Paper Shadows: A Memoir of a Past Lost and Found
by Wayson Choy
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Three weeks before his 57th birthday, novelist Wayson Choy received a surprising phone call during his publicity tour: a mysterious woman told him that he had been adopted. Inspired by this astonishing revelation, this beautifully-wrought memoir reveals uncanny similarities between the colorful secrets that enrich Wayson Choy's award-winning novel set in prewar Chinatown and the subsequently discovered secrets of his own life.Tags
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I adored Choy's first 2 novels - Jade Peony and it's sequel, and the basis of this memoir sounded so intriguing- after discussing his first novel on the radio the author gets a phone call telling him heat his parents were not his real parents. What follows is is search for the truth, but first we get his memoirs. Sadly they are in dire need of an editor. There is too much repetition and too much time spent on boring details, on the other hand, intriguing details are given a bare mention and never elaborated upon.
I have always been curious to read Wayson Choy's other book The Jade Peony, but ended up having to read this one first. I was somewhat bored by the beginning, but as it went on I got more engrossed by it (It was lucky that I had to finish reading the book as it was required by a university course, or else I would have tossed it aside long ago.)
This book, to me, is distinctly Canadian even though it talks about pre and post-war Chinatown and Chinese in Victoria and Vancouver, BC. The language is clean and very easy to read. It reminds me of Alistair MacLeod's No Great Mischief. Recommended.
This book, to me, is distinctly Canadian even though it talks about pre and post-war Chinatown and Chinese in Victoria and Vancouver, BC. The language is clean and very easy to read. It reminds me of Alistair MacLeod's No Great Mischief. Recommended.
Synopsis: An auobiography/memoir of Wayson Choy's childhood in Chinatown, Canada.
My Opinion: Quite slow at the beginning - Wayson Choy doesn't mention the adoption again until the end of the book. But it became easier to read and more engrossing around the middle.
Pages: 338
My Opinion: Quite slow at the beginning - Wayson Choy doesn't mention the adoption again until the end of the book. But it became easier to read and more engrossing around the middle.
Pages: 338
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Jun 19, 2015French
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4+ Works 1,184 Members
Wayson Choy was born in Vancouver, Canada on April 20, 1939. He graduated from the University of British Columbia in 1962. After working in advertising, he became a professor at Humber College. He taught there for more than 25 years. His first novel, The Jade Peony, was published in 1995 and received a Trillium Award and the City of Vancouver Book show more Award. His second novel, All That Matters, was published in 2004 and received the Trillium Prize. He also wrote two memoirs entitled Paper Shadows: A Chinatown Childhood, which received the Edna Staebler Prize for Creative Non-Fiction, and Not Yet: A Memoir of Living and Almost Dying. In 2005, he was named to the Order of Canada. In 2015, he received the George Woodcock Lifetime Achievement Award for an outstanding literary career in B.C. He died after suffering cardiac arrest on April 27, 2019 at the age of 80. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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- Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada; British Columbia, Canada
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- (3.48)
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- English
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