Midnight at the Dragon Cafe: A Novel (Alex Awards (Awards)) [Paperback]

Judy Fong Bates (Author)

Book Description

Series: Alex Awards (Awards) | Publication Date: April 12, 2005

The life of a young Chinese girl is torn apart by dark family secrets and divided loyalties in a small Ontario town in the 1950s. Judy Fong Bates's fresh and engaging first novel is the story of Su-Jen Chou, a Chinese girl growing up the only daughter of an unhappy and isolated immigrant family in a small Ontario town in the 1950s. Through Su-Jen's eyes we see the hard life behind the scenes at the Dragon Caf, the local diner her family runs. Her half-brother Lee-Kung smolders under the responsibilities he must carry as the dutiful Chinese son. Her mother, beautiful but bitter, lays her hopes and dreams on Su-Jen's shoulders, until she turns to find solace in the most forbidden of places, while Su-Jen's elderly father strives to hek fuh, swallow bitterness, and save face at all costs.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this deeply affecting debut novel by the author of the short story collection China Dog, intrepid Su-Jen Chou, the only daughter of parents who flee Communist China in the 1950s to become proprietors of a Chinese restaurant in an isolated Ontario town, watches as her family unravels. In Irvine, it is "so quiet you can hear the dead," and Su-Jen's mother, Jing, beautiful and bitter, laments her imprisonment in an unfamiliar country. To Jing's chagrin, Su-Jen's father, Hing-Wun, much older than his wife, believes in the traditional method for obtaining wealth: endless hard work. When Su-Jen's handsome older half-brother, Lee-Kung, comes to live with the family and help out in the restaurant, Su-Jen is happy, but soon she notices her mother and Lee-Kung exchanging veiled glances and realizes they're keeping some dangerous secret. Increasingly, Su-Jen finds herself caught between her parents, who have "settled into an uneasy and distant relationship... their love, their tenderness, they give to their daughter." She seeks relief in books and in the Chinese tales her father loves to tell, but the trouble festering comes to a head when a mail-order bride arrives for her brother. Bates conveys with pathos and generosity the anger, disappointment, vulnerability and pride of people struggling to balance duty and passion.
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From Booklist

*Starred Review* Su-Jen Chou, six, meets her elderly father for the first time when she and her beautiful mother leave China to join him in a small Ontario town in the 1950s. She sleeps between her parents in the same bed in a room upstairs from the restaurant. "They settled into an uneasy and distant relationship. Their love, their tenderness, they gave to me." Then her adult half-brother joins them, and his mail-order bride is on her way. Su-Jen, now Annie, is soon comfortable in English and makes friends as she grows up Canadian; her mother remains stranded among strangers, unable to speak the language. But even at home, the unspeakable drowns out what is being said. True to the young girl's viewpoint, the plain first-person narrative tells an immigrant story with rare intensity, the anger and the sadness, as the adults fight about one thing while Su-Jen wants to shout about what they all pretend they do not know. The mounting suspense of family secrets makes this first novel a breathless read, even as the simple, beautiful words make you want to stop and read the sentences over and over again. The haunting characters in that lonely greasy spoon evoke a tradition stretching back to Carson McCullers. Hazel Rochman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Paperback: 315 pages
• Publisher: Counterpoint (April 12, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1582431892
• ISBN-13: 978-1582431895
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #931,078 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Authentic to the core, full of longing, tragedy, April 23, 2004

By 

Diane Lu-Hovasse "Words by Design" (Toronto, Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Midnight at the Dragon Cafe (Hardcover)

How genuine this novel is! Having grown up like Su-Jen in a small Ontario town where we were one of the only Chinese families, I totally related to the girl's experience, even though, unlike her, I was born in Canada. The smell, the taste, the look of a small town Chinese-Canadian greasy spoon certainly rang true to my mother's stories about her own family's operation of several cafés in different Ontario communities. The author evokes the claustrophobic isolation of the family living and working amidst a predominantly white community with such authenticity, it left me breathless, hoping for their emancipation. The story begins with a woman's memory of her childhood, but the story seen through her eyes, is a microcosmic look at a macro-history of these immigrant-run restaurants. This one, with its particular twists and justifications, I found to be especially poignant and on the mark. I've wished for more stories from Chinese-Canadian authors like those from American author Amy Tan. I think I've found finally found one here and now! I'll look forward to the next tale from Judy Fong Bates, a bright new talent.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The people behind the faces of the local Chinese-Canadian greasy spoon, December 3, 2005

By 

book yeti "book yeti" (Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Midnight at the Dragon Cafe: A Novel (Alex Awards (Awards)) (Paperback)

With a quiet, unassuming elegance, Canadian-Chinese author Judy Fong-Bates sets the scene for her highly applauded debut novel, 'Midnight at the Dragon Cafe'.

Perhaps this story touched me more acutely than most of its readers, as it called to mind what my father and his parents must have experienced during and after their immigration from Hong Kong to a little town in Canada in the mid-1950s. Every word to me was genuine, haunting, compelling...

Little Su-Jen Chou (at the tender age of six), along with her beautiful yet bitter mother, immigrates to Canada from Communist China, to meet the father she has never known. A father who is the proprietor of the local Canadian-Chinese "greasy spoon". With Su-Jen mother constantly haunted with yearnings for her homeland, unpleasant family secrets uncovered, and the trials and challenges they face in a new and often-times unwelcoming land, Fong-Bates weaves a story full of heartbreak, tribulation and acceptance.

Poignant in its simplicity and yet weighty in its inner complexities, 'Midnight at the Dragon Cafe' explores many social issues of the time, along with the disappointments, the pride, the sacrifices, and the triumphs of those who immigrated to Canada in search of something "better". Compelling and well written, Fong-Bates stunning first novel deserves a heaping spoonful of praise.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This is a fine novel!, March 8, 2004

By 

Ken Setterington (Toronto) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Midnight at the Dragon Cafe (Hardcover)

A good friend told me that this was the best book she had read in years! I am in total agreement and I will be urging fellow readers to savour the delights of Midnight at the Dragon Cafe with the same fervour. Judy Fong Bates's first novel allows one to not only explore the world of the Chinese/Canadian restaurant/greasy spoons that were in every community across Canada, but also discover the loneliness, passions, joys and heartache that were experienced by those who ran the restaurants. The story of young Su-Jen and her family striving for a better life in Canada is a beautifully haunting tale told by a master storyteller. I couldn't recommend it more highly.