The Coffin Tree [Paperback]

Wendy Law-Yone (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 19, 2003

Wendy Law-Yone opens her first novel with the phrase of a survivor, "Living things prefer to go on living." A young woman and her older half-brother are expelled from their home in Burma by a savage political coup. Sent to elusive safety in America, the motherless siblings find themselves engulfed by the indifference, hypocrisy, and cruelty of an American society unable to deal with difference. Her brother's death drives the unnamed narrator into the seclusion of a mental hospital, where memories of her childhood and the strength it ingrained in her are enough to heal her heart and return her to the outside world.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"It combines the exquisite palpability of dreams with an earthy sense of irony ... an uncanny talent for defining the boundaries of sanity and making madness palpable. . . . A virtuoso piece of writing." --New York Times Book Review

"[A] poignant new addition to an honored literary tradition...rang[ing] from de Tocqueville to...Sevan-Schreiver -- and outsider's reflections on America." -- San Francisco Chronicle

"The reader must move to exotic places, to Burma in the beginning, to New York squalor in the middle, to a mental ward for an affirmative finale. The reader must move almost without transitions but with bags of empathy, crammed full. Must move, will be moved." --Los Angeles Times

"Law-Yone writes with a...sense of incongruity...It is one of her many gifts, which...promise much for the future." -- The Nation

Book Description

A Burmese woman's estrangement from her homeland brings her to the brink of insanity

Wendy Law-Yone opens her first novel with the phrase of a survivor, "Living things prefer to go on living." A young woman and her older half-brother are expelled from their home in Burma by a savage political coup. Sent to elusive safety in America, the motherless siblings find themselves engulfed by the indifference, hypocrisy, and cruelty of an American society unable to deal with difference. Her brother's inevitable suicide drives the unnamed narrator into the seclusion of a mental hospital, where memories of her childhood and the strength it ingrained in her are enough to heal her heart and return her to the outside world.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 208 pages
• Publisher: Triquarterly (March 19, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0810151413
• ISBN-13: 978-0810151413
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 6.4 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,159,340 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Provocative narrative of insanity in ethnic America., February 8, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Coffin Tree: A Novel (Asian Voices) (Paperback)

It's a terrible loss to Asian American literature (and literature in general) that this book is no longer in print. It details the migration of a Burmese woman and her brother to America as political refugees, and metaphorizes the way in which migration to the US and becoming a "colored minority" created a more abstract, and inescapable, refugeeism, which eventually manifests itself as imprisonment. The first half of the book details what nowadays is termed a "typical immigrant experience," in which the protagonist deals with discrimination and poverty. The second half of the narrative describes a descent into insanity, and as such, the writing reflects the disjointed and startling incoherencies that the rest of us usually associate with loss of mental control.

Written in 1983, when Asian Americans registered only a small blip on the American literary map, and describing an experience that Asian Americanists neglect, Law-Yone's work deserves another look.

[Just to help convince you...the back cover of the copy I have includes glowing reviews from The Boston Globe, NYTBR, Booklist, and The Nation.]

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent read! I couldn't put the book down!, October 22, 2011

By 

R. Maung - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Coffin Tree (Paperback)

I really couldn't put this book down! I was from Burma too, and the way that the author portrayed the people and the relationships between them, and the sights and smells and sounds really reminded me of home, even though she really didn't get much into nostalgia (other than brief moments of them during the recovery of the narrator but still described very accurately the emotional significance of them. I think that is what the author was really good at...the emotional experience of the characters in the story, and the internal processes that happened for them. This probably explains the back and forth in the time frames, which one of the previous reviewer found confusing. Yes, it took a little adjusting to those shifts, but I come to see this as part of the narrator's experience being portrayed in the writing style. How the narrator shifts from one memory to another, from one reality to another, and the craziness of her experiences. Also, emotions are not linear. Memories are not linear. They come with them associations that trigger one thought or feeling to another to another, which was such in the story line. I do think they end up weaving together quite nicely as a whole, with the beginning really ending up nicely, and in fact leading up nicely, to the ending.

I'm also in the field of psychology, and to read these accounts of despair, insanity and suffering of being human, was really intriguing to me, and so very true, I think. Perhaps because I do come from the country in the story, I do get it. I get all that craziness and what it all means, and how it impacts a person. All in all, this is very well written. I'm buying her next book "Irrawaddy Tango" right now, because I enjoyed it so much! Most books I read, no matter how technically sound and artful in their literary, feel so void of the kind of emotion that evokes in this novel. It's been a while I've been moved this much from a book.

4.0 out of 5 stars The Travails of a Burmese Brother and Sister, June 9, 2009

By 

Bonnie Brody "Book Lover and Knitter" (Port St. Lucie, FL) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 100 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Coffin Tree (Paperback)

While this book is billed as fiction, I believe it is autobiographical. It is about a Burmese brother and sister who travel to the United States after a coup in Burma.

The story of their childhood is a hard to decipher fantasy coupled with cultural differences that make it all the more bizarre. Both brother and sister are mentally ill. After the sister's suicide attempt that nearly results in her death, the young woman embraces life. She realizes that even if her childhood was a fantasy that her brother was embracing, it was still of value to him.

Though the book was deep and delved into deep and mysterious places, it seemed devoid of passion, as though the author wanted it that way intentionally as a self-protective device.