Snow Flower and the Secret Fan: A Novel by Lisa See

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

In a brilliant bit of gender stereotyping, my husband has been heard to observe of my friendships with other women that they’re far more like romantic relationships than the friendships he has with other men. Though I bristle a bit at the embedded assumptions there, I can’t deny that in some ways it’s true; in many ways my female friends really are my girlfriends, for better (our emotional intimacy and the support we provide, the feelings of inclusiveness and love) or worse (the emotional dependency, the arguments, the obligations). These friendships can be thorny, but only because they’re also complex, and I’ve always loved fiction that highlighst these complexities and complications.

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See delicately explores just these issues. It’s the story of Lily, a nineteenth century Chinese woman in a rising family, who is matched in sworn sisterhood with the Snow Flower of the title. Their relationship, a “laotong” match made just after both girls have their feet bound at age seven, is privileged among their society as one of the few relationships forged by choice rather than familial obligation. Meant to last the women’s lifetime, the laotong match is valued even above the union that’s made in marriage.

Through the course of the girls’ lifetime, we see Lily and Snow Flower progress from bright young girls optimistically looking forward to a lifetime of friendship into established heads of two very different households. Like wine, their friendship grows more complex as they age, though it’s sometimes tainted by jealousies and competition, and is eventually shattered by the growing gap in their social status. This is where See is most successful: at capturing all the nuances, from the sexual to the social, of close female friendships.

In doing so, she also offers us a fascinating and fairly enveloping look at a historical period very different from our own. Not only do we learn about the horrors of foot binding in Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, but also about nu shu, a secret women’s language through which the girls correspond. But it’s not necessarily in these edifying subjects, but in the immersive nature of the setting and the general tone of the novel that Snow Flower and the Secret Fan really succeeds as a period piece.

In fact, it was only during certain passages about foot binding, language, history, and music, that I really felt See faltered. In providing us with needlessly ample background, her tone becomes encyclopedic and pulled me out of the novel’s emotional epicenter. Now, that’s not to say that I didn’t find these topics interesting, but I sometimes felt like she was trying to prove something to the reader, saying: “HEY LOOK! I’VE RESEARCHED THIS LITTLE-KNOWN LANGUAGE! YOU’RE LEARNING! THIS IS A HISTORICAL NOVEL!”

Such insistence doesn’t do her characters or story any favors. Still, this remains a worthwhile read for what it does do well–illuminating a very special and treasured friendship, for all the wonders and dangers such a friendship offers.

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A few weeks ago, my friend Michele had this to say about race in this blog post:

It sounds odd, but I always have a hard time constructing (and by constructing, I mean imagining or tentatively writing a bad first page of a pretend novel that I then abandon) a protagonist who is, like me, half white. The dilemma is that if I don’t mention race, the reader will automatically assume she or he is white by default (which is inherently problematic), and if I mention race, then the novel suddenly becomes a commentary on race or racial identity politics or transparently autobiographical/memoir-ish. It’s really frustrating. I’ve tried just mentioning it in passing, but it just doesn’t work. And then there is a larger question of ethics–should it be the responsibility of the minority author to deal with or at least acknowledge racial issues because that is the world or experience we (minorities) live in/with? I can see why Sci-Fi or fantasy genres might be more liberating in some respects, though I imagine the compulsion to read things allegorically is much too strong.

I never thought about the implications of writing race in fiction, honestly, until I got into an online argument about the new Star Trek movie just after its release. I was objecting to the pairing of Uhura and Spock on the grounds of the established canon (I always liked her chemistry with Scotty); several black female fans responded pretty (justifiably) passionately about how thrilled they were to see a black character paired with a primary (white) character in a functioning and happy relationship. I’d thought about the importance of Uhura in the lives of young black women before, mostly thanks to interviews with Whoopi Goldberg about her childhood reaction to the character. What I hadn’t realized, in my white, privileged state, was that the same need for fans of color to see diverse and realistic characters of color is still going, by and large, unfulfilled. Writers of color are doing what they can, but I think it’s important for writers of all races to be aware of constructions of race in their novels, particularly when writing for young and impressionable readers, many of whom haven’t had the privilege of libraries full of heroes who look just like them.

(And I’ll say that I feel pretty much the same way about character sexuality. Sorry, JK Rowling, but mentioning that Dumbledore is gay as if it’s an afterthought just isn’t enough. It’s not a reflection of the world that anybody I know lives in, and it’s not fair to your young readers, or your characters.)

The heroine in Encounter at Rhea’s Point, Dee, is half-black and half-Polish. Rhea’s Point is in first person; she describes herself freely, and, though the focus of the novel isn’t a particularly racial one, I think her identity is important to her and therefore, in some ways, to the narrative. She doesn’t “just happen” to be half-black and half-Polish; even growing up away from Earth, she is defined, in part, by the differences between her and her blond, white, blue-eyed, and thin mother. That’s not to say that it hasn’t been a challenge. I don’t want to pretend like I can speak for those who have gone through life, in our society, particularly, having had the experience of actually growing up of mixed ancestry; I realize that my experiences are very fundamentally different from that. But I do the best I can, with Dee and with all of my characters: I try to make them breathe, try to make them have genuine, non-stereotypical* experiences, try to make them people and not archetypes. I don’t do it because I think it’s noble. I do it because I think it’s correct, or rather, incorrect to do otherwise.

That’s not to say that I don’t understand Michele’s apprehension. Race is such a loaded thing, and, honestly, I can’t help but feeling a little self-conscious about talking about it, even now; will my attempts to discuss my motivations seem paternalistic or condescending? Can a white writer even approach a character like Dee fairly and respectfully? All I can say is, I sure hope so. I did my best with her.

And I continue to try to do my best. Convocation, my manuscript for NaNoWriMo features an interracial group of students. Though the narrator in this case is white and Jewish (and wealthy–that’s been a real stretch for me, as I grew up pretty poor), I’ve been mindful to populate her world with important people of varied races and sexualities. With every character of a race other than mine, I try hard to make sure their race is an important part of them, not a trifling matter, because it isn’t when it comes to real life, but I try to be sensitive enough not to make race the only part of the character. In all cases, and in all respects, I want my characters to be people, and not stereotypes.

*Speaking of stereotyped characters, I recently starting watching True Blood and at first I loved Tara; she seemed like a subversion of a stereotype of an angry black woman and seemed to have such potential for depth. The further I’ve gotten into the show, though, the less I’m sure. The black characters there are a flamboyant gay drug dealer, a perpetually angry woman unable to forge healthy romantic relationships, an alcoholic who thought she was inhabited by a demon, and a practitioner of voodoo. At the very least, the characters aren’t as nuanced or well realized as the other (white) characters, which is more than disappointing.

November’s busyness has only been accentuated by NaNoWriMo; I look up and the month is halfway gone and the word count is halfway there and the MFA@FLA Writer’s Festival (which kicked my ass with its awesomeness–Chris Bachelder was stunning, and I can’t wait to buy the work-in-progress that he read from) is over and the lovely Claire Barwise’s visit is over and everything is hazy. And crazy.

I fully intend to write something intelligent soon, namely about writing race. There are blog posts I intend to respond to by doing so–of course, those are two weeks old already, and in blogland that’s a lifetime, but I keep telling myself: the writing comes first, the writing comes first.

I’ve been quiet lately, I know–not even updating Motes, for shame. It’s all because I’ve upped my daily word count goal on my current manuscript as a warm-up for nanowrimo.org (and frankly, in part because Claire finished hers, and I was jealous–jealousy can be a great motivator!). It’s had a terrific effect on the urgency and flow of the novel. Forget my goal to finish it by my 26th birthday: I should be done with it before the end of this week. It looks like it will clock in at just over 70,000 words.

Through the increased production, the characters started to run away with the plot a bit: my protagonist got all nervous about her first kiss, and somehow managed to drag out the action leading up to it; I realized that it wasn’t time for one character to die, despite the fact that I’d planned her death from the beginning. I don’t want to say something like, “It’s their novel at this point; I’m just telling the story,” because it sounds crazy. But that’s how it feels. I’m not entirely sure if this is a good or a bad thing: the writing is supposed to have control, of course, but I also want my characters to feel like fully realized people, which, I suspect, they are.

It is, of course, very rough. But, damn, I feel engaged. I’m looking forward to this feeling continuing through next month. Here’s to hoping that I’ll have three novel drafts finished before December. If 2009 was a year of writing, why can’t 2010 be a year of editing?

Speaking of which, if anyone is interested in reading either a first or second draft (depending on how unabashed I’m feeling) of this MS, at least, in exchange for offering copious editing remarks, I’d welcome that, bearing in mind that this is young adult sci-fi and probably not for everyone. Email me!