Nancy's review
The Bonesetter's Daughter (Ballantine Reader's Circle)
by Amy Tan
Nancy's review
The Bonesetter's Daughter (Ballantine Reader's Circle) by Amy Tan
Nancy's review
rating:
While Amy Tan is 'the' Chinese-American writer, I find that her stories have nothing whatsoever to do with my own Chinese-American experience. Maybe she's just from a different generation? I am perplexed.
Some parts of this book rubbed me the wrong way. For example, her transcriptions of the narrator's mother's broken English word-for-word made me wince. It reminded me of those movies in which we know that the foreign character is 'foreign' because he/she speaks English with a foreign accent. Or worse yet, movies like "Memoirs of a Geisha" where Japanese characters living in Japan speak English with a Japanese (or Chinese?) accent.
Maybe by having the mother speak broken English, Amy Tan intended to illustrate the cultural divide and communication difficulties between mother and daughter. Or maybe she wanted to provide a contrast to those chapters that are told in the mother's own voice, in which she appears to be very eloquent. But I feel that this was not wo...more
Some parts of this book rubbed me the wrong way. For example, her transcriptions of the narrator's mother's broken English word-for-word made me wince. It reminded me of those movies in which we know that the foreign character is 'foreign' because he/she speaks English with a foreign accent. Or worse yet, movies like "Memoirs of a Geisha" where Japanese characters living in Japan speak English with a Japanese (or Chinese?) accent.
Maybe by having the mother speak broken English, Amy Tan intended to illustrate the cultural divide and communication difficulties between mother and daughter. Or maybe she wanted to provide a contrast to those chapters that are told in the mother's own voice, in which she appears to be very eloquent. But I feel that this was not wo...more
