The Kitchen Gods wife " Book Review"

One of my new year’s resolutions was to start reading books. Growing up I loved to read, I cherished my library card. Nancy Drew, Sweet Valley High, Charlotte’s web… the list was endless. However with time the library card had to give way to lip gloss mascara and cell phones. I guess just like the Sweet valley twins I looked up to as a child, boys, bestfriends and life’s drama’s took over.



Now almost 30, married and a mom there’s much less drama, therefore I have come to realise I miss my long lost love of reading. After almost 15 yrs I walked into a library and got a library card. When it came time to choose I did not know where to start so I went to the first isle and did what I usually do when I’m at Mr. Video and have no idea which DVD to choose; read the back of the sleeves. After reading the back of the sleeves of a couple of books I decided on Amy Tan’s The Kitchen Gods wife ( Flamingo publishers)



The books is about a Chinese American woman (Pearl) and her relationship with her mother (Winnie), although they love one another they do not have the typical mother daughter relationship, something it seems is keeping the woman from having a closer bond. When Pearls aunt “thinks” she has a brain tumour and has a short time to live she confronts both women and tells them she can no longer keep their secrets that they are keeping from each other, she therefore is giving eachone the opportunity to tell the other, if not; she will.

The story had quite an impact on me because as Winnie told Pearl for the first time about growing up in china during the war, being deserted by her mother as child, having an arranged marriage to a husband who abused her physically and mentally all these events that stole her innocence, caused her lose trust in people, develop a tough exterior, and led to her being the person she is today. It led me to reflect on my own relationship with my mother.



There are so many things I would like to know about my own mother; why as a child she would desert our family (my father, two brothers’ and I) for month’s sometime years at a time. Why she was not like other mothers, why she did not tell us she loved us more importantly why she had so much anger aimed at me. With age the anger I had towards my mother have been replace with curiosity, why ? I realised  I only know my parternal family not much about my mothers family . Where she grew up, how was her childhood, what my grandparents were like (they died before I was born) why she has no relationship with her siblings. I want to be Pearl I want her to tell me her life story in a few hundred pages. Invite me over for a cup of tea, sit me down and reveal all to me. The most significant revelation being that she trully Loves me.



I doubt though that such will ever happen between my mother and me, but reading Tan’s book made me think maybe there’s more to my mother’s story. She also has events, a war?  An abusive husband?  Something that  led her to be astranged from her children, to fear expressing intimacy.



It’s ironic how a new year’s resolution as easy reading a book has me contemplating such a difficult descision as mending my relationship with my mother. *note to self; next time pick up a Danielle Steel novel.