The Kitchen God's Wife

Oh, wow. I fell in love with Amy Tan’s writing and The Kitchen God’s Wife within the first few pages. Due to personal experience I can’t handle books dealing with abuse, but I could not stop reading this one. No wonder Amy Tan is as celebrated as she is! I’m definitely going to check out what else she’s written.

Content warnings:
- ableist c slur (intentional)
- fatphobia
- r slur
- abuse, especially domestic abuse -- the book has a LOT OF THIS; proceed with caution
- rape
- racism in the mother’s PoV (referring to “those tribal people” in China & more)
- intersexism
- casual cissexism
- homophobia

Representation:
- almost every character is Chinese

For more than fifty years, Winnie and Helen have kept what happened about their lives show more in China a secret. But Helen threatens to reveal everything to Winnie’s daughter, Pearl, because she fears she’s dying. Winnie is determined to tell her daughter everything first, and to tell it all right -- as Helen would get it all wrong. So she tells her life story to Pearl: from her mother leaving her to live with her negligent aunts on an island to her abusive husband to her immigrating to America. Little does she know Pearl has a secret of her own to share.

Most of the book except for the chapters near the front and the end are in Winnie’s PoV, where she’s telling the story of her past. The others are in her daughter’s, Pearl’s. You could say the story is about her life in China, her hardships, what she overcame, but I believe it’s about the relationship between mother and daughter -- even if we don’t see them interact many times throughout the book (in comparison to the scenes when they’re alone; when Pearl doesn’t exist yet; etc.).

It’s Amy Tan’s way of crafting and writing about this mother-daughter relationship that really hooked me, Winnie’s relationship with Helen’s (which I believe was described as something that’s not quite best friends but a bond stronger than sisters), and her understanding of chronic pain when it comes to Pearl’s secret -- that she has MS. A couple pages really hit hard.

But like I said above, I usually don’t read books that contain a lot of abuse. I just can’t read it for obvious reasons. But I couldn’t put this down, and … I’m not sure if maybe the abuser here was just … so much like mine and it was like staring into a fire and being unable to stop or if it was just that captivating.

There were, of course, things I didn’t enjoy, mostly the fatphobia present throughout the entire novel, and then especially the intersexism, which seemed to come out of nowhere, interrupt everything, and make me feel absolutely disgusted with who I am. The intersexism (as well as homophobia) is present on just two pages -- that’s it -- but wow, did it make me sick. Winnie’s ex-husband is one of the worst human beings you could imagine -- and a woman she grew up with then says, “My husband was still worse! He was a [-n intersex person].” And at first Winnie doesn’t even believe her. Then she says, “But how could Miao-miao marry you off to such a person?” and proceeds to ask about his sexual organs. Did you see them? How did you know? etc. But the worst is when the woman says she found her husband in bed with another man and says, “The female side of him had enticed a male.”

Just on two pages. There’s absolutely no need to include this in the story. To put this intersex person as being on the same level of nastiness as an abuser, murderer, etc. I don’t care if it’s still in the PoV of the mother, the author decided for some reason to add this in here. Does she think it’s humorous? I don’t know.

But that’s the only reason this is four stars instead of five. I was completely enraptured by this book. show less

When we meet Winnie Louie, she seems like a traditional Chinese wife, ruling her family with a combination of love and superstition. Now widowed, she still misses her husband, Jimmie Louie, and worries excessively about her two grown children. Winnie has secrets she has kept hidden since her youth in China, secrets she wants to tell Pearl but is afraid to.

Pearl Louie, now in her 40s, has secrets too. She has just been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, and knows that her mother will wonder what she has done to cause Pearl's illness. Most of the novel then switches to Winnie's narration and the story of her life in China. She is sent to live with relatives but then makes a terrible mistake that will fill her life with pain and misery. show more Her story is both tragic and painful to read about.

I originally read this book when it was first published in 1995 but discovered that I couldn't remember anything about it. Amy Tan does a wonderful job of making her characters realistic and every word from Winnie seemed believable. The first section was a little slow, but once we go back to China with Winnie, I couldn't put it down. It has several subplots and all of them are engaging. The characters are complex and the relationships between the women is especially insightful. While some of the scenes are tragic, I'm glad that I had a chance to read this novel once more. show less

Riveting...the book rings with distinctive voices, and it's laden with those details that make readers feel they've gained a toehold on another world.

Every time I read a book set in 20th century China I am astonished, fascinated, and heartbroken. This one captured me from the very beginning with the mother/daughter points of view chapters, then went off in a direction I didn't expect. The story itself is compelling, and the descriptions really suck you in. There's a real sense of place. You get a personal, closeup view of huge changes in a vast country. The human scale shows the impact better than figures do (in my opinion). The mother-daughter relationship feels genuine, with realistic misunderstandings, not overwrought (not just the typical ones, but those springing from the difficult relationship between immigrants and their children). There's a mixture of the extraordinary and show more the mundane that feels somehow real (as it's semi-autobiographical I don't know which bits are from her own life).

A huge part of this book is the female experience in patriarchal China. Though set after the demise of footbinding, many customs still constricted women in other ways - traditional arranged marriages, with polygyny & concubines, the expectations of femininity and class, sexual and reproductive labour (with no rights over the children), difficulty accessing divorce etc. The depiction of domestic violence, and the curious mixture of "weakness & strength" (paraphrased) needed to stay or go, felt very real. The relationships between women are beautifully shown in all their inconsistent glory. Class is very visible too, in the educational divide and the huge disparity in access to resources. show less

It’s been easily 17 years since I read The Joy Luck Club that I finally decided to read The Kitchen God’s Wife. In some ways, KGW is better the JLC since it focused in depth for predominately one character, Jiang Weili Winnie Louie, along with her friend Helen and daughter Pearl. JLC’s revolving 4 mother/daughter relations had less depth… BUT, I find JLC to be more impactful, because it’s more believable. Amy Tan has a tendency to throw every roadblock, crap, god-awful unimaginable events into her characters’ lives. When it’s happening to 8 people in JLC, I can appreciate it more. When it’s Winnie alone, there’s a bit of now-what?!?

Unfortunately, I find the main character, Winnie, to be simply whiny. I almost feel bad show more to call her whiny after all these bad things in her life. But her characterization is kind of hard to appreciate when she is so superstitious, strong, yet just as weak, and her stubbornness in acquiring the divorce paper that resulted in the final rape and beating from her first husband.

I also thought the book has loose ends in Helen’s character – a bit of friend vs. frenemey. While the book wrapped with her as a supposed true friend, there are unexplained motives to all her other incorrect memories and pain that she caused Winnie throughout the years.

In the end, by throwing too much into the history of these ladies, I think Amy lost sight of her writing. It was still an easy page turner. But the only good thing that I’m drawing from this book is that I am finally ready to read “The Rape of Nanking” – a reality that I’ve avoided thus far.

A few quotes, and some of which are more like truths that I am far too familiar with:

The duty of a “good” Chinese daughter does for her family. --- After years of manipulation, I moved two states away to avoid this supposed duty.
“When we were first married, Phil used to say that I was driven by blind devotion to fear and guilt.”
“Whereas nowadays – today, for instance – I’m not really sure why I still give in to my family obligations. While I would never admit this to Phil, I’ve come to resent the duty.”

Winnie starts her story with this quote.
“It is the same pain I have had for many years. It comes from keeping everything inside, waiting until it is too late.”
~~I wish for no one to have pain in their lives, but for just as many, holding the pain inside is simply the norm.~~

I had smiled reading this. At work, it’s called risk mitigation. But apparently, it’s bad luck to plan for bad events.
“I am only saying we must be practical. This is wartime. We must feel with our hearts, but also think with our minds – clearly all the time. If we pretend that dangers are not there, how can we avoid them?”
“How can you say these kinds of bad-luck words to poison everyone’s future?”

An expression of love and care, from Gan (an admirer) to Winnie.
“You see yourself only in a mirror. But I see you the way you can never see yourself, all the pure things, neither good nor bad.”

Stereotype X 2 – This made me chuckled a bit too.
“Just beyond Changsha, we drove past hills with rice terraces cut into them. This is the kind of China you Americans always see in the movies – the poor countryside, people wearing big hats to protect themselves from the sun. No, I never wore a hat like that! I was from Shanghai. That’s like thinking someone from San Francisco wears a cowboy hat and rides a horse. Ridiculous!”

About the horrors in Nanking:
“Raped old women, married women, and little girls, taking turns with them, over and over again. Sliced them open with a sword when they were all used up. Cut off their fingers to take their rings. Shot all the little sons, no more generations. Raped ten thousand, chopped down twenty or thirty thousand, a number that is no longer a number, no longer people.”

Finding love in each other, a kind of forbidden love (since Winnie was still married to the bad first husband), but love nonetheless.
“To see his face! The joy on his face! We said no words. He took my hands and held them firmly. And we both stood in the road, our eyes wet with happiness, knowing without speaking that we both felt the same way.”

Love in a simple, joyful, pure, uncomplicated expression:
“Why take a picture of me in a nightgown, my hair all messy like that? Your father said it was his favorite picture. ‘Winnie and the sunshine wake up together,’ he used to say. Every morning when I woke up, he was already awake, looking at me, telling me that. There was a song he sang to me. ‘You Are My Sunshine.’ He sang it many times, every morning.”...... (After making love for the first time) And afterward he kept his arms around me, afraid to let me go. “So that’s why your father liked this picture. In the morning, I was still there. I was his sunshine.”

Between Winnie and her daughter Pearl regarding Pearl’s multiple sclerosis , from Pearl:
“I was relieved in a strange way. Or perhaps relief was not the feeling. Because the pain was still there. She was tearing it away – my protective shell, my anger, my deepest fears, my despair. She was putting all this into her own heart, so that I could finally see what was left. Hope.”
~~I am a firm believer in hope; Pandora box be damned. :P ~~ show less

It's been over a decade since I reread this, and I still love it. I always wonder at first about the dual narrator/framed story, but it works--because this is a story Winnie tells to Pearl. I love the complexity of Wei-wei and Hulan's friendship, the sortung out of fate and luck, the perseverance. The losses still hit hard. The hope still hits hard too.

his was written later than The Joy Luck Club, and I think that definitely shows in the quality of the writing and the structure of the novel. The sometimes cloying sentimentality of that book is not as much in evidence here, and the way the storyline falls into place is much more easy to follow.

The pacing of the book is very, very slow, however. It's 400+ pages in a large format paperback, but feels much longer. In some respects, I liked this; it allowed us to see more of the world of China in the 1920s through to the 40s, which is really unimaginably foreign to me. I like how Tan shows us how the Chinese way of thinking informs their culture and vice versa, because that's certainly one of the aspects that most people from western show more cultures have a hard time comprehending and getting their head around. In many more ways, though, it irked me; the beginning was much too slow and ponderous, and large sections of Winnie's story could have been filleted out without making any substantial difference to the storyline.

I never particularly found myself caring for the characters, either. Winnie/Wei-lei was certainly a strong and independent female character, of the kind I normally feel very strongly towards. However, I found myself almost skimming over one of the climactic scenes of the novel involving Wen Fu's final attack on her, and really not caring one way or the other what happened to her. That's not what the emotional outcome for the reader should be after investing the time to read nearly four hundred pages.

Tan's prose is still clear and elegant and a pleasure to read; I can't see myself picking up another one of her books, though. show less