Face

by Aimee E. Liu

In her piercing and pignant fictional debut, Aimee Lee crosses continents and generations, from New York's Chinatown to pre-war Shaghai, to tell a tale of a young woman trapped between two worlds.

Genres: Fiction, Asian Literature

368 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1994

Reviews

[Zefyr · Rating 4 out of 5]

Secretly, she was saying, the Butterflies used to envy me because I was real American. "If you'd stayed around, we might have been friends."

I mouthed the conventional wisdom, said those differences never should have mattered.

"No," she agreed, "but if they didn't, there would be no Chinatown."

[devi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Every twist had me on the edge of my seat. A beautiful story detailing grief, repression, and love.

[Noreen · Rating 5 out of 5]

A reminder of the power of a photograph. Both old and new.

Difference between Western and Eastern way of looking at life. Page 340: I picked up a rock covered with barnacles and slippery green threads of seaweed. ....the underlying stone with riddled with holes. The doctors said Dad's body was riddled with cancer. This stone would go on a lot longer than that, supporting all this life in spite of the holes. If it were my mother, she'd be like the stone. Let the disease grow, consume her, and yet perversely, turn it into the very fuel that kept her moving, shoving everything and everyone out of her way. Because she'd been damaged she would feel entitled, but because she was entitled, she would never have enough. She would demand the impossible. To be whole, unspoiled, constantly renewed. To refill the holes and disguise them. And then remake history.

My mother didn't have cancer, but she bore her share of shame, which she treated in just this way. A very Western approach. American. If you don't like what's happening to you, dismiss it. Don't run from it but over, around, or straight through it. That's what Gramma Lou meant when she said, Mum paid more attention to the obstacles in her way than what she was aiming for....My mother must have had secrets that dated back long before Dad. But she kept going.

My father's response to shame, just like his response to his cancer, was typically Chinese. Swallow it, tamp it down, sink with the weight of it. What had been done to him he kept on doing to himself until it became a reason to quit. To hide. But never point a finger. Never blame or complain or admit to pain. Better to disappear than lose face. The cancer would succeed in killing my father but it would not claim the victory of his death.

...In the end the stone's ongoing life, its survival beyond either of my parents, depended on everything but the riddle of holes. On the contrary, each empty space represented a cancer that had been cut out and discarded. The tracing was a scar, a memory. That's all.

Neither Western nor Chinese but a combination and something else entirely. A third possibility.

Once the cancer is surgically removed, the memory and the possibility of recurrence will remain forever, cannot help but remain as essential ingredients of character, but when the imminent danger is gone it possible to carry on. Not to keep reconstructing what is dead and rotten. And not to reject the sorrows of the past or the lingering fear, but to use them to move forward.

Michelle Norris said "There is often grace in silence, but there is power in understanding."

[Gato Negro · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautifully written; the details of the [spoiler alert] remembrances of her rape were diffuse enough where I knew, or at least I thought I knew what the main character's nightmares were about, but I wasn't entirely certain. The author's attention to detail with regard to photography, the juxtaposition of the Chinese and American cultures, the pain and anguish of her father's guilt and illness...amazing stuff here. I look forward to reading more of this writer's works. They have each been a sincere pleasure thus far.