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Two Trees Make a Forest: On Memory, Migration and Taiwan

Jessica J. Lee (Goodreads Author)

4.32 · Rating details · 22 ratings · 6 reviews

I have learned many words for 'island': isle, atoll, eyot, islet, or skerry. They exist in archipelagos or alone, and always, by definition, I have understood them by their relation to water. But the Chinese word for island knows nothing of water. For a civilisation grown inland from the sea, the vastness of mountains was a better analogue: (dao, 'island') built from the

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Kindle Edition, 256 pages

Published November 7th 2019 by Virago

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Nov 20, 2019 Rebecca rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: travel-books, nature, 2019-second-half, requested-from-publisher, reviewed-for-blog, family-memoirs, languages, awesome-title, dementia, cover-love

(3.5) I loved Turning, Lee’s 2017 memoir about swimming in one of Berlin’s lakes per week for a year, so I jumped at the chance to read her follow-up, which delves into her maternal line’s history in Taiwan. She travels to Taipei for three months to brush up on her Chinese, write and hike. Interspersed with the lush descriptions of her walks are reflections on Taiwan’s history and on the hidden aspects of her grandfather Gong’s past that only came to light after Lee’s grandmother, Po, died and ...more

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Nov 30, 2019 Charlott rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Everything in my education had inoculated me against this kind of anthropocentrism: to resist the idea of nature for us alone, of a forest providing arboreal answers to very human predicaments. But still I find myself falling short, seeing in this mountain a mirror for my misunderstandings, as if in knowing its nature I might find a way to belong to this place.

Jessica J. Lee's sophomore book "Two Trees Make a Forest. On Memory, Migration and Taiwan" traces her grandparents' story from China to ...more

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Feb 12, 2020 Andy rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: biography, library, non-fiction, requested-received

author reflects on migrant family history, shown through the lens of two return trips to Taiwan, mixed with known parents' and grandparents' stories and some secrets revealed through lost relatives and grandfather's rambling missive as he succumbed to dementia.

touches on the natural environment, the mountains and plants as she hikes on the island, also on the colonial history - but the detail here felt unnecessarily vague to me, and on the written language.

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Dec 30, 2019 T.R. rated it really liked it

Shelves: memoir, nature-and-wildlife, read2019

Part memoir, part quest for self, family, and nature in Taiwan, this is a gentle book with a gentle narrative voice that carries the reader along on a very personal journey. I like it for its simplicity and clarity, and its evocation of Taiwan and her family that is both personal and yet placed neatly within the great sprawl of the island's history and geography.

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Dec 29, 2019 Hannah rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: biographies-and-memoirs, ecolit, nonfiction

“Born into conflict, at the junction of two volcanic arcs, Taiwan is an unstable landmass in perpetual confrontation.”

Lee’s debut Turning was one of my treasured discoveries from this past year, and I feel it was that memoir that prepared her for the massive scope of her second book: Taiwan is explored through geological, historical, and personal lenses. In the beginning, Lee paints the country in the bold strokes of millions of years, the timeline of geology, filling our heads with the dramas “Born into conflict, at the junction of two volcanic arcs, Taiwan is an unstable landmass in perpetual confrontation.”

Lee’s debut Turning was one of my treasured discoveries from this past year, and I feel it was that memoir that prepared her for the massive scope of her second book: Taiwan is explored through geological, historical, and personal lenses. In the beginning, Lee paints the country in the bold strokes of millions of years, the timeline of geology, filling our heads with the dramas of the Ring of Fire, fault lines and ever-moving tectonic plates, orogeny and mountains that “stand taller every day.” And already implied through that description, bolstered by the historical timeline placed at the beginning of the book, is an interweaving of Taiwan’s geology with its history: Taiwan is a place constantly shifting—in ownership, politics, identities.

On the personal level is the story of her family. Just as in her debut, Lee doesn’t seem to sugar coat, simplify, or romanticize even while striving for coherent narration. She casts herself in a light that feels realistic, admitting to linguistic ignorance, to cultural misunderstandings and the daily embarrassments that go with being in a place where you do not wholly belong, no matter how desperately you wish to.

In a world where people from both ends of the political spectrum are increasingly obsessed with cultural purity and the idea that culture can and should be performed, Lee arrives in Taiwan more foreigner than not, yet still daring to try to belong in some way, to find meaning in her own complex family tree. She believes in her right to belong in the world even while having no clear-cut claim to a single place, and I think that’s the kind of voice we need right now. She embraces complexity and overcomes the temptations of performativity. The writing is tightly concerned with place, belonging, and community but does not adhere to any form of nationalism (ditto with Turning). She does not pretend to land in Taiwan and just “get” the country because of something in her blood. The world is richer than that, and she explores it deeply, at home, in the library, on the mountains.

I was touched by her stories of her family, which also overcame simplistic depiction. Her grandmother was an incredibly brave woman who lived through the Rape of Nanjing. She was also at times callous, petty, secretive, and on some level unknowable. Her grandfather: brave, moral, literary, and forever wounded by his war. Also, again, unknowable. And her mother: “In Taiwan…my mother became a person with a topographic history. … [In] forty years of life in Canada she had never rooted to the place and got lost easily.” I loved how Lee explored the concept of places making their way into your bones (or not). I related to it well.

I am also a placeless person—or, depending on your perspective, a person of too many places—and I found her stories incredibly relatable. She doesn’t necessarily have advice for how to live with your own placelessness, but it is wonderful to be with her amidst all this modern day confusion nevertheless. ...more

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Feb 03, 2020 Sarah Swarbrick rated it really liked it · review of another edition

The title of this book is a good summary of the topics of this book, but does not do justice to the sweep of history, geology and beautiful nature writing to be found inside. A beautiful story.

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