Huamei Han, whose poetic English feels like Mandarin, sets her stories in China after the Cultural Revolution.

The young narrator, Lin Yongxue (Sing the Snow's Praise), searches out glints of tenderness as she toughens herself to the daily brutalities of life among people who dare not ask for more than the body's survival.

"You stupid clumsy rice bag! You never stop shaking! Grandma screams. "Ai, old heaven! I owe the old; I owe the young.
What evil did I do in my previous life?"

-- an excerpt from "Grandma"

 

National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication Data

Edition: 2nd Canadian ed.
Names: Han, Huamei, 1970-

Publisher: Toronto: Life Rattle Press, c2005
Series: Life rattle new writers series 1200 5266 23

ISBN: 978-0-9735201-2-4
Classification: LC Call no.: PS8615.A55T73 2005 C813'.6 C2005-906132-44
Subjects: 1. China-History-Cultural Revolution, 1966-1976--Fiction
I: Title. II. Series.