2008 Woodie Awards
'Midnight at the Dragon Café' is a fast-paced family drama
Jessica Lindner
Issue date: 4/21/08 Section: Features
In the 315 pages it takes to reach this novel's ending, there is tragedy, treachery and little love. The love that's there is tangled and twisted and all the wrong kind.
Judy Fong Bates' (China Dog: And Other Tales from a Chinese Laundry) first novel, Midnight at the Dragon Café (Counterpoint, $14), chronicles the life of an immigrant Chinese family and their restaurant in the small town of Irvine, right outside of Toronto, in 1957. Through the eyes and voice of the youngest family member, Su-Jen, the reader is introduced to the tight-knit immigrant family surrounded by a strange people and a foreign tongue, pinching pennies and struggling to keep their Chinese traditions in the new country of "Gun-ah-dye."
Su-Jen is only six years old when she arrives. She is given the "proper" name of Annie, quickly masters the English language and plays with the English-speaking girls at school. Over the book's time-length of six years, she integrates herself so much into the Canadian culture that the distance between her and the rest of the family widens into a yawning canyon, impossible to bridge.
Su-Jen becomes little more than a spectator on the sidelines, remarking on the daily routine at the Dragon Café, the steady flow of regular customers and the menial, everyday tasks that make up the running of a restaurant. She comments on her parents' crumbling marriage, her mother's love affair with her stepson and the oppressive, threatening silence that hangs over the family like a storm cloud.
Su-Jen talks about the love she has for her new culture and the longing she has to fit in with her peers. But there will always be a barrier blocking her from being a true Canadian-born girl, no matter how opalescent or thin it may be.
"But whenever I was in the alley and tried to separate the tangle of branches to catch a closer glimpse of what lay on the other side, I ended up with scratches, fine white lines on my arms," Su-Jen says. Here, there is already a symbol of this barrier, as Su-Jen tries to see into the perfect gardens and perfect lives of her English-speaking neighbors.
Judy Fong Bates' (China Dog: And Other Tales from a Chinese Laundry) first novel, Midnight at the Dragon Café (Counterpoint, $14), chronicles the life of an immigrant Chinese family and their restaurant in the small town of Irvine, right outside of Toronto, in 1957. Through the eyes and voice of the youngest family member, Su-Jen, the reader is introduced to the tight-knit immigrant family surrounded by a strange people and a foreign tongue, pinching pennies and struggling to keep their Chinese traditions in the new country of "Gun-ah-dye."
Su-Jen is only six years old when she arrives. She is given the "proper" name of Annie, quickly masters the English language and plays with the English-speaking girls at school. Over the book's time-length of six years, she integrates herself so much into the Canadian culture that the distance between her and the rest of the family widens into a yawning canyon, impossible to bridge.
Su-Jen becomes little more than a spectator on the sidelines, remarking on the daily routine at the Dragon Café, the steady flow of regular customers and the menial, everyday tasks that make up the running of a restaurant. She comments on her parents' crumbling marriage, her mother's love affair with her stepson and the oppressive, threatening silence that hangs over the family like a storm cloud.
Su-Jen talks about the love she has for her new culture and the longing she has to fit in with her peers. But there will always be a barrier blocking her from being a true Canadian-born girl, no matter how opalescent or thin it may be.
"But whenever I was in the alley and tried to separate the tangle of branches to catch a closer glimpse of what lay on the other side, I ended up with scratches, fine white lines on my arms," Su-Jen says. Here, there is already a symbol of this barrier, as Su-Jen tries to see into the perfect gardens and perfect lives of her English-speaking neighbors.
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