nwasianweekly.com
March 27, 2004
Join the Northwest Asian Weekly for its second annual Rainbow Bookfest:
Celebrating Authors of Color at Union Station, Fifth Avenue and Jackson
Street in Seattle, on April 24, 2004. This year’s event will feature
a poetry slam, workshops for kids and many new workshops featuring authors
of color. Visit www.rainbowbookfest.com.
A quick look at books
Reflections
of Seattle’s Chinese Americans: The First 100 Years, co-edited
by Ron Chew and Cassie Chinn. Published by Wing Luke Asian Museum, 2003.
This book will make you laugh and cry. A multitude of histories of any
place bear exploring, and this is the history of Chinese in Seattle. It
represents the collective work of many, many talented contributors and,
most of all, the gift of story from 102 interviewees.
Co-editors Chew and Chinn steward the second edition of the much loved
Reflections from a decade ago. The first edition sold out of its 2,200
copies within a year.
The format, rendered by publication designer Abe Wong, is simple and powerful
— a photograph, the place of birth, the dates of birth (and sometimes
death), a carefully edited monologue along with each person’s Chinese
name. The portraits reveal lives of struggle and accomplishment, pride
and pain, circumstance and fate, clarity and decisiveness. The editors
have wisely maintained the aural feeling of original voice in the text.
Soldiers, housewives, fishermen, traders, musicians — it’s a
democratic effort in which every story is created equal.
Reflections is sure to become a classic of oral history. Sometimes the
stories flourish with detail and the characters pop off the page. Other
times, the narrator’s experience seems to flatten to a whisper, as
if life has been reduced to the dim sound of in-and-out breathing.
For context, there is a narrative by Doug Chin that traces the days of
the gold rush to the present in Seattle’s Chinatown. It begins: “If
gold had not been discovered in California ...” The end of the meticulously
wrought essay reminds the reader that (many) of the people within the
book’s pages owed their existence in Seattle to simple villagers
who left Toisan a long time ago. Both eloquent and timeless, Reflections
connects the beads of history like a string of shining pearls. —AMS
All that is Gone, by Pramoedya Ananta Toer. Published by Hyperion
Press, 2004.
One of the greatest pleasures of my childhood was spent sitting on a porch
on hot dark summer nights, hearing the crickets chirping and listening
to my grandmother’s stories. Pramoedya’s collection of autobiographical
short stories brought back those wonderful childhood memories for me.
This fictional memoir of life in pre-war Indonesia begins with Pramoedya’s
early childhood memories. His home is initially filled with visitors,
servants and extended family. But joyous scenes are soon replaced by secrets.
The father becomes more absent for reasons that are not clear, and the
mother cries and prays far into the night as she awaits his return. Tension
gradually increases in the home, as well as in his small town.
Then war breaks out as Indonesia tires of Dutch rule. Pramoedya’s
stories describe the effect on the family. After all the unspeakable horrors
and hardships of war, victory eventually arrives, but with unexpected
outcomes. Victory for the people means being able to sell their goods
at the market, but the new government has its own demands, which do not
include improving the lives of the people. In an ever-spiraling circle,
new revolutionaries rise to replace the existing power, and the people’s
sense of calm is destroyed again and again.
Pramoedya’s genius in painting scenes of unimaginable cruelty followed
by acts of pure humanity draws us in. It’s impossible to remain dispassionate.
Pramoedya has been called “Indonesia’s Albert Camus,” and
it is easy to see why. His stories are powerful cries for peace and justice.
Everyone, but especially world leaders, should read his stories next time
they consider war as the only alternative to peace. —CPR
Ann-Marie Stillion can be reached at annmarie@nwasianweekly.com.
Carmen Palomera Rockwell can be reached at scpnwan@nwlink.com.
Send
correspondence to:
Northwest Asian Weekly • P.O. Box 3468 • Seattle •
WA 98114
Tel: 206.223.5559 • Fax: 206.223.0626 • Email: scpnwan@nwlink.com
Please bookmark this site: www.nwasianweekly.com.