Wang Xuan was born in Heilongjiang, China but at age seven, she moved to the Los Angeles where she chose the name “Juliana” out of the back of a dictionary. Home Remedies is her first collection of short stories that was published last year. I picked up this book randomly in a bookstore one day as a guy who loves reading stories centered around East Asian culture or East Asian American culture.
I can't give an absolute plot summery since as the title states, This book is a collection of short stores. Much of the stories content deals with the emotional anguish of Chinese people from millennials to older people through time. I will honestly say that I didn't like all the stories that were presented but I understood the whole message that was being created in Xuan's words. Some of my favorite stores were Mott Street in July, Vaulting the Sea, Days of Being Mild, and Future Cat. Each chapter is a different story while the book is separated by various subject matters such as Family, Love, and time. Xuan writes these stories not to give an actually solution but to show how your choices effect where your life will go. Life often takes you to the a crossroad where many choices lead to endless possibilities. It's there that you must make a choice which road you want to step toward. The characters take their responsibility in many ways that effect their lives. I found that Home Remedies taught me that not everyone makes choices for their own happiness, but for the happiness of others... Maybe even for their future family to come. Some wonder around at a standstill until they choose to face the responsibility bring what could be the rest of their lives. I also felt that each chapter what like I as the reader was in a time machine that would take me to a new world in a new time with different characters. What happens in each story can be bluntly raw storytelling that doesn't give a fairytale ending however, nine times out of ten, You feel closure for the characters. Xuen's writing lastly crosses the boundary belonging to many genres. The last sector of the novel called "Time" is somewhat fantasy based: an element I wasn't expecting at all from Home Remedies. She does a good job keeping the characters well rounded considering the page length and novel size. I would overall recommend this book to those who enjoy reading short stories as well as if you're a fan of other Chinese author, Ha Jin.
No comments:
Post a Comment