Customer Reviews

A Map of Paradise

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a fine novel, in my opinion. The title is bland and can give one the impression that they are about to read an annotated atlas or something. Regardless, after reading the first dozen pages or so you will get a real feel for this book. As the published reviewer notes, it adheres to historical accounts exceptionally well. This novel could be read by both older adolescents with good command of language and adults. Its use of local color (California, Hawaii) is also exceptional and while some stock characterization is done, overall the effort is quite literary. I found it to be solid historical fiction of a sort. So ignore the knee-jerk PC reviewer who couldn't get past the cover (by the way, just where is that Yalie she's talking about?) and give it a try. If the plot doesn't hold you, you are likely to become better informed on Hawaii's colonial period.

Having lived in both Hawaii & the Sacramento area, I enjoyed the local history through the experiences of a Chinese immigrant family struggling to build a better life in the Western states. Will view the levees around Sacramento with new eyes!

Rating: I gave this novel five stars for its descriptive storytelling and its detailed historical content on the Hawaiian kingdom and the settling of immigrants there in the late 1800s. It may not be a complete history, but enough to get a sense of the turmoil and hardship of the times.

This historical novel describes the arrival of the Chinese as laborers for the sugar plantations in Hawaii in the mid 1800s, and of their gradual integration into the island economy as farmers, traders, and businessmen. The novel tells of the exhaustive work in forming a Chinatown community out of the two warring groups of Chinese - the Punti and Hakka clans.

The book also details the history of the Hawaiian kingdom and the dying off of important members of its royal family in the latter part of the 19th century, giving way to increasing American and British influence and control of the islands.

The Chinese immigrant Pao An worked shoring up levees in California before joining his wife Rulan and their daughter in Hawaii, a land they called the Blessed Isles. There they built a life for themselves and formed a community with other immigrants. The core of the novel are the love stories of Pao An and his wife Rulan, of their daughter Molly and the half-Hawaiian poet she lived with and loved, and of the quiet boy Lin Kong, whom Molly had spurned since childhood.

While Ching Sledge deserves applause for the effort in producing fiction dealing with Chinese diaspora history (rare), she is, like so many Asian-American writers (particularly females- Amy Tan, etc.) caves in to an ingratiating assimilationist "tourist" attitude that is appealing to non-Asians, but often highly offensive to Asians. Furthermore, there are gaping holes in the historical accuracy of the story, which sweeps too easily past the great tensions that existed during the period.

very goo

This is the kind of book you can judge just by looking at its cover. The poor oppressed Asian female falls in love with a beautiful Aryan Christian colonist from Yale. Why don't we just e-instate slavery while we're at it. How could anyone glorify the oppression of the colored people of the earth? Either they hate themselves, or they were just out to make a buck. Maybe both.