This is a wonderful memoir-type of book about the complicated relationship between mother and daughter.
When Elaine was growing up, her mother told her Why do you need prepare for the good things to happen? They’re good. They won’t hurt you? My job is to prepare you for the hard times, and teach you how to avoid them, whenever possible.”
Elaine’s approach is neither traditionally Eastern nor conventionally Western. However, this book explains how a mother raised her daughter drawing on Chinese fortune-telling, feng shui blackmail, ghost stories, and shame and embarrassment in equal measure.
Also Elaine has discovered and come to recognize the hidden wisdom and immeasurable value in her rather unorthodox upbringing.
This is an uplifting book that will help the reader to also reflect on her upbringing with her mother or father. Parents seem to have strange ways of bringing up their kids. And kids are always critical of their parent’s upbringing styles. However, there is a lot of wisdom that parents convey to their children.
I find it really hard to believe why it takes us so long to realize all the important lessons. I too had such a strange upbringing with a Russian/Ukrainian upbringing. Lui’s book made me laugh and cry as I too commiserated with my own upbringing and how similar it was not so much in content as in style.
Thank you Elaine Lui for such a wonderfully powerful and uplifting book. Your book encouraged me to also pencil my own story and all my own peculiar upbringing moments.
Rating: 5 stars
Reviewed by: Irene S. Roth
Irene Roth's Canadian Book Review Blog 