Customer Reviews

The Love of Lotus

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This is a quick and good read that gave me a lifetime of insight on Confucian ideals and their clash with western values in someone that successfully navigated and alternately accepted each of these value systems. At its heart it is a very human story of survival in wartime(World War II), a search for love, and a struggle between personal happiness and living up to family expectations(known as filial piety in Confucianism). Being asian american, (although my last name is Wu, I am not related to the author), I had always grown up with a sense that the traditional Confucian values that many Chinese families and specifically asian-american immigrant families stress was backwards and old fashioned with no redeeming value here in the U.S. This was the first time I could really relate to the Confucian point of view and see its validity and usefulness in maintaining the social order and structure in precommunist China literally for hundreds of years.

Born in a well-to-do family, Wu Wilcox traces the turbulent years of World War II as her mother struggled to not only keep her family alive during the war but continue her children's education amidst the chaos. This stress on education will be a wonderful example to anyone who has ever struggled to understand Chinese parents' amazing valuation of "book learning" as opposed to experiential learning as it traces its roots back to the national chinese scholarly exams that had been in place for hundreds of years prior to the communist revolution. Her autobiography details how her family is fragmented and scattered during the war and how her new life in the U.S. during the turbulent 1960's helped shape her world view. She goes from being a classically trained student in the Confucian tradition, to the indoctrination of communist ideals of sacrifice for the common good to a decidedly more western, individualistic and self-actualized point of view.

She gives a sympathetic eye to all views and is refreshingly unscarred from the experience, showing little bitterness at the harsh consequences of relinquishing her Confucian ideals despite great family pressure. This view comes at a great personal price. You see the gradual transition of her point of view.

Though the sentences are at times awkward, for the most part, the book is very readable and its short length make up for any difficulties in language, something that should be corrected should the publication go into a second edition( I hope it does!). This is a must read for all those ABC's(american born chinese) children out there that ever yearned to understand their parents better--or their spouses or significant others that ever wondered if they'd ever be accepted, especially those in cross cultural relationships. "Take heart," Wu Wilcox seems to say via her titular analogy that just as a lotus emerges clean and beautiful despite the mud below, we are to strive to leave all that is difficult and messy about our lives and carefully select out the great and the beautiful, presenting a Confucian ideal of the divine, a beautiful flower. This book is the answer for the boyfriend character in the movie version of the "Joy Luck Club," when he discussed how his first meeting with her parents went and she answers, "I think they'd rather have rectal cancer." Now significant others of ABC's and ABC's themselves have somewhere to turn to understand this, at times, maddening point of view.

Cynthia Waiying Wu Wilcox describes with sensitivity and astuteness a society based on Confusionist obedience. From small purchases to life altering decisions, obedience to parents is paramount. Wu's ability to weave small details into a pattern which illuminates life in World War II China, from the household plumbing to the political atmosphere, is extraordinary. The book is worth reading for Wu's perpective as an outsider to Western culture, which, in turn, gives us insight into ourselves. This book is a quick read, and worth the time.

One of the most enjoyable and informative books I have read. She describes how a young Chinese girl copes with the civil war in China to obtain an education. This education ranges from the classical traditional Chinese to contemporary mid-western American.This also is a story of how important her mother considered an education. Along with her formal education, she managed to cram in a lifetime amount of world travel.
This is an extremely easy read.

The memoir of female Chinese-American author Cynthia Waiying Wu Wilcox, The Love of Lotus is not only a recounting of her childhood and adult life, but also a philosophical look at the conflict between traditional and received values, and the contrast in culture between nations. Growing up in China, she received a classical education, an unusual occurrence for girls; World War II forced her removal to the Chinese countryside to attend high school in Christian missionary schools. She attended college in Wisconsin and chose to become a pharmacist, eventually earning U.S. citizenship and marrying a Caucasian. The Love of Lotus is a testimony of acute scrutiny of the meanings of faith, purpose, identity, and independence. Classical Chinese education was once meant as preparation to serve the Emperor; with China's government becoming Communist, what was the purpose of what she had learned as a young girl? Highly recommended for anyone interested not only in the story of an immigrant woman's search for balance between Chinese and American perspectives, but also in philosophy concerning that most elusive of qualities, happiness, whether from an American or Chinese perspective.