I know that I said I was going to read A Long, Long Way, but it just didn’t grab me. I made it all they way through the first chapter and went, “Eh.” But the idea of that book sound interesting enough that I might go back it sometime.
So, now I’m reading The Joy Luck Club, one my favorites that I haven’t read in a long time. What I’ve always liked about Amy Tan is way that she can make Chinese and Chinese-American culture come to life. She can recreate the naunces of the language and the everyday philosophy of China. It’s incredible. I’ve never seen anyone that can analyze their own culture in such a way that things get explained without a lot of expository prose that bogs the story down.
Whenever I encounter a book where the characters are from a completely different culture from me—every Amy Tan book I’ve read, John Burdett’s books about Detective Sonchay Jitpleecheep, or Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart—I find myself reexamining my position on cultural relativism. In the main, I think that all cultures (with a few exceptions) are equally good. If they work, they’re good; if they don’t, they need to get replaced with something that works. But some of the ideas in Chinese culture that get portrayed here (like daughters-in-law being servants to their inlaws, teaching girls to “swallow sorrow,” etc.) disturb me. But on the other hand, listening to pop psychology and such makes me think that everyone needs to learn to swallow a little sorrow and stop whinging about their lives and go and change the things they don’t like.
I always come back to the same position, though. Any culture that isn’t your own is going to seem weird. You often don’t understand how people in other cultures think. And people in other cultures probably think the same thing about us. With some exceptions, I think that all cultures and cultural practices are equally valid ways to live.
But I do like books that make me reexamine my ideas about things. I think it keeps them fresh. And it keeps me on my toes, so that if cultural relativism comes up in conversations (and I work in academia, so this sort of thing happens to me more than most), I can succinctly argue my position.