Bookshelf: HOMESEEKING by Karissa Chen

Love, the Vicissitudes of History and the Shanghai Diaspora

// Author Karissa Chen joins Historic Shanghai (via Zoom) to discuss this book on Sunday May 25, 10am. To register, click here. Not in China? Email us at info@historic-shanghai.com

One of the most compelling ways of telling history is through its impact on individual lives, and that’s what Karissa Chen does so beautifully in Homeseeking, her debut novel.

At one level, Homeseeking is a story about childhood sweethearts across a lifetime.  But it’s so much more. It’s the story of 80 years of Chinese history, of the Shanghai diaspora, of how the vicissitudes of history toss lives into wild disarray. It’s a story of impossible choices and the scars they leave, of love, and above all, of home.

Homeseeking: The Story

It’s Shanghai, 1938. Haiwen and Suchi meet as seven-year-olds in their lilong, eventually becoming teenage sweethearts. Author Chen has a wonderful way with language, drawing you into the world of the novel gently but completely, evoking the interior lives and emotions of her characters so well that I had to stifle a sob more than once.

As the novel begins, China is in the midst of a transformation, and we see this embodied in her characters: Suchi’s mother is illiterate, with bound feet; Haiwen’s is a sophisticated, bobbed-haired, qipao-wearing classical music lover. Suchi’s father is a patriotic, anti-foreign bookshop owner; Haiwen’s is a British-educated son of wealthy textile merchant. Haiwen’s violin teacher is a Russian Jewish refugee.

In 1947, Haiwen joins the Nationalist army to spare his brother, who’s married with a baby on the way. Haiwen’s confident that he’ll be back to Suchi and his family soon. But a year later, as the Chinese civil war endures, Suchi’s father sends her and her sister to Hong Kong, ostensibly on a business trip; they never return. Haiwen ends up in Taiwan with the Nationalist soldiers. Separated from each other and their Shanghai families by war and revolution, their lives unfold over the next 60 years, from the singsong halls of Hong Kong, to the military encampments of Taiwan, the bustling streets of New York, and sunny California.

Entering Haiwen and Suchi’s World: Soundscapes

Chen’s fine ear for language includes a detail that most writers don’t bother with: representing the different dialects spoken. Chen does it by changing character names, depending on where they are. Suchi, for example, is how the main character is known at her Mandarin-speaking school. But to her family, she’s Suji (Shanghainese), and her Hong Kong husband calls her Soukei (Cantonese). Once she gets to America, she becomes Sue.

It brings you in to the soundscape of the story, conveying the migrant’s need to adapt to new languages, and showing how personalities shift along with the languages spoken. If you find this confusing, Chen has an answer: “I hope instead of giving up, you might take a moment to imagine what it must be like for those who have to navigate this on a daily basis, and then forge onwards.”

Also part of the soundscape is music, a central thread in the book. Haiwen is a violin prodigy, and Suchi has dreams of being a singer. Chen’s descriptions of music, of Haiwen’s playing, and the emotions they evoke are nothing short of magical, and one of the most affecting parts of the book. If you’d like to hear the same music, Chen has helpfully put together a playlist, here.

Perspectives

The novel alternates chapters between Suchi and Haiwen, with Haiwen’s story told from past to present, and Suchi’s from present to past. You see who they are in 2008, with a tantalizing slow reveal as you move back and forth through time to find out how, and why, they become that way.

Chen’s done the research, and done it well, but she never hits you over the head with history. Thankfully, she doesn’t feel the need to share everything she’s learnt – instead, she creates characters redolent of the times they lived in, and (mostly) gets the details right. This isn’t history writ large, it’s history from below: the untold history of ordinary people buffeted by extraordinary times.

The inspiration for the novel, Chen says, was coming across a photograph of her grandfather weeping before his mother’s grave in Shanghai. He had been in Taiwan in 1948 and was never able to go back before she died. Multitudes, she realized then, were separated thus, not knowing the fates of their families, not even knowing how to contact them.

You can never go home again, said Thomas Wolfe. Homeseeking is the story of how the Chinese diaspora lived that, through decades of not knowing; of finally going home and finding everything and everyone, including themselves, changed—and realizing how you can find home again.

HOMESEEKING is available on Kindle. It’s not available in hard copy in China at this time.

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