A Memoir of Misfortune

by Xiaokang Su

Su Xiaokang had faced calamity in 1989, after the Tiananmen Square massacre, he became the object of a government manhunt and was forced to flee China, leaving behind his wife and young son. Eventually his family was allowed to join him in exile in the United States, and he believed the worst was behind him. Then a terrible automobile accident left his wife, Fu Li, unable to move or speak.
In this remarkably honest account, Su, who blamed himself for his family's disaster, writes wrenchingly of his inner torment and despair. He describes the pain of living in exile, his desperate search for a miracle cure for Fu Li, and his bemusement at his teenage son's increasing Americanization. Above all, Su's moving memoir invites us along on a deeply personal odyssey, as a man who had once been at the center of an international political drama dedicates himself to the far more demanding task of remaking an emotional world for his wife and son.

350 pages, Paperback

First published July 9, 2002

Reviews

[Cheryl · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm organizing my bookshelves and coming across books that have been hidden for years. I found this one at a library sale in a small town in Pennsylvania and it cost the same as a tall white mocha at Starbucks. That day I picked it up and read the cover, I was intrigued by how books can make the world feel interconnected and small—I have both physical and goodreads shelves labeled "global intrigue" that I reserve for such books.

We read about the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre in college in order to pass exams, but never considered the aftermath for the students, writers, and activists involved. Some spent years in prison, others years in exile without being able to see their family because they could not return to their homeland and their families were not allowed to travel to see them. Su Xiaokang was one of the activists and protestors who was on the WANTED list for "counterrevolutionary incendiarism" because he stood in solidarity with the student protestors and because he wrote the script for the documentary River Elegy. He was forced to flee his home and his personal account details his despair and reflections:

Perhaps it is only when man faces this black hole that he can begin to question what existence is about and realize that living needs courage, ask himself whether his life is a failure and question whether it was worthwhile.

Xiaokang escapes and writes to his wife and son, who eventually join him in America (after they are helped by an international human rights organization and included on a list of people the U.S. government negotiated with China for release). However, they face more adversity in the form of a terrible car accident while on vacation to Canada. Xiaokang and his wife end up in a coma, and when he emerges, he finds his wife in a paralyzed state. Faced with the stark reality that his strong-willed wife who took care of the family and gave up her career while he gained notoriety as a writer would now lose her competency and become fully dependent on him because of the choice he made to go to Tiananmen Square when she begged him not to, he questions his life, questions his choices, and this forms the premise of the memoir.

But the day I met her, I felt as if I had walked into a refreshingly cool morning. It must be the kind of feeling described by Eileen Chang: 'To meet the one among ten thousand, to meet in ten thousand years, not a moment too early nor a moment too late, right on the dot of time. It is beyond words.'

The memoir has a lugubrious aura that's hard to shake off when reading. I almost stopped reading but was too curious to stop because of how profound it gets in certain sections. There is a noetic quality you want to see in a memoir when he describes his guilt of surviving a coma and remaining healthy while his wife suffers, but there's also heaviness in the elucidation of the self-torment that comes with regret for how he was as a life partner. I assume that details of Su's life in China as a writer and the climate at the time were not fully explored for obvious reasons, but it is an element that feels unrealized. Nonetheless, this memoir is jolting enough to make one ponder that fatal turning point in history and the importance of freedom of organization as we face events occurring around the world today.

[Tama · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a pretty heavy book that can make you feel like shouldering some of the authors burden..I was impressed by his candor, especially concerning his spiritual quest,and his marriage. Su Xiaokang survived the Tiananmen Square massacre and began a new life in the U.S.-- Shortly after his wife and son reunite with him in America,they are in a terrible car crash that injures the entire family.Su's wife,Fu Li,sustains the greatest trauma and awakes from a coma with severe injury to her brain. The story returns to the past as a means of understanding the present. Leaves you wanting to know more about this family and how life is for them today.

[Marcy Auguste · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book. Seems to be too sad in places to want to finish. Very uplifting in the end. One thing I can never figure out about these Chinese writers. They always say, I don't know if I deserve the guilt I am feeling. I wonder always what that means to them. Why would you want to feel guilty? Great story about a true period of time for many people who were there in China during the uprising.

[Nich · Rating 3 out of 5]

Things I liked:
1. I learned that there were Chinese political exiles living in different parts of America following political riots and protests in the 80s. I had never really heard or thought about what might have happened to the people involved in Tianamen Square, or the Chinese who have rebelled against the authoritarian regime. I also hadn’t given much thought to the communities of Chinese immigrants, even though I grew up in the northeast where there are many.
2. I wasn’t expecting to be able to relate to Su Xiaokang, and it was, for the most part, difficult to completely understand him or his situation. However, when he talked about the loneliness he experienced, it was moving.
“...solitude is unbearable because the emotional props enabling one to confront the world are taken away. The price for maintaining solitude is psychotic eccentricity. ...solitaries does not mean freedom from the worry of fame and gain, the relief from responsibilities. The sense of security in being away from the crowd. No, solitary ness is the impoverishment and emasculation of the self, an internal withering and further loss of the sense of security. The individual is submerged in - and at the same time protected by - the collective. The choice of not being submerged entails a simultaneous loss of protection.”

[Kongfutea · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am really impressed by Su’s honest writing and the fate of his family.