Kitchen God's Wife (The Perennial Collection) (Flamingo S.)

by Amy Tan

[nannah]

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 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.