Cambridge by Susanna Kaysen

I picked this book up off the "new releases" shelves at the Rapid City Public Library. It was a good choice. The narrator in this story, Susanna, grows from about six or eight years of age to about 13. The story chronicles her thinking and fascinating life as a daughter growing up in the fifties, with her father, a Harvard professor, and her mother, a sparkling stay-at-home mother. The family spends years abroad in the English Cambridge, in Italy, and in Greece. Susanna's reactions and thinking capture some of my thinking and feelings at this age very accurately. While Susanna is very different than I was at that age, there are similarities. She feels alien in her family; which I occasionally did. Her careful listening to her parents' disagreements and her interpretations of them felt very familiar to me. She has a nuanced ear for emotions behind the words.
I enjoyed reading about her relationships with her Swedish nanny and her mother, in particular. And it's interesting that she never gives her little sister much credence or even tells us her name. But what was especially intriguing to me was her intense dislike of her mother, and how it angered her that her mother was always right and always knew what she was thinking. She could verify her father's knowledge in the encyclopedia, but her mother's assertions were baffling to her. How did she know those things? It reminded me very strongly of Leonard's frustration with his mother over similar issues. She asserts things with great confidence that "everyone knows" but really aren't true. Like..."50% of football players are homosexuals."
I also enjoyed reading about Susanna's music lessons and her fondness for her teacher. It's just a fascinating age to reconnect with and the author does a very credible job of recreating that thinking.

The Kitchen God's Wife by Amy Tan

Leonard surprised me with this book. He chose it because he remembered that I liked The Joy Luck Club by the same author. I love how Amy Tan opens up the world of Chinese immigrants, especially those in the San Francisco Bay Area, to her readers.
This was an engaging book, from beginning to end. The modern daughter has no idea about her mother's past; this book is the story of her mother's coming of age in China. It reveals a harsh male dominant culture that is hard to read about. The powerlessness of women in that society is described in graphic but tasteful detail. Winnie, the mother, tells her story with lots of questions about her own role and choices in it. It's fascinating to read about how she considers herself both weak and strong. We are invited along her thought process and get to witness incredible patience, courage, fortitude, and love. It's inspiring.
I enjoyed this book because both my sister and I had Chinese friends in high school and college. While reading, I would sometimes think back to some experiences I had with them...this book explained some things for me...It's fascinating to consider how different and how hard the transition to American life would have been for these immigrants. And how baffling their own American-born children would be to them! I imagine this book could be a welcome bridge-builder in those families.