A story that tells us about the question everyone who has lived in a different country asks themselves, especially those that are born in another world than their parents or who moved there when they were little. Do I belong to the country where I live or to the country that my passport shows.
This is a story about a Chinese family in New York who moves "back" to China. My children have lived in different countries all their lives, the youngest wasn't even born in Germany. And while the difference between several European countries is probably not as large as that between countries from different continents, I know they don't exactly feel as belonging to a certain country, they are simply "European".
This is not so easy for the chldren of Dr. Liang, they are American but their ancestors are Asian, and they have to discover the difference between those two countries.
As any of Pearl S. Buck's books, this is a highly interesting book about a culture that is quite foreign to us. But she has depicted it so well, as always. The characters are so alive and every single one of them shows us their life.
From the back cover:
"Kinfolk is the story of a Chinese family. Dr. Liang moves to America in search of a better life, but his children long to return to China. Each responds to their new life in China differently, providing rich insight into the struggles between Eastern and Western culture, and the differences between generations.
A tale of four Chinese-American siblings in New York, and their bewildering return to their roots
In Kinfolk, a sharp dissection of the expatriate experience, Pearl S. Buck unfurls the story of a Chinese family living in New York. Dr. Liang is a comfortably well-off professor of Confucian philosophy, who spreads the notion of a pure and unchanging homeland. Under his influence, his four grown children decide to move to China, despite having spent their whole lives in America. As the siblings try in various ways to adjust to a new place and culture, they learn that the definition of home is far different from what they expected."
Find other books by Pearl S. Book that I read here.
Pearl S. Buck received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1938 "for her rich and truly epic descriptions of peasant life in China and for her biographical masterpieces".
I contribute to this page: Read the Nobels and you can find all my blogs about Nobel Prize winning authors and their books here.
This does sound like a very interesting one! I feel like her books have become forgotten over the years since she won her Nobel, and that's really sad.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Lark. I think even if you are one of the newer laureates, people won't know you unless they are huge readers, and the older ones ... well, someone mentioned on her blog a book by Selma Lagerlöf, the first woman who ever received the Nobel Prize for literature and one of the comments were that they never heard of her. So, if even the bloggers don't know them, then others won't, either. And you are right, really, really sad.
DeleteSounds interesting. We have lived on several continents and it can be hard to feel like you belong anywhere, especially when people ask you where you are from.
ReplyDeleteYes, Cindy, that might be one of the reasons why she still is one of my favourite authors. Mind you, when I first discovered her, I was a teenager and had only lived in our small German village.
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