• .

  • *** This comment contains spoilers! ***
  • 

  • As a Chinese-American, I'm a little biased against books that attempt to describe the Chinese experience by Americans, of Chinese descent or otherwise. Even though some of the episodes were probably quite "authentic" - e.g., the man with the four wives and whose youngest wife swallowed opium, and t ... Continue

    As a Chinese-American, I'm a little biased against books that attempt to describe the Chinese experience by Americans, of Chinese descent or otherwise. Even though some of the episodes were probably quite "authentic" - e.g., the man with the four wives and whose youngest wife swallowed opium, and the stereotypical Chinese mother for whom nothing was ever good enough - I couldn't help but feel that Amy Tan chose the stories based on qualities that would appear exotic to a Western reader.

    Btw, I thought the movie was much worse than the book in this respect. Some of the dialogue that attempts to imitate the syntax and tone of Chinese speech made me cringe; it doesn't even sound like what a Chinese-born speaker of English would say. (Cantonese is my native language, so I think I can speak to this.)

    

    Is this helpful?

• ― Lucja said on Aug 20, 2008 about the Mass Market Paperback edition| Add your feedback

• 1 of 2 people find this helpful

  • 

  • Amy Tan was born in America. She grew up in America. She writes in English.

    I was born in Malaysia. I grew up in Taiwan. Mandarin is my native tongue.

    So I the reason I got this book wasn't because I wanted to read about China or the Chinese people, but because I wanted to read about ... Continue

    Amy Tan was born in America. She grew up in America. She writes in English.

    I was born in Malaysia. I grew up in Taiwan. Mandarin is my native tongue.

    So I the reason I got this book wasn't because I wanted to read about China or the Chinese people, but because I wanted to read about Chinese people in America.

    To be fair, Amy Tan is brilliant for this part. But she instead chose to spend much more effort on the China portion of the story, something she doesn't have firsthand. And, alas, she failed as a consequence.

    

    Is this helpful?

• ― pthow said on Apr 8, 2007 about the School & Library Binding edition| Add your feedback

Drawn together by their past, four women meet once a week for forty years to share stories and create joy and luck out of unimaginable catastrophe.

Groups with this in collection

Malaysian Bookworms (36)

50 Book Challenge! (296)

• Books I Want to ReadChinaMy favoritesBooks I Couldn't Put DownNovelsfictionnovel2 Literature/NovelsModern Fiction說個故事吧-外文
• See all (11)