The invisible bonds between people
Farida Shaikh goes through some spirals of culture
The Hundred Secret Senses
Amy Tan
Harper Perennial
The Hundred Secret Senses makes one comprehend the hidden resources within each one of us. We all have senses that are many in number, buried deep within our psyche, that we are often not aware of. We all experience gut feelings; we are able to sense that which is not obvious to our ordinary senses.
Amy Tan unfolds 'a series of family secrets that question the connection between fate, beliefs, hopes, memory and imagination and the natural gift of our hundred secret senses.'
Amy Tan's highly successful work, The Joy Luck Club (1989), was made into a movie for which Tan wrote the screen play and was nominated for best screenplay award. The Kitchen God's Wife (1991) also received much praise. Soon after Tan was labelled by some 'womanist' readers 'as mother daughter expert.'
Four years later her third novel, The Hundred Secret Senses, was not as popular as her earlier works. The publisher viewed the writer as 'refreshing… she …gets better and better with her story telling! This book was a lot more authentic. Kwan Li was such an intriguing character who had much more depth as you got to know her.'
So to erase the stigma of a typecast writer, Tan took a tangential turn to break away from matriarchal narrative, and focus on the intercultural --- conflicting and blending --- relationship between two half sisters, connected by a common father; the pragmatic, totally American Olivia Yee, a photographer, and the mystical Chinese Kwan Li with yin eyes who communicates with the dead. Much of the narration, in contrasting typical American English and Chinese English, makes both personalities vivid and lively. Interestingly, one sister sees the actual through a camera while the other sister uses her secret senses.
The novel has two story lines, one set in contemporary San Francisco and the other in Guilin, Changmian, meaning never ending song, in South China with representations of a different history and a different reality and 'at times, semi-autobiographical rendering of historical experiences specific to the twentieth century, most obviously the Sino-Japanese War 1937-45 and the Cultural Revolution 1949.'
Tan writes about 'invisible bonds between people,' their identities, 'whether foreigners had feelings that were entirely different from those of the Chinese people. Did they think all our hopes were stupid?' '…in five ways she… Miss Banner, could sense the world like a Chinese person. But it was always this sixth way, her American sense of importance, that later caused trouble between us… Kwan and Banner. Because her senses led to opinions and her opinions led to conclusions, and sometimes they were different from mine.'
The blending of culture and psyche is clear, for the American mother would like to be like Luis Rainer who portrayed O-lan in Pearl S. Buck's The Good Earth and the five year-old sister would be like 'a slanted eye version of Natalie Wood in West Side Story' in future. Both modelled their 'hopes after actresses who spoke in accents that weren't their own.'
Kwan and Libby-ah, Olivia, '….are connected by a cosmic Chinese umbilical cord that gives the same inborn traits, personal motives, fate and luck.' For 'Kwan there are no boundaries among family … everything is open for exhaustive dissection,' like what is spent during vacation or what is wrong with one's complexion.
In terms of content, modern marriage leads to 'trivial disappointment. Sure, in some ways we were compatible --- sexually, intellectually, and professionally. But we weren't special. We were partners, not soul mates, two separate people who happen to be sharing a menu and a life.' The expected synergic effect is missing and Olivia thinks that '…Our whole wasn't greater than the sum of our parts. Our love wasn't destined. …That's why he had no great passion for me.'
To salvage Olivia and Simon's marriage from going through a divorce Kwan tells Libby-ah of her dream, a sweet tale of love of a bank robbery where everybody's money and Olivia's heart are stolen. She finds it difficult to stay alive. So the bank president loans her his heart with no interest charge. He is Simon. Kwan says this is love between Olivia and Simon, so the thought of divorce is to be ruled out.
Tan's terrific sense of humour, also labeled as 'gutsy humour', comes in 'Ben's parents live in Missouri…misery' and in Olivia, who is referred to as Libby-ah like Gaddafi's Libya. '…his thin patch of hair looks like an advertisement for anti-static cling products…' 'I found mole, big as my nostril, found on what you call this thing between man legs, in Chinese we say yinnang, round and wrinkly like two walnuts? Scrotum, yes- yes found big moles on scrotum!'
Use of Chinese English ('…I have something must tell you' and 'Yin people want come…') are frequent. Kwan did not become Americanised with time. She is proud of her ability to speak in English and corrects her husband 'not stealed… but stolened.'
And 'cavi-ah what's that? ..... you know fish egg ….. O have, have……..Cavi-egg, crab-egg, shrimp egg, chicken-egg all have.'
There is reference to little Yiban who speak in many Chinese dialects, Cantonese, Shanghainese, Hakka, Fukien and Mandarin. There is mention of the various tribes --- Punti with more yellow river Han blood, Zhuang fighters, one village against another village and one clan against another clan. Kwan belongs to the Hakka Guest people----farmers on the mountain. Hakka women are strong, with naked, not binding feet.
Tan makes distinctions between many kinds of love in relationships. There is tragic love and uncertain love between parents and siblings; and selfish love between sweethearts where love is given to be taken back.
There is love that comes with a person's American sense of importance .It is a sort of illness. This is different from love in the Chinese sense. The Chinese message is '…. The world is not a place but the vastness of the soul. And the soul is nothing more than love, limitless, endless, all that moves us towards knowing what is true.' And it is a myth to suppose that love is nothing but bliss, for '…. It is also worry and grief, hope and trust.'
Kwan disappears in the caves. She is not dead as Libby-ah never sees her dead. Kwan believes and communicates with the dead ones. Libby-ah realises that this is possible: 'And believing in ghosts --- that's believing that love never dies. If people we love die, then they are lost only to our ordinary senses. If we remember, we can find them anytime with our hundred secret senses.'
The Hundred Secret Senses tightly links the 'Chinese past and the Californian present,' and the lesson learnt is the reconciliation of the 'two world.'
Farida Shaikh is a free- lance writer.
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