The Love of Lotus
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by Cynthia Waiying Wu Wilcox
Price: $17.00
240 Pages, Paperback, 6 x 9
ISBN-10: 0-9786135-8-9
ISBN-13: 978-0-9786135-8-7
Readers will enjoy this memoir about conflicting Chinese and American values in the life of a plucky woman who was born in Hong Kong in 1929. She recalls memorizing Confucian works in her classical primary education, describes surviving front-line WWII in missionary high schools, and recounts the problems of achieving higher education in the U.S., where cultural shocks were mutual. Her late marriage to a Caucasian, delayed by cultural conflicts, is a love story with striking events.
The most engaged readers will be those who want to understand the cultural basis of the generation gap between Chinese parents and Chinese-American children. This memoir, however, is also a thrilling and candid account of a traditional upbringing in Hong Kong of the 1930s, of wartime missionary education in Southern China during WWII, of immigration obstacles, of depression and of cross-cultural marriage. Historians, WWII buffs, psychologists and love story enthusiasts will snap up this book.
About The Author
The author was born in Hong Kong in 1929 in the conservative Chinese family of a small business owner. She was educated in primary school in the classical Chinese tradition, with rote memorization of poems and treatises thousands of years old. War forced her through front lines during WWI to receive a high school education in Christian missionary schools. After the war she completed high school at one of those schools and then came to the U.S. as a college student. Trained professionally as a pharmacist, she remained in the U.S. as an urgently needed professional and eventually became a U.S. citizen. During her years abroad her family became wealthy and expected her to marry a prominent Chinese man in Hong Kong. After years of personal conflict between traditional Chinese values and adopted Western values, she disobeyed her family's demands by marrying a younger Caucasian American and living in the United States. In her effort to better understand the two cultures in which she lived, she attended the University of California at Berkeley and earned a Master's degree in Asian Studies. Now preoccupied with grandchildren, she and her husband of 40 years live in Northern California where she enjoys sharing her writing experiences with others who hope to write memoirs.
Reviews
Reviewer: Midwest Book Review The memoir of female Chinese-American author Cynthia Waiying Wu Wilcox, The Love of Lotus is not only a recounting of her childhood and adult life, but also a philosophical look at the conflict between traditional and received values, and the contrast in culture between nations. Growing up in China, she received a classical education, an unusual occurrence for girls; World War II forced her removal to the Chinese countryside to attend high school in Christian missionary schools. She attended college in Wisconsin and chose to become a pharmacist, eventually earning U.S. citizenship and marrying a Caucasian. The Love of Lotus is a testimony of acute scrutiny of the meanings of faith, purpose, identity, and independence. Classical Chinese education was once meant as preparation to serve the Emperor; with China's government becoming Communist, what was the purpose of what she had learned as a young girl? Highly recommended for anyone interested not only in the story of an immigrant woman's search for balance between Chinese and American perspectives, but also in philosophy concerning that most elusive of qualities, happiness, whether from an American or Chinese perspective.
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