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All That Work and Still No Boys
by Kathryn Ma
University of Iowa Press, 2009, Paperback
First collection
awards: Winner, 2009 Iowa Short Fiction Award
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Kathryn Ma
is a lawyer and a Bread Loaf Scholar. She was awarded the 2008 Nathan
Meyerson Prize for fiction and her work has been nominated for a
Pushcart Prize and Best New American Voices. She is a first -generation
American whose parents are from Wuxi and Mengzi , China. Born and
raised a Pennsylvania Quaker, she now lives with her family in San
Francisco.
Read
an interview
with Kathryn Ma
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"Oh, in America
we don’t worry about such things as ghosts and evil spirits and all
that old fashioned nonsense.” A lie, I know it because Joe is buried
in the best section of Mesa Verde where all the Chinese want to go
because the feng shui is ideal I went to buy a plot there for Cecil and
me; all full, they told me, and then six months later Joe Liang went
right in."
Reviewed by Michelle Reale
Kathryn Ma's All That Work and Still
No Boys is a truly touching collection of short stories. Ma, a
lawyer, conjures the Chinese-American and immigrant community,
primarily in northern California, with a wide gaping eye. While some
stereotypes live on because they are based, however tenuously, on
truth, Ma does not in any way cling to them as a way of pandering to
her readers. Instead, what she offers is a fresh way of looking at
family and community and the difficulties in honoring one's culture
while at the same time being true to oneself.
She understands the brutal dichotomy of having a foot in each world and
having to figure out what's best to save and which cultural touchstones
would be okay to leave by the wayside. But it is never as easy as one
decision. In the title story, a Chinese mother needs a new kidney and
even though her son Lawrence is the best match, tradition wins out and
the mother refuses to take a vital organ from a son. "One of the girls
will be fine," she says.
The interplay between the sisters and their brother Lawrence reveal the
underlying tensions caused by the persistent favoritism Lawrence has
always gotten instead of his sisters. It deepens when the sisters feels
as though Lawrence doesn't do enough to convince their mother that she
needs his kidney to live longer.
In the story The Scottish Play two
old Chinese women who occasionally meet one another for lunch at the
Senior Center live vicariously through the lives' of their children and
grandchildren while invoking the saintly characteristics of their dead
husbands. The women constantly stick one another with verbal knives
until everything comes to an end at a Shakespeare production. In this
story in particular, Ma's wit is sharp and she is more than deft with
the barbed dialogue that the two old women lob back and forth to one
another.:
"But you are so lucky." Mrs. Liang interrupts my dreaming, “that you
have a daughter who is
willing to take you in. My daughter-in-law said that I could have their
spare bedroom, but I said no. I'd have to give up so much of my
independence."
"Oh," I say
innocently, "Mrs. Liang, did you finally learn to drive?"
Even if you know nothing about the Chinese community, you can tell that
Ma is getting it just right.
In Mrs. Zhao and Mrs. Woo, Ma
shows the survival tactics of two
immigrant women. When Mrs. Zhao must return to China, Mrs, Woo takes
her place caring for a family with children. But showing that nothing
is permanent and security is often only the recipient of the lucky, Ma
tells a deceptively simple tale of how some people must survive by
their wits.
All in All, Ma's collection of ten stories is a pleasure to read. While
the main focus may be the immigrant community, what Ma focuses on is
the one desire we all share: to be happy. In the story The Long Way
Home, Joanna questions her younger sister about a tragic event
when
they were young and the effect it has had on both their lives:
"'You're not happy anymore are you'" Joanna asks. I shake my head, no. 'It only last a moment,' she says, 'then it goes.'"
Indeed, all the
characters in this collection learn that lesson, sooner or later.
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