My Half of the Sky

My birth was a handicap for our family.  Sure, our late leader Mao Ze Dong had said:  “Women hold up half the sky.”  But that just wasn’t so.  A girl leaves her house to marry into another family.  She doesn’t pass her family name to her children.  She doesn’t care for her parents forever – giving them money when they can no longer work, leading their casket to the other side of the River of Sleep, visiting their gravesites twice a year with spirit money, good foods and love.  A man does all these things.

In the beginning paragraphs of Jana McBurney-Lin’s coming of age novel, the recent normal school graduate, Li Hui introduces her plight as a modern day female child in a Chinese society that has traditionally undervalued half of their people.  Much to her father’s dismay, Li Hui has been offered a teaching position in a village in Sichuan Province – a position which destines her to poverty and the likelihood of a low marriage.  As the story progresses, Father has intentions of financial gain through dealings with Madame Matchmaker who has found a wealthy Singaporean family interested in a country bred daughter.  Meanwhile naïve little Li Hui begins to experience the world around her and meets Chen Chan Hai, a young quarry worker in the village.  Chan Hai is that special man who loves flower shops and special tastes – a sensitive young man with urgency for experiencing everything around him.  

I want a shop like this when I grow up.  He laughed at himself.  "I’m good with flowers.  I especially like mixing them and making new hybrids.  They’re beautiful and much more resilient." He wiped imaginary dust off his arm.  “What about you?  What do you want?”  No one talked like this, about dreams.  Father would never think to ask.  Mother would laugh at such foolishness.  But coming from Chan Hai, I wasn’t surprised.

Love – young, pure and ultimately unrequited love.  Father arranges the marriage for a profitable exchange; Guo Qiang, proves to be a disinterested, hard-drinking husband who reminds her with every encounter that she is his and will stay that way.

McBurney-Lin tells a wonderfully entertaining story with the traditional coming of age theme (which is experienced universally) and weaving in the cultural challenges of growing up in China’s rapidly changing social system.  Throughout the novel, family is treasured and approval is desperately needed, and yet the very ties that bind mimic those on the bound feet of women – they break, they strangle, they restrict and cripple those who desire them the most. 

Throughout the novel, Li Hui diverges from the happenings in her day’s encounters to give charming details of people she meets and things she sees.  She gives names to all those of importance near to her but gives role titles to others thus saving the reader the burden of sorting out who is who.  Recognizable examples include Little Emperor and his father, Mr. Overindulgent, New Neighbor, College Boy, Colleague, Mother-In-Law, Creased Shirt, Man In Blue, Mr. Palm Reader, and Mr. Dumpling.  Of special importance is Madame Paper Cutter whose insightful mentoring is woven throughout the novel through her legacy of gifting a phoenix paper cut which Li Hui turns to whenever she needs to rise from a frustrating situation.  Madame Paper Cutter is a wise old sage who anticipates the hardships this young woman will experience in her transformation from a compliant tradition-controlled daughter to a woman who is productive and fulfilled in a modern and changing society.  Included in the vignettes are simply told classic folk tales many of which parallel Li Hui’s plight of being married to a stranger and craving the charms of a passionate lover.

Jana McBurney­-Lin is working on the sequel to My Half of the Sky and so leaves the reader ready for the continued saga by closing with this passage: 

I hurried down the hall, begging Madame Paper Cutter’s phoenix to give me energy.  To let me fly.  Voices surrounded me.  “Come home.”  “Your father will meet you at the airport.” “I’ll be waiting,”  “Come home.”  But I couldn’t return to the clutches of Father.  I couldn’t return to the village.  I saw that clearly now.  No life existed for me back there.  No job.  No baby.  No lover.  Nothing.  Chairman Mao Ze Dong had said women hold up half the sky.  But with all respect, he was wrong.  I couldn’t hold up any of the sky in my village.  With my family.