"The Chinese in America" by Iris Chang (2003)

"The anti-Chinese backlash engendered much soul -searching and debate within the Chinese American community.  The late 1990s and early 2000s saw endless, frantic discussions on how to prove one's loyalty to the United States, or whether to confront these attitudes with organized protests.  Some immigrants began to blame themselves for being too complacent - for immersing themselves in their careers and families, and not braving the risks of participation in affairs of the larger world.  On Internet chat groups and in public forums, they openly questioned whether they had been giving the right message to the next generation.  Was it, perhaps, short-sighted to discourage their children from careers in the media and the arts, careers that could influence public perception of Chinese Americans, in favor of the more anonymous fields of science and technology?  Could the putative security offered by such fields have been nothing more than an illusion?  Were they wrong to warn their children to avoid politics?  Could their own memories of repressive regimes in Asia have nudged them toward a safe haven of political apathy in the United States?"

Iris Chang is a Chinese-American author.  She began her career as a reporter, and later switched to the writing of history.  She has won numerous awards, and her most famous book is probably The Rape of Nanking, which I read some time ago.

The Chinese in America starts where you'd expect it to start: in America in the 1800s.  It then moves to a snapshot of Ching Dynasty-era China at the same time.  From that point on it advances through the history of Chinese Americans decade by decade, stopping to examine The Chinese Exclusion Act, racism against Asian Americans during World War II and more recent, racially motivated acts against Chinese Americans.

The author writes well, and with a fluid command of her subject that precious few historians possess.  Some of the typos I encountered near the beginning of this book were slightly embarrassing, but that's not something I can hold against the author.  Her arguments are always predicated on both facts and the ideals upon which the United States is, or at least pretends to be, built.

I can't say this book was consistently fascinating, but overall it's very good.  The most interesting thing about it is the interactions between American and Chinese governments.  In The Chinese in America one sees that these two countries have developed in tandem, and the modern history of China is in many ways also the modern history of America.  The labor shortages, economic upheavals and political changes in one nation were constantly effecting the other, and a kind of feedback loop developed over time.  

It's in some ways easy to see the Chinese immigrants building the Trans-Pacific Railroad as cut off from their country, but the reality was something more complex, more subtle.  I think The Chinese in America does a good job of illustrating this human relationship between the two countries, even if this relationship isn't always at the forefront of the discussion.

Compared to The Rape of Nanking, a book that's bound to provoke more extreme reactions among readers, The Chinese in America is, I think, much better.  In this book the author shows that she can write history in the absence of racially-charged atrocities, and that her understanding of the subject exceeds what's usually supplied by propaganda.

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"The Sea, the Sea" by Iris Murdoch (1978)

"We are such inward secret creatures, that inwardness is the most amazing thing about us, even more amazing than our reason.  But we cannot just walk into the cavern and look around.  Most of what we think we know about our minds is pseudo-knowledge.  We are all such shocking poseurs, so good at inflating the importance of what we think we value."

Iris Murdoch was a British novelist and philosopher.  She was raised in Ireland and studied philosophy at Cambridge.  She was awarded the Booker Prize for The Sea, the Sea during the year of its publication.

In the novel James Arrowby, retired actor and director, moves to a small village in the vicinity of London.  Tired of previous amorous adventures and wanting to pursue a more contemplative mode of existence, he nevertheless seeks romance with an old flame.  His misunderstandings with various women inform much of the plot, and throughout the novel his idealizations of these women and their circumstances contend with the larger social reality he inhabits.

The book starts out well even if it's on the slow side.  I liked the meditative nature of the protagonist's personality and his way of recollecting younger episodes in his life.  He's arrogant and egotistical, but this seems a given when one understands his career on the stage up to that point.

What I had trouble with was the turning point which comes about 1/4 of the way into the book.  After this point the protagonist seems to exceed himself, and his behavior becomes erratic in the extreme.  His behavior, in other words, seems very inconsistent, and the other characters' behavior exhibits this same inconsistency as the book progresses.  You would think character A would never do action B because that is one of his defining traits, but no, character A goes right ahead and does action B because... reasons.

After a certain point this aspect of the book makes the plot seem arbitrary.  The characters don't act in accordance with the way they're introduced, and as a result everything starts to seem very random.  It's as if the author was just smashing this cast of characters into an established plot, regardless of whether their roles in this plot are in harmony with what they as people would actually do.

With this in mind no, I wouldn't recommend The Sea, the Sea.  It's just too frustrating to bother with.  Yes, it won the Booker Prize, and yes, a lot of people like it, but it either lacks a feel for its characters, or the author does a bad job of explaining why her characters do what they do - I really can't decide which it is.

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"Cotton" (a.k.a. "The Ballad of Lee Cotton") by Christopher Wilson (2005)