User:Book2010/Butterfly Tears by Zoe S. Roy

http://www.librarything.com/work/10293308

Short Story Collection

Butterfly Tears by Zoë S. Roy http://sites.google.com/site/zoesroy/

Published by Inanna Publication and Education Inc. 2009 http://www.inanna.ca/butterfly_review.html

Overview

Butterfly Tears is a collection of short fiction that depicts the experiences of Chinese immigrant women facing the challenges of life in a new country. The stories are set in different parts of China, Canada, and the United States and examine Chinese women's cross-cultural experiences in North America as well as women’s issues and political discrimination in China. The stories, or parts of stories, set in China give the reader interesting glimpses into events such as the Cultural Revolution and Mao’s death. In the title story, an ancient Chinese legend about two lovers and memories of a violinist who commits suicide during the Cultural Revolution haunt a young woman who fears her husband is having an affair. Leaving her abusive husband, a woman and her young son in A Beaten Mandarin Duck move to New Brunswick where they form a new family with a visiting professor from China. Twin Rivers tells the story of a female engineer who ends up in jail as a result of her love affair with a married man. Feminism and changing male/female relationships form another important theme that runs through many of the stories.

A witty presentation of Chinese women’s experiences in Maoist China, Canada, and the United States, the women in these stories are haunted by their past in China as they struggle with the challenges of life in a new country. Written with clarity and preciseness, these stories are deliciously symbolic. —Li Zeng, Associate Professor of Chinese Studies, University of Louisville, Kentucky, The United States.

Zoë Roy’s collection of short stories, Butterfly Tears, is compelling at a number of levels. The fifteen stories are poignant and sensual, as Roy’s characters find their way through the webs of complex relationships and the demands of both urban and rural environments. Drawing out the experience of migrants to North America from the China of the era of the Cultural Revolution, these stories also form an exploration of the subtle consequences of immigration, the gains and the lingering sense of loss. That the main characters are women, and women in whom vulnerability and strength coexist, adds a gender dimension to a collection in which the food and the secrets of its preparation continually symbolize the nuances of both painful and comforting passages of life. —John G. Reid, Professor of History. Saint Mary's University, N.S. Canada http://www.smu.ca/academic/arts/history/faculty/reid.html