Are you hungry for a good book? How about a book that
is a gourmet banquet for even the most ravenous reader? Truong's writing is a sensuous literary feast; it makes one want to
read it aloud, to devour each word, to hear it and taste it, just like
Linda, who longs for a certain word "like it was a spoonful of
peach cobbler."
Yang chronicles tales of her
Chinese heritage woven with her own life story. The beauty of her language and
her illustrations are breathtaking: weeping willows, cypresses, and ancestral
burial ground as elegant as calligraphy.
Belle studied art in Beijing at
the Academy of Traditional Painting where she moved to hide from her California
boyfriend, a stalker, nicknamed "Rotten Egg." After Tiananmen, she moved back
to her parents' home in Carmel, CA and began listening to her father's family
stories. She retells them with beautiful brushstrokes of her pen and brush: the
life and death of her Manchurian great grandfather, the wealthy
family patriarch, Famine, Wars, family feuds, Misery, Anger and, finally, the
Solace of mediation through Buddhism and Taoism. Her poetic storytelling made me yearn for
my childhood home, friends and family. This poetic eulogy memoir will make your
heart sing and forget its sorrows.
