Community Library Notes
“The Kitchen God’s Wife” by Amy Tan is the story of a large Chinese family and the culture thatmakes themwho they are. Pearl is invited to her cousin Bao Bao’s engagement party for his fourth fiancé. She has to go; because Aunt Helen has already counted her for the tables to come out right. Pearl’s husband Phil, is upset that he has to drive to San Francisco from San Jose on a weekend with heavy traffic. He married into this crazy family, he thinks.
Pearl has MS and tires easily. She has not told her mother. It is one ofmany secrets we, the reader, will learn. It is also the day of Great Auntie Du’s funeral. Pearl goes to hermother’s and aunt’s flower shop, the Ding Ho Flower shop. Her mother believes logic is an excuse for accidents, tragedies and mistakes. She has created beautiful bouquets for the party and the funeral.
The engagement party isworse than Pearl expected. Her mother and aunt Helen argue over everything. Her mother tells Pearl’s daughters the story of the KitchenGod’s wife, who reports on everyone’s behavior, and decides who deserves good or bad fate. Grandma gives the girls an altar and they take it home as a toy. Pearl feels the distance between her mother and herself.
Tan tells the reader that when Pearl and her brother Samuel were little ones, their mother Winnie thinks she should have married Lin. She doesn’t tell Helen of her mistake. It’s like choosing a fish froma tank. You don’t know until you have tasted it. One of many Chinese proverbs.
When Winnie came to the United States, she felt she could put all her secrets away and start a new life. She sponsored Helen as her sister-in-law, married to her half-brother Kun who had died as a young man (not true, another secret). Winnie decides to tell her daughter Pearl everything, to have no secrets. Her first husband was Wen Fu, and he was Pearl’s father. When Winnie was 6 years old, her mother left their family. Winnie remembers her in 10,000 different ways. She is stillwaiting for her to return.
Winnie tells Pearl how she and her friend, Peanut, went to the marketplace on the New Year and met Wen Fu. He was attracted to Peanut and bought her things she desired. Winnie carried their notes back and forth to each other. Wen Fu decided he loved Pearl instead and proposed to her. He was charming and shewed him. Shewas happy, though not in love with him.
Her aunts tell Winnie’s father aboutWen Fu’s business, exaggerating. Father thinksWen Fu will be a goodmatch for his daughter. The next day, his senior wife takes Willie shopping for her dowry. Everything bought was first class: furniture, bedding, china dishes, silverware and the best chopsticks. For some reason, Willie hides the chopsticks in her bag. Someday she may need them.
Willie and Peanut become close friends again. Peanut tellsWillie she has heard that business families sell their ancestor portraits to Americans and English people. This is a terrible thing. Wen Fu joins the Chinese air force under Clare Channault. They live in a monastery with other recruits. Wen Fu makesWillie do and say things a proper lady does not do or say. Willie meets Helen, then called Hulan, who was married to a vice-captain and was “fat like a steamed dumpling.” They take baths together and go to the tea house. Hulan’s husband is kind to her. They trade secrets from then on. Wen Fu is popular with the other men, though they are afraid of himand his temper.
At Christmas, 1941, a dance is held to celebrate Chennault’s Flying Tiger’s defeat of Japanese planes, with food, drink, and dance music. Willie meets Jimmy Louie, a ChineseAmerican man who translates for the Information Department. He changes the names of the women there into American names: Peggy, Sally, Suzy, andWillie’s into Winnie. He called herWin-Win. And he namesWen Fu as Judas. Then he asks her to dance.
When she got home, Wen Fu beat her and she decided to divorce him. But when she ran away, Wen Fu found her and made her miserable for many years. But eventually, “the stupid chicken flies out of its cage.” She and Jimmy Louie made plans and lived together. Her father gave her three gold pieces, and she had her valuable silver chopsticks that she had saved from her dowry.
Does their happiness last? DoWinnie andHulan find each other again and renewtheir friendship? Find this heartwarming novel with Amy Tan’s other books at your Mendocino Community Library when it re-opens.