Wild Swans - 3 Daughters of China

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Part memoir, part biography, part autobiography - Wild Swans is a chronicle of the struggle and survival of 3 generations of author Jung Chang's family in the tumultuous 20th century of modern China. It is an astounding personal account of a now well-known history, facts which are at times more disturbing than fiction could ever be! 3 women, 3 generations, 3 lives - so different, and yet bound by a common thread of strength and resilience!

The first is the author's grandmother, born during the unpredictable years of the overthrow of the Manchu empire. The beautiful Yu-Fang, a valuable bargaining chip for her father, has her feet bound to increase her potential market value - and is eventually taken as a concubine by a powerful warlord, General Xue. A baby daughter is born to them, and a couple of years later, Yu-Fang is fortunate enough to be given her independence by the dying General. Overcoming the stigma of having been a concubine, she finds love with Dr. Xia - an elderly widower who overcomes strong family opposition to marry Yu-Fang, and also adopts her daughter, De-hong - the author's mother.

De-hong, the second of the 'swans' - lives through some of China's most pivotal and turbulent moments. The Japanese occupation, the struggle between Mao Zedong's Communists and Chiang Kai-shek's Kuomintang, the ascendancy of the Communist party, the initial fervor and goodwill of the  Communist movement - De-hong soon becomes an officer of the Party and marries a die-hard, principled Communist, Wang Yu. The idealism of Communism soon degenerates into an atmosphere of distrust, suspicion and persecution. The consecutive Three Antis and Five Antis campaigns, the Anti-rightist campaign, and the Hundred Flowers policy lead to widespread insecurity, hatred, denunciation and massacres of thousands. Increasingly disillusioned, the author's parents struggle to keep faith with the Party policies, until finally, they themselves become targets.

Despite the catastrophic failure of the Great Leap Forward, and the devastating famine that followed, Map Zedong's cult went from strength to strength. An entire generation of youth, including the author, was indoctrinated to believe in the god-like status of Chairman Mao. Through the horrors of the Cultural Revolution and the unrelenting, debasing persecution of her parents, the author never loses faith in Mao. The Reform through Labour campaign sees the author sent to a remote village at the edge of Himalayas - where she works first as a peasant and a barefoot doctor. Relocating later to Chengdu, she also works as a steelworker and then an electrician. It is only after Mao's death and the fall of the Gang of Four that the author is able to enroll in an university, and then finally, win a scholarship to study in the West.

To be very honest, I did not really enjoy reading this book. It did not shed any new light on China's Communist history and Mao's disastrous reign. Despite all the hardships, it is very clear that the author and her family led a fairly privileged life as high-ranking Communists - makes it a little hard to sympathize when the author talks about receiving extra food coupons during the famine which killed millions!! The author's naivety - meant to be endearing - borders on simplistic ignorance, and it was a little strange to read about the natural beauty of the villages and the view from hospital windows when there were obviously larger issues at stake!! Even her father's defiance, his admirable principled stand - it is obvious that the author idolizes her father, and the hero-worship makes him out to be a paragon of Communist virtue.

Of the three swans, the author's grandmother comes across as the strongest character. From saving her infant daughter from the General's wife, to standing up to Dr. Xia's family, and ultimately, taking on the responsibility of her grandchildren - I especially loved here little gestures of defiance like wearing her long with flowers! The author's mother, undoubtedly, had a lot of hardship - her husband's callous indifference is something no woman should have to tolerate, and her regret at the end of the book about not having any family memories could be that of any career woman today! As for the author - right to the end when she uses her parents' contacts to get a back-door entry into University, just seems like she was coasting along when there were others drowning in the maelstrom!

Very rarely do I not finish a book - but I came close with this one. I do wish the author had written only about the First Swan, her grandmother - that would have definitely been way more interesting!!

Half of a Yellow Sun

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I absolutely loved Cutting for Stone, a novel set in Ethiopia - so it was with great anticipation that I started reading 'Half of a Yellow Sun', another novel of Africa, set in 1960s Nigeria. Author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie powerfully captures the rise and tragically short struggle of Biafra to establish itself as an independent country in the southwest part of Nigeria. The name of the novel comes from the flag of the ill-fated nation, destined to become a mere footnote in the annals of African history!

In a newly independent Nigeria, Olanna and Kainene are twin sisters belonging to a wealthy and influential family. Olanna is in love with Odenigbo, a professor and an intellectual - and she leaves a life of privilege in Lagos to live with him in the university town of Nsukka. Their household includes Ugwu, a 13 year old villager, who works as Odenigbo's houseboy. Kainene, although Olanna's twin, resembles her in only 1 way - her unconventionality. Richard, a British expat in Nigeria, is inexorably drawn to Kainene's droll wit and enigmatic bearing.

The novel switches back and forth between the early 1960s and the end of the decade - the early part of the book introduces the main characters, their almost banal domesticity, but it also sets the stage for the upcoming unrest, the conflict between the Hausa and Igbo communities of Nigeria. 1966 saw coup followed by a counter-coup and the merciless, senseless massacre of thousands of Christian Igbo living in the mainly Muslim Hausa-dominated North - which directly led to an Igbo secession, and the formation of the new Republic of Biafra, and then the inevitable civil war. With Nsukka under attack, Olanna and Odenigbo flee to Umuahia with Ugwu and their daughter, Baby - and then after the fall of Umuahia, finally move in with Kainene and Richard. With a dire shortage of food and medicine, Kainene decides to trade across enemy lines...

I liked the flow of the novel - the moving across times, the comfort and luxury of the pre-war days contrasting starkly with the deprivation and desperation of the civil war. The mystery of the fallout between Olanna and Kainene - though easy to guess - adds to the tense atmosphere, but seems just a tad contrived, the easiest plot device for the sisters' estrangement. And while the prose is beautiful, the characters themselves seem to be a little flat and dry - the passion, anger, outrage and even the fear does not come across, making it hard to sympathize - they remain fictional characters, never rising into the otherwise charged atmosphere of the novel.

The civil war is central to the novel - and like all wars, has not only stories of the most degrading atrocities, but also of noble sacrifices and selflessness. The author is at her best writing about the war, about the misery and helplessness, the starvation. The queuing up for meager supplies, the heartbreak of mothers unable to provide for their children, the slow strangling of Biafra - it is all straight from the heart. Tying in the history with the fiction are snippets from the novel-within-a-novel - 'The World Was Silent When We Died' - and the identity of the author comes as a surprise, and in Adichie's own words, it makes a political point about who should be writing the stories of Africa.

Which brings me to the expats - on one side is Richard, who considers himself as Biafran, all the way across the spectrum to the pair of American journalists - both called Charles, their callous indifference a comment on the indifference of the world powers? And it is actually Richard who irritates the most - the typical expat who identifies with a 'cause', his Biafran identity seems to be a mere extension of his obsession with Kainene. The journalists are almost caricatures and while their inclusion was puzzling - Richard's passivity is really annoying.

The brutal effects of colonization, the insidious politics of divide-and-rule policies, the seeds of distrust knowingly sowed between peacefully co-existing cultures, the massacres in the name of religion, the horrors of civil war, the hatred that percolates through generations - all these strike a deep, bitter chord within me. Half of a Yellow Sun could be a novel about India and the Partition - and for me, this made a very personal connection to the novel. The not-so-obvious effects of colonization - the degradation of culture and language, the existence of 'elite' anglophones, a twisted sense of history - again, this story of Nigeria is the story of so many nations today!

Half of a Yellow Sun is not a novel easily forgotten. Despite its shortcomings, the story it tells is real and profound. The war has ended, life goes on - but the scars will always remain. May we never forget!