Generations and Misconceptions

Title: The Bonesetter’s Daughter
Author: Amy Tan
Publisher: G. P. Putnam’s Sons
Publication Date: 2001
Rating: B+

Amy Tan’s novel The Bonesetter’s Daughter explores the frustrations of a generation now dealing with ailing parents. But intermingled with this story is the history that is passed down from generation to generation, specifically between LuLing Lui and her daughter Ruth. Ruth finds their roles have reversed due to LuLing’s bouts of dementia, and she really knows very little about her mother’s past.

Tan brilliantly displays LuLing’s childhood through documents she’s written for her daughter. The reader gains a glimpse of the hardships LuLing and her biological mother had to endure in China. Many puzzle pieces fall into place for Ruth when she finally sheds light on her mother’s past.

But it is Ruth’s character that makes this novel fall short of a masterpiece. Her overly compensating nature is most times annoying. Sandwiched between the stories of LuLing’s past is Ruth’s relationship struggles with her mother and her boyfriend Art. These moments pale in comparison to Tan’s prose describing China in the early part of the 20th century, the philosophies and superstitions of the characters and their actions in response to these superstitions.

Thanks Kurt

Title: A Man Without A Country
Author: Kurt Vonnegut
Publisher: Seven Stories Press
Publication Year: 2005
Rating: A+

Recently on Jon Stewart’s “The Daily Show,” Stewart commented to Kurt Vonnegut that A Man Without A Country was like having an intimate conversation with the writer. He was right on point. For decades Vonnegut has drawn laughs and cringes from his readers with his wit, sarcasm and imagination. He’s created worlds with horrific parallels to the world in which we live, holding a mirror up for us to see the ugly step-sister, the one no one wants to look at or acknowledge.

In his latest work, Vonnegut manages to put into words the thoughts, fears and frustrations of a large number of Americans. His diatribe regarding the current administration and the country’s use of fossil fuels is brilliant, infused with his signature humor. At eighty-two years old, Vonnegut is still as formidable a writer as when Slaughterhouse-Five was first published. Bravo, Vonnegut, bravo.

Cycle of Life

Title: One Hundred Years of Solitude
Author: Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Publisher: HarperPerennial
Publication Year: 1967
Rating: A+

Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s masterpiece One Hundred Years of Solitude not only carries the reader through the birth and death of the fictional town of Macondo, but also celebrates the birth and death of the Buendia lineage.

This story is about how history repeats itself, always circling and circling until the end becomes the beginning again. This is a story about the snake that ate its own tail. Fantasy and facts intertwine, painting the walls of the Buendia home in Macondo. The children never know what to believe and what not to believe because the storytellers tell all their stories in the same voice, with the same face, no matter how extravagant. Marquez modeled this mode of storytelling after his own grandparents, who shared with him their own superstitions and family histories.

For over one hundred years, the Buendia family is marked by passion, death and incest. The siblings, aunts and uncles have children, each carrying the names that have been passed down for generations. The names have been passed down for so long that by the time the last children are born and named, their ancestors are only mystical characters. Inhabitants of the town question their ever existing.

When reading this book, one gets the feeling that they’re reading the same story over and over again. The transfer from parent to child on and on of the same Buendia characteristics adds to this sense. But as the family lives on – mostly oblivious to the changes in the outside world – the town of Macondo is changing. From its humble beginnings when it was originally founded by Jose Arcadio Buendia, to its days of prosperity then of war, to its swift ending, the only constant in the town is the Buendia family.

“The history of the family was a machine with unavoidable repetitions, a turning wheel that would have gone on spilling into eternity were it not for the progressive and irremediable wearing of the axle.” From years of solitude was finally born (as predicted by Ursula – the family’s original mother) the product of incest and passion: The last born child bore a pig’s tail. The axle was worn. The solitary nature of the Buendia family eventually led to its demise. But not without providing many, many years of glorious stories and people, filled with life and color.