Customer Reviews

Paper Daughter: A Memoir

5 star:		(19)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Paper Daughter is a rich memoir of cultures crossing, as many reviewers have noted. It is also a valuable addition to the literature of class in America. But I find it has stayed with me most of all as a story about family, and especially about the terrible love that connects so many of us with our parents.

Mar's rendering of her early childhood in Hong Kong is beautiful, capturing the satisfaction of a child who feels safe, known, and well-cared-for; she describes her family's meager resources with care and no rancor, making clear that for her, the world was rich and complete. One of my favorite images in a long time is of little Man Yee arriving at school asleep, snuggled up against her mother's back for the walk there. And if there is one moment of plain peace in this novel, it is when Mar, having completed with her mother the arduous and anxious journey from Hong Kong, is reunited with her father at the airport. Nuzzling against him as heart contracted and released. This was my father, and he remembered me."

What felt to a little girl like an idyll for her family, one room in a crowded walk-up with uncertain plumbing, was of course not really tenable, and her parents were compelled to make the choices they did. And surely even if Mar's American acculturation had not divided her so painfully from her parents, something else would have. Who among us has not, at some time, looked around at her family, no matter how valued, and felt herself a stranger in a strange land? (After a recent reading from Paper Daughter, Elaine Mar told the audience that she believes that when she and her mother speak Chinese, she understands almost 100 percent of what her mother says, but her mother only understands about 70 percent of what Elaine says. Thinking of myself and my own mother, I thought "yep, that's about right," even though both my mother and I are native English speakers.)

Mar's is a classically American story, of upward class mobility and the distance it puts between a young woman and her immigrant parents. But in spite of its honest treatment of an isolation so overpowering it sometimes made her nearly suicidal, Paper Daughter is nevertheless a novel infused with loyalty, love, and humor. Mar's appreciation for detail, and especially for the contours of the heart's many hungers, helps her paint a picture in which every face holds beauty and sorrow.

There is no love more intense than the one that ties us to the parents who raise us, and there is no chasm deeper than the one that opens up between those parents and ourselves. We fight with each other desperately, perhaps just to keep from letting go altogether. In Mar's family, poverty, fear, and displacement added intolerable stress to the mix, as they do for too many families. Her parents feel she can never appreciate their sacrifices, and truly it seems that they can't understand her suffering either. Yet from this impasse Elaine Mar has created a book that honors both.

When I first started this book, it was incredibly captivating, because there were experiences Elaine had to which I can relate -the familial obligation, the confusion, the language barriers, the financial problems, etc. I was thrilled that an Asian American woman author chose to write about a deeply personal experience.

As I neared the end of the book, I started getting confused. Mar seemed to be making a chronological list of things that have happened to her, but she offers very little insight into her particular experiences. I frequently asked myself, "What did she learn from this?" I felt as if Mar was spiraling downward, instead of trying to get something positive out of the pain and abuse of her childhood. It seems like she could have learned so much from her negative experience; instead, she kept running and running.

In addition, I was confused about several other things, like the missing chunk of time between her elementary and high school years. Too little happened during that time for her to eloborate on? And what about the conclusion? Her story seemed to end abruptly, and she was running away again.

Mar's childhood seems to have endless potential to provide her with the oppportunity to grow, but we don't anything learn about this. That was what stuck out the most, that she didn't seem to grow. I was especially curious to learn about her life in college - though she didn't write about that - because she was away from home and there were probably myriad revelations and self-discoveries.

If she writes another book, I would definitely read it, because although I didn't enjoy Paper Daughter a lot, I think that Mar is heading in the right direction in writing about her experiences as an Asian American. I think all she needs is a little push.

From the first page, this moving memoir captures the essence of the transplanted life of a jook-kok, a Chinese-American child born in the old country. Born in Hong Kong, Elaine (her "American" name) immigrates to the United States when she is five years old. All her early childhood memories, the safety of a poor but well-ordered life are based on the identity and acceptance of her Hong Kong relatives.

In America, Elaine's nuclear family lives with her father's sister and her family in Denver, Colorado. Most of this extended family works long, ardous hours in the kitchen of a Chinese restaurant, preparing "Chinese" food and washing dishes. With the adults engaged in economic survival, Elaine and her young cousin, San, spend many hours supervised by Elaine's non-English speaking mother.

The most painful hours of Elaine's life are spent in school. She enters first grade with few language skills, unable to express herself adequately. Unable, as well, to defend herself against the taunts of the children, who call her "chink" and "slant-eyes". Gradually, as her command of language improves, as well as comprehension of American social nuances, Elaine begins to blend in with her classmates. With the longing of a child's heart, she is thrust daily into the fractured world of Chinese vs American. In spite of the painful solitude Elaine endures, she retains a strong sense of self, blindly reaching to make her life tolerable. Her mother will never comprehend the daughter's suffering, she has her own pain, and there are no Chinese words for what the child is experiencing.

This is a heartbreaking story of culture shock and self-survival. Elaine's acceptance in America depends upon her ability to adapt, to read the signs of her environment. Ultimately, her life is split in half, between Chinese and American. She makes difficult choices, at the cost of her Chinese heart. She has written this memoir to reclaim that heart, and to tell her family she has not forgotten. But they cannot read English words and she is forever outside the embrace of her two cultures. In the last sentence, M. Elaine Mar tells us, "Like my grandfather, I'd immigrated, with no way to send for my family."

The book opens with a sensuous description of a Hong Kong child eating chicken bones, crushing them between her teeth to release the clotted marrow within. The author later contrasts this earthy and primal experience with the manner in which Americans eat fried chicken, delicately nibbling away from the bone, oblivious to the rich marrow within. I found this broad metaphor thought-provoking, contrasting the sterility of American suburban life with the riotous, crowded Hong Kong environs where the author lived her earliest years.

I was very impressed with the sensual detail in the book, the descriptions of textures and scents hinting of mystery, such as the jars of dried mushrooms and spices that her mother stored in the tiny room that was the author's first home.

The criticism that many reviewers have expressed is that the memoir fails to be reflective. I did not find that to be the case. I prefer to have the author use metaphor and selectiveness of memory to present her view, as she deftly does, than to read pages of exposition detailing why she felt her mother treated her coldly. I believe the author is trusting to the intelligence of the reader to puzzle out the motivations of each character. It would be less than artful to be as obvious as some readers apparently wish.

That said, I did not always sympathize with the author, especially as she grew into adolescence and became increasingly disrespectful of her parents. However, it took courage for the author to sometimes portray herself in a less than attractive manner. One was left to wonder if her adolescent angst would have been similar if she had never left Hong Kong.

I felt the memoir's legitimate focus was her childhood and formative years. Some have expressed the wish that the author would have continued, describing her college years in greater detail. I disagree, as that would have moved the story away from the focus on family. Family is used to define the author throughout the memoir; as she seperates from her family, the story ends. Therefore, I found the break logical.

My one criticism would be that it is slightly facile to believe that a Harvard education somehow has elevated the author beyond her family. The first severing was one of language. Education was secondary. I disliked the implication that the education she strove for somehow delivered her from an intolerable life. The author seemed to be overly impressed with herself for being accepted into Harvard, as if this were the grandest achievement attainable. She also failed to criticize, or if she did, it was too subtle for my tastes, the adolescent mentalities and delusions of genius, which were apparently common amongst the students at the Cornell summer program she attended. Nor could I tell if she felt the psychiatrist who interviewed her for the program was rather pompous and shallow, as I did. My assumption, though, is that the author has chosen to leave this unsaid and that this scene was yet another instance of her trying to fit into one sub-group or another, posing as an intellectual rather than as a typical American teenager.

The author progresses from dutiful Chinese daughter, to bewildered immigrant, to essential interlocutor for her family, to sullen teenager, to burgeoning "intellectual". I felt that most of these transitions were beautifully described and that the varying experiences and motivations of the different family members contributed greatly to the richness of the story. I was a little off-put by her eventual move to Cambridge and Harvard, because I felt that the author's motivations were more about belonging to an "elite" group and progressing socially than any educational goals. However, my opinion is belied by the elegant and moving memoir that she later wrote, which implies that her maturity has progressed greatly beyond the last stage described in the book, that of a self-centered teenager eager to break from her family.

Overall, I found this memoir to be very worthwhile reading.

Like M. Elaine Mar, my parents are from the Toishan region of China, I live in the Denver area (though only for the last 2 years), and we were born 10 days apart, so I was very anxious to read what it was like to grow up with such similar circumstances.

Mar does a great job conveying the frustration of being first generation Chinese-American in a predominately American city. I grew up in Portland and also went to an inner city high school and my parents worked in a restaurant, too. The family conflicts and peer jealousies are well described. It is hard to not be able to communicate what I learned in school and what I do at work to my parents because of my limited Toishanese. I was disappointed to read about the persistent verbal abuse from her parents. Not all Toishanese are as short on praise.

Mar describes vividly her grade school experiences, but I was left longing for more detail about her high school and college years. How did she become a brilliant poet and philosopher? Who shaped her writing career? What kinds of relationships did she have in high school? Perhaps this was the fault of her editors, who wanted to focus on the family relationships more than the personal triumphs of independence. There are enough other books that describe the immigrant experience. The interesting and inspirational storyline here would have been to describe how she independently forged her education and career without any external help.

I can't help but recommend this, mostly because it mirrors my life so much. It captures the essence of what it was like to grow up the children of Chinese immigrants.

This is a book for everyone.

Richly descriptive, bravely revealing, and intensely engaging, M. Elaine Mar's writing has the remarkable effect of bringing the reader right inside her own feelings and senses, as if to experience her story firsthand.

Its touching vignettes from a family life so infused with both love and pain; its thoughtful depiction of the experience of a working-poor, first-generation immigrant family in modern U.S. society; and its revealing account of a young girl's struggle for identity in world filled with contradictions, are what make this book worth reading.

While I might agree that Ms. Mar doesn't bring everything to a tidy resolution at the end, I'm compelled to point out that this is a memoir, not fiction. Who among us does have everything resolved in life? This book - - as with life - - is more about the journey than the destination.

I enjoyed Paper Daughter tremendously, I wholeheartedly recommend it, and I look forward to more from this author.

I was truely skeptical about getting this book as I roamed around the book store for something to read on the train but after reading the first chapter, I found myself in tears. Nothing that I've read in the past has truely affected me as the way this book has. Being an American Born Chinese girl made me see the trials and turbulantions one goes through in order to forfill the american dream. It was like a mirror reflection of the relationship with my parents only they understood what I wanted in life and was by my side for it. What was shocking is that she mentioned her father having a glass of hennessey and a smoke during his days after work. Once I read that, I actually was in a gasp because that's what my father still does to this day after a long day of work in a restaurant as well. You will definitely sympathize the pain she has written in the book and you'll never let this book down once you pick it up. And once you're on the final chapter, you'll find yourself flipping through the "acknowledgements" and you'll really know why she's thanking these people in her life. I must say, as a Chinese American reader reading this book, you would definitely need a tissue. Now that I live in another state far away from my parents, this book really made me more aware of what I have, and that is my loving family. This book really reassures you about your roots. Elaine Mar, thank you for writing this book, you have truely gave me the experience of what it's really being a Chinese person in America.

M. Elaine Mar's Paper Daughter is an accomplishment. Mar gives a real and sometimes painful depiction of her life growing up as an immigrant to this country. Although often describing the sadness, anger, and other hardships her family faces, she also writes about the truly positive and special times she experiences with family members. I was so moved by her closeness with her father and his unfailing pride in her - even when he outwardly showed other feelings about his daughter. As a close friend of Mar, I gained a great deal of insight into her from reading her story. I highly recommend Paper Daughter, and look forward to reading more from Elaine!

Too many people from our generation do not appreciate the hardships and sacrifices endured by our ancestors (and parents). We take too much for granted, we complain, and we are ungrateful.

I was saddened by the lack of respect Ms. Mar pays to her parents and her extended family for sacrificing their own "dreams", financially scraping by, and struggling with language in order to give her a better life and more opportunities. Ms. Mar focuses on the abuses and the negative, failing to depict the positive influences on her life. If she has never had a source of nurturing then this is truly a miraculous underdog story. It makes you wonder if she would have been able to achieve the same or greater if her family never immigrated from Hong Kong.

I don't deny that she had a difficult life, but I find it repulsive that she is embarrassed by her family and feels the need to "lie" about her background. . .rather than be proud of how far she has come and what she has accomplished. I have pity for Ms. Mar; not for the struggles she's been through, but for the fact that she has denied her family and the respect they deserve.

It is fortunate that her parents, her Aunt Becky and older members of the Chinese community do not read english, for this story would be devastating to them. In the future, I hope she is more sensitive about slurring names of people in the Chinese community without substantial evidence.

Come experience two worlds that never really meld into one. A Chinese daughter of immigrant parents who tries to live in both worlds, old China (her parents may be here in the States, but never truly become part of the culture) and the USA . She finds she cannot live in both worlds without deep resentment and frustration and opts to reject her parents old ways in the end. This was an excellent view of the frustration and pain for both sides involved. Gives you a view of those who live in America, but are not really a part of it.