Daughters of Shandong (2024) by Eve J. Chung

 Book Review

Daughters of Shandong (2024)

by Eve J. Chung

   A recent publishing trend I do appreciate are these historical novels that tell grandmothers/grandfathers story.  It's an approach that gives an Auto-fictional vibe to work that otherwise might be construed as genre historical fiction.  It's also great to see American authors who write books like this one instead of starting off with a bildungsroman about a character that resembles the author.  As a best-seller, it's fantastic and more power to it.  It's not particularly sophisticated beyond the concept itself- taking Grandma's origin story and turning it into a compelling work of historical fiction.  The experience itself: the wife of a wealthy local landowner is left behind with her two "worthless" daughters when the Communist's come to town, she plots her escape out of the nascent Chinese Communist state, is very interesting.

  As the author points out in her Afterword, in which she makes the "grandma's origin story" plot clear, she also points out that the major players in post-Communist victory China:  The Chinese Communist Party, the British, who governed Hong Kong and the Nationalist Government of Taiwan, all had their own reasons to keep the refuge misery caused by the Communist victory quiet.  You can add to that the United States, which was fighting the Korean War nearby, thus it truly isn't well documented or well understood.

  I can forgive Chung her concessions to appealing to a broad, YA level audience.  One point that Chung does not soften is the ingrained sexism/prejudice against daughters in Chinese civilization. It's not exactly something one can point out in polite society but it comes up all the time- Chinese families face a lot of pressure to produce a male heir and are daughters produced BEFORE sons are considered bad luck and worthless.  Not something I learned about from Daughters of Shangdong but it's rare to see a work of fiction that centers this practice so squarely in the narrative.   That's also either the greatest strength and or weakness- Chung's plucky grandma-as-a-girl narrator sees the world through the eyes of a strong American feminist circa 2020 alternately acknowledging subservience to and criticisms of the strong tradition of deference to elders in Chinese culture.   Surely a "historically accurate" narrator would not  have such a sophisticated critique.