Feelings that overflow borders

Dreams of Joy
Lisa See
New York: Random House, 2012
Pp. 375 

“Dreams of Joy” features a Chinese family that is torn apart by personal failings, war and post-revolutionary borders, but persists in trying to reconstruct itself. Lisa See packs so many dramatic events, contrasting landscapes, human conflicts, personality shifts and socio-political changes into an average-size novel that one may be inclined to second the words of Pearl, who says towards the end, “I think I can have no emotions left in me, yet my feelings are so very big, their borders can’t be seen.” (p. 347)

As the novel opens, Joy discovers that her mother, Pearl, is actually her aunt; her Auntie May is her real mother; Pearl’s husband, who raised her, is not her father; and both women were in love with Z. G., her real father. Those who have read “Shanghai Girls” will know this background. “Dreams of Joy” is a sequel, but can be read alone.  

Confused and anguished by the sudden revelation of these family secrets, Joy runs away from home in Los Angeles’s Chinatown, and heads for The People’s Republic of China to find Z.G. and join the revolution, in defiance of her family’s distain for communism. It is 1957. The revolution is relatively new. Joy is only 17, and has no idea of the choices her mother and aunt faced in escaping after Japan’s invasion during World War II, but soon she will make agonising choices of her own. 

As Joy narrates her journey to Shanghai, where Z. G. is a famous artist, and then to a small Chinese village, where she joins a people’s commune, marries and has a child, one admires her ingenuity and determination. At first, one may not be so strongly drawn to Pearl, who narrates the other half of the novel. As she sets off for China, returning after 20 years to find her daughter and bring her home, she seems a bit stuffy and embittered, but her coming to terms with the past sparks personal growth. Her search for Joy becomes a search for joy. Both Joy and Pearl navigate precarious psychological and physical borders, while May plays a supportive role from back home in the US. 

The novel is filled with delicious as well as horrifying images and details. Chinese culture and art, both pre- and post-revolutionary, is showcased. Pearl’s memories recreate “the good old days” in Shanghai; villagers are seen synthesising the new revolutionary culture with their inherited folk traditions, but Joy begins to notice that the proclaimed equality for women is mainly symbolic. Each major character is identified by his or her astrological sign and its adherent characteristics.

Joy, for example, is a Tiger, thought to be romantic and artistic, but also rash, and she lives up to all these qualities. Yet, her experience and the values acquired from her family push her beyond a pre-determined character as she matures and begins to see the world with more realism and nuances. The author creates characters who grow, using their assumed nature to fight the burden of the past; most of those who fight against fate are women, especially mothers.

Chinese cuisine is also showcased in both its opulence and its absence. One reads of the luscious variety of the pre-revolutionary, upper-class diet, but also village food, while simple, is relatively plentiful and healthy, until Chairman Mao declares the Great Leap Forward soon after Joy joins the people’s commune. It is now known that a combination of wrong agricultural practices and the setting of totally unrealistic goals led to mass starvation in China at that time. 

Yet, knowing that millions died during the Great Leap Forward is nothing compared to reading See’s vivid descriptions of the daily meaning of slow starvation in terms of human suffering, and the lengths to which people will go when they are starving. The peasants knew that this policy wouldn’t work, but no dissent was tolerated, locking thousands into their “fate” — a man-made catastrophe. 

The battle between fate and human empowerment is only one theme explored in this novel. There are also different visions of the Chinese Revolution, from Joy’s original idealism about creating a new society of equality, to Pearl’s middle-class opposition, and Z.G.’s pragmatic compromises to stay in favour with the party. All the major characters love China, but tragically, most are unable to live there.

The overriding theme, however, is the power of a mother’s love for her child. The story shows that such love is not restricted to the birth mother but can flourish in any woman who has cared for a child. Having a daughter pushes Joy to define her priorities. She realises she is not motivated by art for art’s sake, nor by politics, but by emotions. “Of these emotions, the strongest is love — love for my two mothers, my two fathers, and my baby… We’re three generations of women who’ve suffered and laughed, struggled and triumphed.” (p. 322)