Family by Pa Chin

revolution.
tragic.
enlightening.

I read this book for my world lit class. It was really difficult for me to get into it, I think because of the names; they were hard for me to pronounce and I kept confusing them in my mind because they were similar to each other.

I was downtrodden by much of the deep sadness in this book. The only good thing, for me that came out of it was to gain a better understanding of the lives of people in China before modernization finally occurred. I'm not sure who had it worse--the wealthy women, or the servant women. And the men were just that--men--trying to make good choices according to culture and the knowledge they possessed but making a mess of everything in the process. In the end there was hope but only after wading through much tragedy.

That being said, I know this piece of work was warmly embraced by the new generations in China during Pa Chin's time and I commend him for breaking the mold and shedding light on this difficult topic. I think he did a great job poetically portraying both the good and bad. It certainly isn't because of his writing that I give this book only two stars, but because of the content.  It is definitely out of my comfort zone of good ole pop fiction (;

2 out of 5 stars