Jean Rivard - University of British Columbia

Books in Review
the subjection of mature selfhood to the
"confines" of one's cultural past and skin
colour. Just as he asserts that the individual
can choose to be racialized, Bissoondath
stresses that each Canadian is free to
choose between "continuing to be what
one's parents have been" and the "psychological
revolution" he has enjoyed, in coming
to a lighter dependence on one's
heritage "to guide or succour." Because
Bissoondath constructs ethnicity and
"race" as an individual matter of choice,
multiculturalism as public policy is, a
priori, flawed.
More ominous is Bissoondath's corollary
that voices identifying systemic racism in
Canada are "crying wolf," and that the most
effective way to eliminate racism is for individuals
to counter it with "an immediate
challenge." Bissoondath decries the "culture
of victimhood ... the threads of which
stitch themselves through the ideas of multiculturalism."
Having constructed parameters
of ethnicity that do not exceed
individual responsibility Bissoondath must
then denounce the social reality of victimization.
Such a construction also facilitates
his comparison of the call for "punitive"
redress of past injustices with "arguing that
the victims of torture must be allowed to
torture their torturers."
Restoring a different canvas of the past,
The Concubine's Children tells the family
stories of three generations of Canadians,
living in China and Canada, largely in the
voice of May-ying, the concubine of the
title. Sold by her "Auntie" in 1924, Mayying
joins her husband Chan Sam in
Canada at the age of seventeen, to spend
the rest of her life supporting his "at-home"
family and the children May-ying and
Chan Sam eventually have together. One of
these children is Winnie, Chong's mother.
Fading family photos (included in this volume),
a trip to China, and her mother's
reluctant story-telling spark Chong's
curiosity about her family. These events
also return as elements in Chong's retelling
of May-ying's life as a waitress in the tea
rooms of Chinatown in Victoria and
Vancouver.
In recounting the "daunting" side of
weaving together family history, Denise
Chong explains: "The truth becomes a
landscape of many layers in an ever-changing
light; the details depend on whose
memories illuminate it." Chong explains
that choosing an omniscient narrator was
her way "to be true to the individual lives of
the family." As I read this text, the powerful
voice of the narrator seems, rather, to
detract from the layering of the stories'
truths, smoothing the seams almost out of
sight. As well, Chong's modulation to the
first person in recounting her own part in
the saga may heighten the tendency of
readers to depend on The Concubine's
Children as historical evidence, and compromise
the very constructedness of history
that Chong is determined to emphasize.
Happily, the stories carry enough urgency
and vigour to maintain the dissonant quality
of individual memory.
The multicultural reality of Canadian
society, and the gentle rousing of academia
to greet non-mainstream writing is widening
the audience for texts like The
Concubine's Children. But readers cojicerned
that the policy of multiculturalism
is spawning a body of literature which glorifies
an ethnic past need not bring such
worries to this volume. Chong acknowledges
her attempt to "find the good among
the bad, and pride among the shame of
[her grandparents'] past." Yet she refuses to
edit out the unlovely in her heritage, letting
shame and pride co-exist in these
pages. In a measured, almost detached
tone, Chong relates the social and personal
complexities among early immigrant
women who created communities of survival
in an environment insistent on arbitrary
standards of ethnic and moral purity.
As in other accounts of witnessing and con-
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