Orphan Bachelors: A Memoir
4/5
()
About this ebook
From the bestselling and award-winning author of novels Bone and Steer Toward Rock, Fae Myenne Ng’s Orphan Bachelors is an extraordinary memoir of her beloved San Francisco’s Chinatown and of a family building a life in a country bent on their exclusion
In pre-Communist China, Fae Myenne Ng’s father memorized a book of lies and gained entry to the United States as a stranger’s son, evading the Exclusion Act, an immigration law which he believed was meant to extinguish the Chinese American family. During the McCarthy era, he entered the Confession Program in a failed attempt to salvage his marriage only to have his citizenship revoked to resident alien. Exclusion and Confession, America’s two slamming doors. As Ng’s father said, “America didn’t have to kill any Chinese, the Exclusion Act ensured none would be born.”
Ng was her parents' precocious first born, the translator, the bossy eldest sister. A child raised by a seafaring father and a seamstress mother, by San Francisco’s Chinatown and its legendary Orphan Bachelors -- men without wives or children, Exclusion’s living legacy. She and her siblings were their stand-in descendants, Ng’s family grocery store their haven.
Each Orphan Bachelor bequeathed the children their true American inheritance. Ng absorbed their suspicious, lonely, barren nature; she found storytelling and chosen children in the form of her students. Exclusion’s legacy followed her from the back alleys of Chinatown in the 60s, to Manhattan in the 80s, to the high desert of California in the 90s, until her return home in the 2000s when the untimely deaths of her youngest brother and her father devastated the family. As a child, Ng believed her father’s lies; as an adult, she returned to her childhood home to write his truth.
Orphan Bachelors weaves together the history of one family, lucky to exist and nevertheless doomed; an elegy for brothers estranged and for elders lost; and insights into writing between languages and teaching between generations. It also features Cantonese profanity, snakes that cure fear and opium that conquers sorrow, and a seemingly immortal creep of tortoises. In this powerful remembrance, Fae Myenne Ng gives voice to her valiant ancestors, her bold and ruthless Orphan Bachelors, and her own inner self, howling in Cantonese, impossible to translate but determined to be heard.
Related to Orphan Bachelors
Related ebooks
The East Indian: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Four Treasures of the Sky: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Third Girl from the Left Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Brown Boy: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5An Unlasting Home: A Novel Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsOwner of a Lonely Heart: A Memoir of Motherhood and Absence Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5How to Say Babylon: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Head above Water: Reflections on Illness Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Flight: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Fi: A Memoir of My Son Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Punch Me Up To The Gods: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Man of Two Faces: A Memoir, A History, A Memorial Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Lacuna: A Novel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5We Measure the Earth with Our Bodies Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Rotten Evidence: Reading and Writing in an Egyptian Prison Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGuardians of the Valley: John Muir and the Friendship that Saved Yosemite Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Chinese Prodigal: A Memoir in Eight Arguments Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThese Women: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Temple Folk Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Dream Builders: a novel Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAll the Young Men: A Memoir of Love, AIDS, and Chosen Family in the American South Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Mythmakers Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Deep Waters: A Memoir of Loss, Alaska Adventure, and Love Rekindled Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSearching for Savanna: The Murder of One Native American Woman and the Violence Against the Many Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Easy Beauty: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Enter Ghost Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Newlyweds: Young People Fighting for Love in the New India Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Best Strangers in the World: Stories from a Life Spent Listening Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Unaccustomed to Grace Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLeaving Eastern Parkway Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Cultural, Ethnic & Regional Biographies For You
Israel: A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5A Man of Two Faces: A Memoir, A History, A Memorial Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Sun Does Shine: How I Found Life and Freedom on Death Row (Oprah's Book Club Selection) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Stories We Tell: Every Piece of Your Story Matters Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Happiest Man on Earth: The Beautiful Life of an Auschwitz Survivor Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Men We Reaped: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Black Like Me: The Definitive Griffin Estate Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Trejo: My Life of Crime, Redemption, and Hollywood Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Finding Me: An Oprah's Book Club Pick Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Heavy: An American Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Black Elk: The Life of an American Visionary Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Assata: An Autobiography Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5We Had a Little Real Estate Problem: The Unheralded Story of Native Americans & Comedy Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Malcolm X: A Graphic Biography Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Afeni Shakur: Evolution Of A Revolutionary Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The End of White World Supremacy: Four Speeches Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Up From Slavery: An Autobiography: A True Story Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Killing Crazy Horse: The Merciless Indian Wars in America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Monster: The Autobiography of an L.A. Gang Member Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sex Cult Nun: Breaking Away from the Children of God, a Wild, Radical Religious Cult Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Violinist of Auschwitz Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Path Lit by Lightning: The Life of Jim Thorpe Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for Orphan Bachelors
2 ratings0 reviews