fishes, I looked at your beautiful face about a million times I can hardly believe how lucky I am to be your Mom, even of it means no more vacations in paradise-- at least for a while.

Love,
Mommy

You know that little sprinting stretch we've been in?

It just came to a crawl. Our I800 approval and NVC cable happened just about as quickly as possible (thanks USCIS!), but now I just got in the line behind an 85-year-old lady with a full cart who needs a price check on cat food, uses a hundred coupons, and then pays with a check, at least figuratively speaking. You see, the embassy in Guangzhou takes both the Chinese and American holidays. All of them. I knew my paperwork would sit on someone's desk through Chinese New Year. I thought that the embassy would be closed Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, which is what the website says, which would delay my pickup by three days (four, if you count the fact that it couldn't be dropped off until today because they don't accept Monday dropoffs). But I found out tonight that they're actually closed the WHOLE week and they're closed for Martin Luther King day too, so our pickup will be delayed not by the three days we were thinking, but by EIGHT days.

So it looks like travel the first week of March is out. The second week is better for Eddie, but man, I want that baby ASAP. If we'd traveled that first week, we could have had her at ten months instead of eleven. We'll take her at eleven months, but every day counts here.

A letter to Rose-- January 10th

Dear Rose,

This having a baby thing is going to be a big change for all of us, including you. It was a huge change when your biggest brother, Bryce, was born. I was in graduate school and working, and Daddy was in medical school, and we were completely, totally clueless when it came to being parents. But we worked hard at it. Bryce was our "trial by fire" baby. He wanted to be held all the time, cried whenever we went in the car, had to be nursed with the water running, and once he started walking, he was running-- off like a shot with so much energy that I couldn't keep up with him.

Of course, part of the reason why I couldn't keep up with him was that I was already pregnant with Annie. I knew two things-- I wanted a big family, and I needed to get started on that big family before Bryce was old enough to scare me off of it. So we had Annie three months before Bryce turned two. Then Isaac was born two years later, and Maren two years after that. We always had one in diapers when the next baby was born, and when Maren finally potty trained, I had a party. Not a real party, but I was partying on the inside-- I'd gone through a whole decade of non-stop diapering.

Over the last few years, we've slowly adjusted to not having a baby around the house. I got rid of all of our baby gear. We started going on actual dates-- even with the kids awake. We can do things like take the whole family out to dinner or go skiing together or even go on family vacations without a stroller.

And then, at just about this time last year, I got this wonderful, crazy, undeniable feeling that wouldn't go away. We needed you. Over the last year we bought all the baby gear (again), baby proofed the house (again), and planned one final last hurrah babymoon for the family (more on that next week). But even as we've been getting the house ready physically, I've worried that we wouldn't be up to the challenge mentally or emotionally. It's a big job to have a baby, and I'm 12 years older now than I was when your brother was born. Are we ready to stay up at night and change diapers and deal with temper tantrums? And those are just the normal, everyday sorts of things everyone goes through-- are we ready to help you through your surgeries and your speech therapy and make sure you're firmly connected to our family? Of course, we believe we are, but I do feel a little tingle of nervousness from time to time.

At Christmas, your Aunt Jilly and Uncle Carl brought baby Sammy to spend his first Christmas with us. The kids were all so excited-- for the first day they swarmed him and got in his face and made him cry. And then, something happened. It clicked-- they remembered how to treat a baby. And it warmed my heart to see them with him, because I could see them falling in love with him, and I know that they'll fall in love with you just as quickly.

So maybe I shouldn't worry. I hope that this mothering thing is just like riding a bike and I won't be too tired and worn out for another ride around the block. And if I falter, your brothers and sisters will show me how it's done. 

Love, 

Mommy

P.S. We've done the math and it looks like the latest we'll be leaving for China is sixty days from now. We could have you in our arms in two months. Maybe less if the paperwork fairies grace us with quick approvals from here on out. I actually just mistyped "from" as "form." I haven't had to pee in a cup to get you here (well, just once), but I have had to fill out a whole lot of forms!