Inheritance

by Lan Samantha Chang

Book Overview

Making a pact to stay together after their mother's suicide, Junan and her sister, Yinan, find their vow challenged when Junan is separated from her husband by the Japanese invasion of China and sends Yinan after him.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0393059197
• ISBN13: 9780393059199
• Release Date: January 2004
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Length: 302 Pages
• Weight: 1.32 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.4" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

Love among the ruins...

In traditional China, girls were valued less than boys. If a woman failed to give her husband a male heir, she lost face and possibly her man to a woman who could bear sons. Hong, the narrator of this familial saga struggles with her role as a female caught between two worlds and two cultures, resisting a history of devalued women until Communism turns centuries upside-down and changes the face of China. The writing is exquisite, as finely wrought as the Chinese characters on a page of poetry, Chang perfectly attuned to the lives of these women, their fierce attachments and rigorous self-control in a country in the throes of tremendous upheaval. Each generation speaks its truth through female characters, Chanyi, Hong's grandmother, Junan, her mother and Yinan, her beloved, if eccentric aunt. Hong speaks of her grandmother, whose heart is broken because she cannot bear a son. Chunyi passes this legacy on to her daughters, the beautiful Junan and the quiet, introverted Yinan. The country is in such turmoil that Junan cannot have the marriage she imagined, but must adapt to a constantly changing landscape that she cannot control. This is China lived from inside the Revolution, the only hope of starving people, desperate for survival and resentful of the leaders who live freely off their labor. Junan's husband, Li Ang, is a Nationalist soldier, his brother, Li Bing, a Communist, the two men's political beliefs clashing, but the brothers drawn together by stronger ties of blood. By 1940, the family has left their home in Hangzhou for Chongquin, one of a succession of moves to escape the violence, their world altered by the Occupation and the rigors of war: "The past three years the city had bloated like a tumor with the new people, their soldiers, their bureaucrats and their refugees". Chang's characters inject life into history, peopling the pages with passion, despair, aspirations and the bonds of blood. Seen through the viewpoints of individuals, the past becomes a presence, the animation of humans caught in a tidal wave of political and societal change. The innocence of youth is soon corrupted by war, the scars of personal indiscretions and the desperate love between those who cannot find peace within themselves or with each other. But there are love stories scattered among the refuse of bombed cities and lost expectations, as the old ways disappear and the land is overtaken with a new sense of purpose. Affection reaches beyond political agendas, lovers grasping a few moments of peace among the chaos: "She held in her hands a piece of his desire. Without it he was crippled." Others love one another "with the cruelty of frightened people. I hurt him with information and he wounded me with secrecy." A rich tapestry of faces, dreams and the urgencies of war, Inheritance is a quietly powerful novel reflecting a family in constant flux, their emotional ties scoring the heart of the woman who wistfully relates her family history: "We can never unde

Magnificent Family Dynasty 1911 - Present

The story begins in 1911 as two young girls accompany their mother to a 'fortune teller' who also is a nun at a Buddhist temple. Changyi who is 34 years of age, knows she must give birth to a boy to keep her husband from acquirng another wife. The nun tells her truthfully, some women have only girls, and some women learn to share their men. She also reveals the fortunes of the two daughters. Changyi feels hopeless and we learn she later due to her shame and grief, sh drowned herself in the lake near the temple. The two daughters, Junan and Yinan, although different physically and temperamentally, grow very close, as their father takes on a new 'mistress' ... which turns out not to be a person but a vice, gambling. He is a wealthy cotton merchant who goes into debt because of this. Several generations live in the family home, including his mother, who has a position of honor and great prestige with several servants. When the girls' mother was alive, they obtained a very loyal servant, Hu Mudan who was indispensible both to Changyi's mother-in-law and to Changyi. After Changyi's death, Hu Mudan becomes even more valuable, even though she had a son without benefit of marriage. Much later in the story he plays a very important role in the lives on one of Junan's daughters. Communism was challening Nationalist China for supremacy and power just when Juan and Yinan were approaching the marriagable age. Junan entered into an arranged marriage with a soldier, Li Ang who was a Nationalist. It turned out to be a "love match" ... just as predicted by the fortune-telling nun. His brother, Li Bing, had learned other ideologies at the University, abandoned his studies and became a prominent Communist officer. As the political tides turned, Junan gradually sold off pieces of hand-carved furniture and other valuables, converting it into jewelry and gold more easily portable wealth. She gave birth to a daughter, Hong and later Hwa ... It seemed the family curse to bear only daughters was being repeated in her life. However, Junan had highly developed survival skills and when worried that her husband might be tempted to get a mistress, she sent her sister Yinan to be his housekeeper. Whether by design or fate, Li Ang and Yinan had an affair, which resulted in a son. War broke out as politics, complex social and emotional relationships ... and loyalties were tested and the family separated for their own survival. Junan emigrated with her two daughters to Taiwan and later to America ... Although the deeply felt family dynamics of love, lust, and politics divided the family both geographicaly and emotionally ... it also bonded them together for the same reasons. The younger generation sought to renew the ties of the past ... which were severed by distance and time but not by feeling. Li Ang and Yinan remained in China throughout the Communist era ... Junan, Hwa and her husband Pu Li, and Hong built new lives in the USA. The past haunted them in unimaginable ways.

Don't Miss This One

This is a great book, which I discovered quite accidentally. It hasn't received much publicity, which is a shame, as I feel it has the potential to become a "commercial" success. This isn't a "Chick Lit" book, there is something in it for everyone - love, lust, betrayal, war, set in 20th Century China. Maybe this will win an award and get the recognition it deserves.

A powerful story, told well.

A compelling story of three generations of Chinese women during a tumultous time in China's history. I could not put it down.

A Lyrical and Deeply Felt First Novel

Several years ago, Lan Samantha Chang's magical and marvelous novella and short story collection HUNGER explored the sense of alienation, loss, and generational disjuncture of the immigrant experience in America. With INHERITANCE, she joins the ranks of Amy Tan, Anchee Min, Hong Ying, and Ha Jin as fictional chroniclers of Chinese history and the bridges Chinese people have constructed between their home country and America. Lan Samantha Chang has crafted in INHERITANCE a sweeping novel whose characters lives' shadow the arc of 20th Century China, from the earliest days of the Republic to the modern era. Passing through the Japanese invasion, the Communist Liberation, the Cultural Revolution, the Taiwanese diaspora, and the opening to the West, the book moves from tranquil Hangzhou to war-torn Chongqing, from the temporary home of Kuomintang hopefuls in Taiwan to the permanent concession of the KMT's loss represented by the United States. Ms. Chang's first full-length novel follows the fortunes of the Wang family through three generations and beyond, from old Chanyi to her daughters Junan and Yinan and then to their daughters Hong and Hwa and one son, Yao. While Hong provides the narrative voice (and the source of the existential question framed by the novel's title), her mother Junan is the novel's focal point, the eye of a family storm generated by her own choices as well as historical events beyond her control. The triangular relationship between Junan, her husband Li Ang, and her sister Yinan spawns unintended consequences that profoundly affect each other's lives and those around them. Just as modern China is both the victim and inheritor of its own past, Ms. Chang's characters are the product of their respective pasts, inheriting character traits and the after-effects of embittered relationships from those who came before them. The author raises the question of who we are as individuals, and how much of our lives are directed by our inheritance from the lives and events of our parents and grandparents. On one level, INHERITANCE can be read as a multi-generational family saga dominated by the force of will of one member. From this viewpoint, it is a story of parental and conjugal relationships, about broken trust and willingness to forgive. Yet on another level, the book mirrors the story of China itself, with the major characters representing the different Chinas of the 20th Century. With her partially bound feet and superstitions, old Chanyi represents the last of imperial China. Junan, her oldest daughter, is the Republic, rigidly bound to tradition but striving for independence. Bookish Yinan represents the philosophical foundation of Communist China, the carefree militarist Li Ang represents Chiang Kai-shek's Kuomingtang, and Li Ang's brother Li Bing represents the spirit of revolution, the Communist Party in action. Daughter Hong, whose name translates conveniently as Red and who is the inheritor of this historic