I just loved this book; I didn't really have time to read it but I made time.
I have so much to say about this book although my thoughts are disparate and disjointed.
Anchee Min owned a four-flat in Bridgeport with her husband. Her tales of fixing up her building are really scary and inspiring. And, yes, if you're angry at your spouse but you want to feel better about him/her by reading about someone else who's worse off, then yes, this is the book for you. Her husband is now a faculty member at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (where they met), but she found fault with the way that he handled managing their apartment building and the way he parented their child.
(It's an interesting commentary on the immigrant experience; Anchee could not get a job because her English wasn't good enough and she had to remain a student in order to keep her visa. This is why she and her husband wanted to own real estate; they hoped it would be a source of income. (Their experience was that maintaining the building ate up all the rent income.)
As much as I have always wanted to read a "real estate memoir," the last few chapters of the book are the ones that I like best.
The significance of the title is that cooked seed is what her colleagues at the film company she worked for before she left China used to call her. Her parents were teachers and victims of the Cultural Revolution; at the age of 17 she was given a job as an actor in a film company run by Madame Mao.
When Mao died and Madame Mao was denounced, Min was tainted by the association and her colleagues jeered her by calling her "cooked seed" which meant washed up, finished, "stick a fork in her, she's done". After working very hard to keep her job for several years, she finally decided that she had to leave China.
Toward the end of the book, she gives her daughter a lecture about "gaming the system." Of course, she herself gamed the system: she lied about being able to speak English when she applied for her visa from the American consulate (another story that I love: a Chinese worker there, with haughty disdain, informs her that she got lucky: the consular official who interviewed her realized that she could not speak English but greatly admired her pluck and said "yes"). She goes on to struggle to explain the real cost of poverty, the poverty of spirit that envelops those trapped in it.
The real appeal of this memoir is Min's "grit." I thought that she was just as determined as the heroine of "True Grit" and thought that that might make a very nice alternative title to this book. I was so impressed by her strength. Interestingly, I don't think she saw herself as strong but as desperate. And, she's very candid about her doubts and about how they affected her relationship with her mother.
In fact, I'm not sure I fully understand everything that she has to say about her relationship with her mother, but I felt that she felt hurt that she could not be honest about her struggles in America because it was important to her mother that she be a "success." At the same time, I think that she judged her parents for how they struggled when she was a child and, of course, I think anyone confronting the harsh conditions of the Cultural Revolution was lucky to survive but probably wouldn't feel lucky. And one of the delights of the book is her gift to her mother of a toilet.
One of the other delights of the book is her account of how she met her husband. I won't spoil it for you by telling you the story, but I found it not just affecting, but expertly told. Min writes that she had struggled as a writer in English, not just to master the mechanics but to create prose that flowed as the best prose does. I congratulate her; while her prose is spare it is excellent and serves her narrative well.
Min writes that her daughter prompted her to write this memoir, saying that it would inspire women in a similar situation. She closes the book with a quotation from Jane Eyre:
I have so much to say about this book although my thoughts are disparate and disjointed.
Anchee Min owned a four-flat in Bridgeport with her husband. Her tales of fixing up her building are really scary and inspiring. And, yes, if you're angry at your spouse but you want to feel better about him/her by reading about someone else who's worse off, then yes, this is the book for you. Her husband is now a faculty member at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (where they met), but she found fault with the way that he handled managing their apartment building and the way he parented their child.
(It's an interesting commentary on the immigrant experience; Anchee could not get a job because her English wasn't good enough and she had to remain a student in order to keep her visa. This is why she and her husband wanted to own real estate; they hoped it would be a source of income. (Their experience was that maintaining the building ate up all the rent income.)
As much as I have always wanted to read a "real estate memoir," the last few chapters of the book are the ones that I like best.
The significance of the title is that cooked seed is what her colleagues at the film company she worked for before she left China used to call her. Her parents were teachers and victims of the Cultural Revolution; at the age of 17 she was given a job as an actor in a film company run by Madame Mao.
When Mao died and Madame Mao was denounced, Min was tainted by the association and her colleagues jeered her by calling her "cooked seed" which meant washed up, finished, "stick a fork in her, she's done". After working very hard to keep her job for several years, she finally decided that she had to leave China.
Toward the end of the book, she gives her daughter a lecture about "gaming the system." Of course, she herself gamed the system: she lied about being able to speak English when she applied for her visa from the American consulate (another story that I love: a Chinese worker there, with haughty disdain, informs her that she got lucky: the consular official who interviewed her realized that she could not speak English but greatly admired her pluck and said "yes"). She goes on to struggle to explain the real cost of poverty, the poverty of spirit that envelops those trapped in it.
The real appeal of this memoir is Min's "grit." I thought that she was just as determined as the heroine of "True Grit" and thought that that might make a very nice alternative title to this book. I was so impressed by her strength. Interestingly, I don't think she saw herself as strong but as desperate. And, she's very candid about her doubts and about how they affected her relationship with her mother.
In fact, I'm not sure I fully understand everything that she has to say about her relationship with her mother, but I felt that she felt hurt that she could not be honest about her struggles in America because it was important to her mother that she be a "success." At the same time, I think that she judged her parents for how they struggled when she was a child and, of course, I think anyone confronting the harsh conditions of the Cultural Revolution was lucky to survive but probably wouldn't feel lucky. And one of the delights of the book is her gift to her mother of a toilet.
One of the other delights of the book is her account of how she met her husband. I won't spoil it for you by telling you the story, but I found it not just affecting, but expertly told. Min writes that she had struggled as a writer in English, not just to master the mechanics but to create prose that flowed as the best prose does. I congratulate her; while her prose is spare it is excellent and serves her narrative well.
Min writes that her daughter prompted her to write this memoir, saying that it would inspire women in a similar situation. She closes the book with a quotation from Jane Eyre:
