Paper Daughter: A Memoir - Softcover

Mar, Elaine

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0060930527 ISBN 13: 9780060930523

Publisher: HarperCollins, 2000

Synopsis

When she was five years old, M. Elaine Mar and her mother emigrated from Hong Kong to Denver to join her father in a community more Chinese than American, more hungry than hopeful.

While working with her family in the kitchen of a Chinese restaurant and living in the basement of her aunt's house, Mar quickly masters English and begins to excel in school. But as her home and school life--Chinese tradition and American independence--become two increasingly disparate worlds, Mar tries desperately to navigate between them.

Adolescence and the awakening of her sexuality leave Elaine isolated and confused. She yearns for storebought clothes and falls for a red-haired boy who leads her away from the fretful eyes of her family. In his presence, Elaine is overcome by the strength of her desire--blocking out her family's visions of an arranged marriage in Hong Kong.

From surviving racist harassment in the schooIyard to trying to flip her straight hair like Farrah Fawcett, from hiding her parents' heritage to arriving alone at Harvard University, Mar's story is at once an unforgettable personal journey and an unflinching, brutal look at the realities of the American Dream.

About this title

Review:

"A moving account of a young woman's struggle to shape her identity and imagine a future she can call her own. Against the odds, M. Elaine Mar emerges whole, and the story she tells is unforgettable." -- A. Manette Ansay, author of "River Angel" and "Sister" "Elaine Mar tells a truly fresh story about the Chinese American experience. Imagine moving from the cosmopolitan city of Hong Kong to the white-bread environs of Denver and the cultural chaos that would create! I'm still thinking about the contrasting images of the fat Buddha sitting on top of the TV, of lunches of chicken bone marrow and dinners of Spaghetti's, and of Bible school lessons and a mother who continues to worship a pantheon of restless spirits." -- Lisa See, author of "Flower Net" and "On Gold Mountain" "Elaine Mar's writing is so immediate. I don't think I have ever read a better depiction of the pain resulting from being wrenched Out of one culture to be shot into another. No one who reads "Paper Daughter" will ever be able to look, at the workers in their favorite Chinese takeout in quite the same way again." -- Bruce Edward Hall, author of" Tea That Burns" "This intimate portrait of a young girl's journey from Hong Kong to Denver and eventually Harvard is so vividly drawn that the reader can almost taste the flavors of the foods prepared in the family's restaurant kitchen and feel the words of new language forming on the tongue. The richly textured prose demonstrates that Mar has become a virtuoso of the very language she struggled so hard to adopt." -- Linda Katherine Cutting, author of "Memory Slips"

From the Author:

In simplest terms, I got tired of lying about who I am.
My mother was horrified when I decided to write this book. Writing was for rich people, she said, not the likes of us, a family of Chinese immigrants accustomed to jobs in sewing factories and restaurant kitchens. She thought for sure that when I called myself a "writer," I really meant that I was unemployed. "Can't you find a job anywhere?" she asked. "What about McDonald's? You can work the counter--you went to Harvard, you speak English.

I did not take offense. I grew up in a Chinatown of sorts, an insular ethnic community whose locale only happened to be in Denver, Colorado, smack-dab in the middle of the United States. Our isolation was defined by culture, rather than city blocks. None of the adults in my parents' generation spoke much English. Every year we celebrated lunar calendar holidays at a social club whose banquets were an excuse for gambling. And until I, myself, left for college, I didn't even know that university-educated Chinese American professionals existed. How could my mother understand the life I've discovered since then? How could my friends understand the life I lived before?

I wrote this book because I got tired of lying about who I am, because I wanted to give voice to a community that has been silent, because I wanted to tell my family that I have not forgotten.

Although she can't read the words, I sent my mother several copies. She called last week to tell me that she'd received them. "I only recognize one word," she said, and pronounced very carefully, in English, "daugh-ter."

About this edition

• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0060930527
• ISBN 13: 9780060930523
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 292