The Believers by Janice Holt Giles

My mother is very interested in Kentucky history and literature. A couple of months ago, the local library hosted an event which featured an actress performing a monologue based on the life of Mary Settles, the last Shaker at the Pleasant Hill Village. Although I had visited Shakertown as a child and I remember owning a doll from there that had a smiling face on one end and a frown on the other end. It's hard to explain and I don't have the actual doll for a picture and I do not recommend doing a search for "Naughty nice doll" on Google images, because even with safe search on, I got some pretty weird hits.

I didn't know much about the Shakers before the dialogue. I knew that "Simple Gifts" and "How Can I Keep from Singing" were Shaker hymns, that they had sent aid to Ireland during the potato famine, and that their name came from movements in their worship services. The monologue was enlightening, since it told both the story of Mary Settles (who was abandoned by her husband at Shakertown) and the history of the Pleasant Hill village, as well as the overall history and beliefs. The monologue painted them in a very positive light, pointing out that they were very progressive on social issues like race relations and equality for women and that they also took in orphans. The Shakers required celibacy from their members and didn't allow private property for full members. In a nutshell, it was a very Utopian society that's lasted for a surprisingly long time. Mary Settles died in 1923 and was the last of the Kentucky Shakers, but there is still an active village in Maine with three members (and yes, there's a website.

I'm not going to go into Shaker history or beliefs very much, since I don't know enough to really discuss it and even if I did, there's so much to discuss. I recommend a little research, though, because it is fascinating and I plan to do more eventually.

The Believers gave a much less favorable view of the Shakers. It takes place in the late 1700's and early 1800's and is the story of Rebbecca Fowler who marries Richard Cooper, the son of her neighbors. Rebbecca and Richard had been friends since childhood and Richard's parents were slightly more prosperous than Rebbecca's family. Richard is a serious, devout, hard-working man and when they marry, his parents give them some of their property to build their house and start a farm, as well as two slaves, Sampson and Cassie, along with their daughter, Jency.

The first few months of their marriage are idyllic, but then their first child is stillborn, which is devastating to both of them. While trying to cope with his grief, Richard attends a revival and decides to follow one of the ministers to form a new settlement. As Rebbecca is getting used to this change, a few Shaker missionaries arrive and Richard decides to join the Shakers. Rebbecca, believing that her place is with her husband, follows him, albeit with misgivings.

The Believers takes a long, hard look at the realities of the Shaker environment. While most of the full members are very devout, they're nowhere near perfect. There is pride and ambition, as well as the difficulties that come with forcing a group of people to live in close quarters. The women in Rebbecca's "family" (actual families are separated and divided into church families, where the children are raised separately and the men and women are segregated) formed a fairly tight bond, but there was also significant conflict among the women. A lot of them chafed at various aspects of the religion. Giles did a wonderful job of showing the problems encountered when a large group of self-sufficient adults are suddenly forced into a highly disciplined environment.

The one problem I had with the book is that it was very much a product of its time. The slaves played a significant role in the book and Giles's treatment of them was probably progressive for when it was written (1957), but reading a book about an extremely racist time written in a very racist time... Well, I believe Giles did her best to portray the slaves positively, but the slaves, especially Jency, still came off an inferiors who needed someone to guide and care for them.

In spite of the problems, I enjoyed it. I also found out that The Believers is the third book in the series. I plan to read the rest of the series as well as doing more research on the Shakers. I'd also love to visit Shakertown over the holidays, since some of the events on their website look amazing.

Naomi by Junichiro Tanizaki

She was born with dissipation in her veins. It was fated that she'd turn out this way, despite your attempts to rescue her. -Naomi, 199

Now do you see how frightening I can be? -Naomi, 231

I've been on an Asian literature kick lately, due in large part to the East and Southeast Asia Challenge. I checked out a copy of Please Look After Mom and after that, I'll probably branch out for a bit.

Naomi (or Chijin no Ai, A Fool's Love, in Japanese) couldn't be more different from The Makioka Sisters, which makes sense, since they were written at different points in Tanizaki's life and focus on dramatically different subject matter. While The Makioka Sisters was written in the 1940's and focuses on the daily life of an affluent Osakan family in decline, Naomi was written in 1924 and focuses a modern girl in Tokyo. Tanizaki was more progressive in the 1920's, to the point that Naomi, which was a newspaper serialization, was actually pulled from Osaka's Morning News due to controversy over the portrayal of Western style dancing.

The plot of Naomi is relatively straightforward. It seems influenced by The Tale of Genji (an older man attempts to groom a young woman into a perfect wife) and a precursor to Lolita (older man suffers for his obsession with younger woman). Joji, the narrator, meets Naomi when she's 15 and he's 28. She's a hostess at a cafe, the daughter of a family who runs a brothel. In her mother's own words, "We were going to make the child a geisha...but she wasn't interested, and so we were obliged to send her to the cafe. We couldn't just let her go on playing."

Joji is an engineer who lives frugally and enjoys a good reputation at work. In fact, he's known as a gentleman, though he dismisses this by saying "Still a country bumpkin at her, I was awkward with people and had no friends of the opposite sex, which is no doubt what made me a 'gentleman.'" Taking all of this into account, his interest in Naomi, due most to her Western-sounding name and her "Eurasian" features), shouldn't be that surprising.

Joji rejects the idea of a traditional marriage, both because of the complicated nature of Japanese marriage negotiations and because he rejects the trappings of traditional married life. In his words:

The best approach would be to bring a girl like Naomi into my home and patiently watch her grow. Later, if I liked what I saw, I could take her for my wife. This would be quite enough; I wasn't interested in marrying a rich man's daughter or a fine, educated sort of woman.

And so, with the consent of Naomi's family, he brings her to life with him, provides her with English and piano lessons, buys her clothes, and overall takes the steps needed to turn Naomi into the perfect modern wife. Of course, it comes as no surprise that things don't work out according to plan and the Joji suffers for it.

Joji should be an utterly despicable character and, despite the fact that the entire story is told from his point of view, in fact doesn't come off as a particularly sympathetic character. However, neither does Naomi. In spite of everything, Joji comes of as less predatory and more misguided. There's a sense of immaturity and social awkwardness and that, rather than a progressive view, seems to explain his rejection of a traditional marriage. Naomi quickly becomes spoiled and lazy in her new situation and Joji, despite seeing Naomi's negative traits very early, goes along with the everything despite realizing very quickly that Naomi spending more than he earns and that their "fairy-tale house" is quickly become a nightmare, with half-eaten food and dirty underwear everywhere.

The most interesting part of the story, to me, is Joji's lack of self-awareness. His problems with Naomi might have occurred because trying to change another person and turn her into your ideal never works out. However, his attempts to turn Naomi into the perfect sophisticated and respectable wife might have failed because he isn't the urbane gentleman he thinks he is. Naomi easily deceives him not because of some extraordinary power over his, as he wants to believe, but because Joji has already deceived himself.

Jia: A Novel of North Korea by Hyejin Kim

A lump of anger burst in my chest. My parents had broken the rules, but what did they do that was so bad? - Jia by Hyejin Kim

I was a little sick this weekend, which was bad news in a lot of ways (I missed a Darjeeling tea tasting I was really looking forward to and, well, I was sick which is never a good thing), but on the plus side, I got a lot of reading done. In addition to finishing Gold Boy, Emerald Girl, I also read Jia: A Novel of North Korea.

This is another book I picked up because of the East and Southeast Asia Challenge and since this is my third country, it actually means I've met the bare bones criteria for the challenge. I plan to continue with it, though. I actually have my eye on Please Look After Mom for South Korea.

Jia is the story of the daughter of a girl who born outside a North Korean mountain prison where her grandparents and sister were sent after her father was imprisoned for his criticism of the government. Her paternal grandparents smuggle her out in an attempt to reunite her with her maternal grandparents. Jia's mother was a famous traditional dancer and her paternal grandfather was a high-ranking army official. Jia grows up in an orphanage in Pyonyang and becomes a successful dancer herself, taking part in the 1989 World Festival of Youth and Students. Unfortunately, despite her talent, her family's status as a member of the reactionary class not only limits her ability to advance, but also her freedom.

I can't help but compare and contrast Jia to The Vagrants. Both take explore similar societies and show the problems faced by the average person in the societies. The Vagrants was a much grittier read and the brutality and hopelessness were always at the forefront. In contrast, Jia was set, for the most part, in a more affluent part of society. Though the influence of the government was always very clear and though the brutality and poverty are just as horrifying (if not more), it seems to exist between a thin veneer of prosperity and normalcy.

Perhaps the most horrifying part of the novel (worse than the torture of prisoners, the disease and poverty face by the beggar children called the kkot-jebi or "flower swallows," and the trafficking of women) is the fact that many North Koreans flee to China. That's right. The lives of North Koreans are so horrible that they consider life as an illegal immigrant in China to be a step up.

As with The Vagrants, Jia is well-written and absolutely worth reading, but also utterly wrenching. For my sanity, I plan to avoid novels about communist governments with long histories of human rights violations for the near future, regardless of how worthwhile they are.

2011 Challenges

Chinese Literature Challenge

Runs: February 3, 2011 to January 23, 2012

Requirements: Read at least one Chinese book and write a review.

Current Level: Merchant (1-3 books)

1. The Vagrants by Yiyun Li

2. Gold Boy, Emerald Girl



East and SouthEast Asia Challenge

Runs: January 1, 2011 to December 31, 2011

Requirements: Read at least three books from three different countries.

1. China - The Vagrants by Yiyun Li

2. Japan - The Makioka Sisters

3. North Korea - Jia: A Novel of North Korea

4. China - Gold Boy, Emerald Girl

5. Japan - Naomi

6. South Korea - Please Look After Mom

7. Japan - Quicksand



Japanese Literature Challenge 5

Runs: June 1, 2011 to January 30, 2012

Requirements: Read at least one book.

1. The Makioka Sisters

2. Naomi

3. Quicksand