Inheritance [Paperback]

Several years ago, Lan Samantha Chang's magical and marvelous novella and short story collection HUNGER explored the sense of alienation, loss, and generational disjuncture of the immigrant experience in America. With INHERITANCE, she joins the ranks of Amy Tan, Anchee Min, Hong Ying, and Ha Jin as fictional chroniclers of Chinese history and the bridges Chinese people have constructed between their home country and America.

Lan Samantha Chang has crafted in INHERITANCE a sweeping novel whose characters lives' shadow the arc of 20th Century China, from the earliest days of the Republic to the modern era. Passing through the Japanese invasion, the Communist Liberation, the Cultural Revolution, the Taiwanese diaspora, and the opening to the West, the book moves from tranquil Hangzhou to war-torn Chongqing, from the temporary home of Kuomintang hopefuls in Taiwan to the permanent concession of the KMT's loss represented by the United States.

Ms. Chang's first full-length novel follows the fortunes of the Wang family through three generations and beyond, from old Chanyi to her daughters Junan and Yinan and then to their daughters Hong and Hwa and one son, Yao. While Hong provides the narrative voice (and the source of the existential question framed by the novel's title), her mother Junan is the novel's focal point, the eye of a family storm generated by her own choices as well as historical events beyond her control. The triangular relationship between Junan, her husband Li Ang, and her sister Yinan spawns unintended consequences that profoundly affect each other's lives and those around them.

Just as modern China is both the victim and inheritor of its own past, Ms. Chang's characters are the product of their respective pasts, inheriting character traits and the after-effects of embittered relationships from those who came before them. The author raises the question of who we are as individuals, and how much of our lives are directed by our inheritance from the lives and events of our parents and grandparents.

On one level, INHERITANCE can be read as a multi-generational family saga dominated by the force of will of one member. From this viewpoint, it is a story of parental and conjugal relationships, about broken trust and willingness to forgive.

Yet on another level, the book mirrors the story of China itself, with the major characters representing the different Chinas of the 20th Century. With her partially bound feet and superstitions, old Chanyi represents the last of imperial China. Junan, her oldest daughter, is the Republic, rigidly bound to tradition but striving for independence. Bookish Yinan represents the philosophical foundation of Communist China, the carefree militarist Li Ang represents Chiang Kai-shek's Kuomingtang, and Li Ang's brother Li Bing represents the spirit of revolution, the Communist Party in action. Daughter Hong, whose name translates conveniently as Red and who is the inheritor of this historical chaos, ultimately represents the internationalized China, integrated into the Western world in a way she could never have foreseen in her childhood.

Not surprisingly, these characters find it next to impossible to reconcile themselves to one another. Only the open and modernized Hong is truly able to accept and love her entire family, overlooking the shortcomings in each and aware of her own failings as well.

Ms. Chang creates a Russian novel's worth of intriguing minor characters who complement the major players admirably. Characters like Li Bing, Hu Mudan, Hu Ran, Wang Daming, Pu Taitai, Chen Da-Huan, and Hsiao Meiyu capture our interest in their own right, adding colorful flavor and contrast to the main characters. Her female characters are rich and fully developed, while her male characters feel moderately less so. Only the missionary Katherine Rodale and Hong's American husband, Tom, seem to fall flat, but perhaps this is Chang's commentary on the blandness of white American family life.

INHERITANCE offers an engaging story of a decidedly matriarchal family finding its way along the currents of history. Along the way, readers will absorb elements of Chinese life and culture, and a smattering of Mandarin vocabulary as well. This is a richly satisfying first novel that leaves me anxiously anticipating Ms. Chang's future works.

The story begins when two young girls accompany their mother to a 'fortune teller' who also is a nun at a Buddhist temple. Changyi who is 34 years of age, knows she must give birth to a boy to keep her husband from acquirng another wife. The nun tells her truthfully, some women have only girls, and some women learn to share their men. She also reveals the fortunes of the two daughters. Changyi feels hopeless and we learn she later dies an early death due to her grief. The two daughters, Junan and Yinan, although different physically and temperamentally, grow very close after their father takes on a new 'mistress' an addiction to gambling. He is a wealthy cotton merchant who goes into debt because of this. Several generations live in the family home, including his mother, who has a position of honor and great prestige. When the girls' mother was alive, they had a very loyal servant, Hu Mudan who helped raise the girls into young adults. After their mother's death, she became even more indispensable and valuable in their lives. Much later in the story she plays a very important role in the life of one of Junan's daughters.

Communism was challenging Nationalist China for supremacy and power just when Juan and Yinan were approaching the marriagable age. Junan entered into an arranged marriage with a soldier Li Ang who was a Nationalist. It turned out to be a "love match" just as predicted by the fortune-telling nun. His brother, Li Bing, who studied at the University, was influenced by the new ideology of Communism and took the view of the opposition. As the political tides turned, Junan gradually sold off her valuables in hopes of escaping the conflicts and difficult future ahead in her war-torn country. She gave birth to her first child, a daughter, Hong, and later to another daughter she named Hwa It seemed the family curse to bear only daughters was reoccuring in her life. Having developed great survival skills Junan came up with a unique solution to the concern she had that her husband might take up with a mistress. Her solution would later haunt her in unexpected ways ...

As war broke out, politics, complex social and emotional relationships and loyalties tested this family to the max. They separated for their own survival. Junan emigrated with her two daughters to Taiwan and later to America. It is amazing how the author developed the themes of love, lust, and politics which divided this family and how despite geographical and emotional distance, she wove together their lives toward the end of the story. The author very neatly showed how the very problems which separated this family helped them unite and bond at the end. The author showed how the younger generation sought to renew the ties of the past which were severed by distance and time but not by feeling. Junan's sister, Yinan and her husband Li Ang remained in China throughout the Communist era. Junan's daughters Hong and Hwa built new lives in the USA. The past haunted them in unimaginable ways. Some astonishing circumstances related to their old servant, Hu Mudan, created the ability for them to make peace with their past relationships in China. This is a highly charged emotional novel which will hold the attention of readers who love complex social and family relationships that are resolved within a history and cultural context. Erika Borsos (bakonyvilla)

In traditional China, girls were valued less than boys. If a woman failed to give her husband a male heir, she lost face and possibly her man to a woman who could bear sons. Hong, the narrator of this familial saga struggles with her role as a female caught between two worlds and two cultures, resisting a history of devalued women until Communism turns centuries upside-down and changes the face of China.

The writing is exquisite, as finely wrought as the Chinese characters on a page of poetry, Chang perfectly attuned to the lives of these women, their fierce attachments and rigorous self-control in a country in the throes of tremendous upheaval. Each generation speaks its truth through female characters, Chanyi, Hong's grandmother, Junan, her mother and Yinan, her beloved, if eccentric aunt. Hong speaks of her grandmother, whose heart is broken because she cannot bear a son. Chunyi passes this legacy on to her daughters, the beautiful Junan and the quiet, introverted Yinan. The country is in such turmoil that Junan cannot have the marriage she imagined, but must adapt to a constantly changing landscape that she cannot control.

This is China lived from inside the Revolution, the only hope of starving people, desperate for survival and resentful of the leaders who live freely off their labor. Junan's husband, Li Ang, is a Nationalist soldier, his brother, Li Bing, a Communist, the two men's political beliefs clashing, but the brothers drawn together by stronger ties of blood. By 1940, the family has left their home in Hangzhou for Chongquin, one of a succession of moves to escape the violence, their world altered by the Occupation and the rigors of war: "The past three years the city had bloated like a tumor with the new people, their soldiers, their bureaucrats and their refugees".

Chang's characters inject life into history, peopling the pages with passion, despair, aspirations and the bonds of blood. Seen through the viewpoints of individuals, the past becomes a presence, the animation of humans caught in a tidal wave of political and societal change. The innocence of youth is soon corrupted by war, the scars of personal indiscretions and the desperate love between those who cannot find peace within themselves or with each other. But there are love stories scattered among the refuse of bombed cities and lost expectations, as the old ways disappear and the land is overtaken with a new sense of purpose. Affection reaches beyond political agendas, lovers grasping a few moments of peace among the chaos: "She held in her hands a piece of his desire. Without it he was crippled." Others love one another "with the cruelty of frightened people. I hurt him with information and he wounded me with secrecy."

A rich tapestry of faces, dreams and the urgencies of war, Inheritance is a quietly powerful novel reflecting a family in constant flux, their emotional ties scoring the heart of the woman who wistfully relates her family history: "We can never understand our children or our parents. Perhaps it is this ignorance that gives each young generation the confidence to live." Luan Gaines/2005.

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