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Summary
Summary
Escriptores i cultures ens aproxima, a través de l'anàlisi de textos escrits i de relats orals, a literatures dels continents africà, americà, asiàtic i europeu. En tots els casos, els textos i relats han estat concebuts per autores q
Summary
Winner of Barbara Kingsolver's Bellwether Prize, an award in support of a literature of social responsibility, The Book of Dead Birds is an intimate portrait of a young woman at a defining moment in her life, who stands at the intersection of two cultures and races.
Ava Sing Lo has been accidentally killing her mother's birds since she was a little girl. Now, having just finished her graduate work, Ava leaves her native San Diego for the Salton Sea, where she volunteers to help environmental activists save thousands of birds poisoned by agricultural run-off.
Helen, Ava's mother, has been haunted by her past for decades. As a young girl in Korea, Helen was drawn into prostitution on a segregated American army base. Several brutal years passed before a young white American soldier married her and brought her to California. When she gave birth to a black baby, her new husband quickly abandoned her, and she was left to fend for herself and her daughter in a foreign country.
With great beauty and lyricism, The Book of Dead Birds captures a young woman's struggle to come to terms with her mother's terrible past while she searches for her own place in the world. This moving mother-daughter story of migration, survival, and reconciliation resonates across cultures and through generations.
Reviews (3)
Booklist Review
Ava Sing Lo is the daughter of Helen, a Korean woman forced into prostitution on a segregated American army base, and one of the clients she serviced. All of her life, Ava has sensed that her mother, often depressed and withdrawn, is ashamed of her past and her daughter's dark skin. Helen is fascinated with birds, which seem to encompass for her some vital message about fragility and survival, but Ava has been accidentally killing her mother's pets since she was a little girl. Now Ava wants to head to the Salton Sea, the site of the worst bird die-off in American history, where she also hopes to repair her fragile relationship with her mother. This first novel is the winner of Barbara Kingsolver's Bellwether Prize for a work of socially and politically engaged fiction; however, Brandeis' novel suffers, at times, from overly fraught symbolism and an awkwardly tacked-on subplot. The author is at her best in her lyrical descriptions of nature and in the finely detailed portrait of the emotional tug-of-war between mother and child. Joanne Wilkinson
Kirkus Review
Korean folklore and ornithology figure in the lives of a former GI prostitute and her black fatherless daughter in an earnest, sad-funny debut, winner of Barbara Kingsolver's Bellwether Prize. At 25, Ava Sing Lo lives with her mother, Omma, in San Diego, has a music degree, and feels crushing guilt about her ancestry. She also has an unfortunate history of accidentally killing her mother's beloved birds. Wanting to surprise her mother by having the carpet cleaned, she destroys the parrot by chemical fumes; or, after refrigerating the robin eggs she finds in the kitchen, she learns that Omma was hoping to hatch them. In penitence, Ava enlists as a volunteer on Salton Sea to help the California brown pelicans that have been poisoned by pesticides. Meanwhile, Omma keeps a journal chronicling the long history of her daughter's bird slaughter--it also functions as a metaphorical history of Omma's inability to fly free of the curse of her past as a prostitute. In alternating chapters, while Ava adjusts to the stinking daily death of pelicans, the reader learns of Omma's early attempt to escape her adolescence as a sea urchin diver on Cheju-Do Island: she runs away to her friend Sun, sings at a folk village, then at a striptease joint for black GIs. Known as Helen, and pregnant, she manages to get to San Diego as the fiancÉe of a white soldier, who then abandons her when the black baby is born. Brandeis gives enormously sympathetic qualities to both Ava and her strangely impassive and emotionally scarred mother. Too many elements, however, fight for ascendancy and resolution: murdered prostitutes washed up on the shores of Salton Sea; the sorrowful, desperate history of Helen's and Sun's lives as GI prostitutes; and the early massacre at Cheju-do in 1948. While the writing can be breezy and lightweight for such gravitas, the plight of the mother and daughter is still heartbreaking. In all, a wrenching tale exploring similar Korean-American identity as Nora Okja Keller's Fox Girl (2001). Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
Ava Sing Lo is a 25-year-old virgin still living in her mother's California home. Despite a freshly minted master's degree, her search for full-time work has been fruitless. Ava doesn't know what to do with herself until news about the poisoning of fish and pelicans in the nearby Salton Sea grabs her attention. Although Ava knows very little about either species-in fact, over the past two decades she has accidentally killed several of her mother's pet birds-she decides to volunteer. Once at the rescue site, she gets more than she bargained for. Not only is she overwhelmed by the array of decaying wildlife, but someone in the area is also murdering young females. As the drama unfolds, Ava confronts her own family history and learns important lessons about love, sisterhood, and friendship. Although Brandeis's writing is at times heavyhanded, the book is poignant and well researched, weaving corporate malfeasance, prostitution, racism, and sexual dysfunction into Ava's coming-of-age story. Winner of Barbara Kingsolver's Bellwether Prize, this unpredictable first novel is highly recommended for all libraries. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 1/03.]-Eleanor J. Bader, Brooklyn, NY (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Excerpts
Excerpts
The Book of Dead Birds A Novel Chapter One I remember the first time I flew. I was four years old. My mother decided to take me to Balboa Park for the afternoon. I watched the back of her short-sleeved blouse as we crossed the parking lot to the playground; the sky-blue fabric tightened, then loosened, tightened, then loosened, across her shoulder blades, pointy as chicken wings. I tried to catch up, but my mother was too fast. Even then, I knew she didn't like to be seen with me in public. I knew it was because of my skin -- so much darker than my mother's, dark like the treats she made out of dates that morning, the ones that stuck between my teeth, filling my mouth with a prickly sweetness. We didn't go to the park very often, but this day was special -- New Year's Eve, 1975. Not December 31, when midnight bullets flew through our San Diego neighborhood and we crouched together in the closet; this was a few weeks later -- the lunar New Year, the Korean New Year, the day when girls stand up on seesaws and swings. At four, I was already as tall as my mother's ribs. I broke into a run and tugged at my mother's shirt, pulling it out of the elastic waistband of her lime-green pants. She shook herself loose and kept walking. I could see the scar on her lower back as her shirt flapped up -- a crescent moon, beaded with pale tooth marks. I reached to swipe a finger over it, but she walked even faster. She let me catch up to her when we reached the grass. Without looking at me, she looped two fingers around my wrist and guided me over to the swings. She lifted me by the armpits with a grunt and deposited me, standing, on a swing strap. I clutched the chain while she moved the swing lightly back and forth, but I couldn't keep my balance. I wobbled, then tumbled into her arms. She glanced around to make sure no one was watching, then shifted me onto her hip and lurched over to the seesaw. With her foot, she tilted one end of the peeling yellow plank to the ground; I grabbed on to her sleeves. "No, Omma!" I yelled, as she set me, standing, on the edge. "You stay here." She twisted herself away from my grip. "Omma!" I jumped off the seesaw. The plank rose into the air. She pushed it down again and set me back on. "You stay now." Her voice was firm. I couldn't breathe as I watched my mother walk to the other side of the playground. I wanted to step off the seesaw but my feet felt bolted to the plank. When she finally stopped and turned around, my throat filled with air. "Omma!" I spread out my arms. She began to run toward me. I had never seen my mother run before. She was fast. I watched her cheeks jiggle and her mouth sway loose and her small breasts swing around as she came closer. Then she jumped. She jumped as if there were a trampoline in the grass. She shot up so high, I worried she might get tangled in the jacaranda branches above. There was a determination in her eyes that scared me. It scared her, too. I could see her hesitate as she began to fall. She pedaled her feet backward like a cartoon character who realized he had just walked off a cliff, but she landed on the seesaw anyway, a crumpling blur of limbs. That's when I flew. I flew straight over my mother's head, flew like a bullet across the playground. I felt as if I wouldn't ever stop, as if I would keep on flying, past the park, past the zoo and the stores and the ocean. I felt as if I would be a flying girl forever. Then a eucalyptus tree zoomed toward my face. My mother tackled me to the ground just as I was about to hit the molting trunk. Neither of us spoke on the car ride home. We barely even breathed -- it felt as if one loud exhale would make some invisible seesaw between us lose its precarious balance. As soon as we got into the apartment, I stumbled off to bed. I felt my end of the ghost board clatter to the ground, felt my mother float untethered behind me as I drifted into a deep, dark nap. When I woke, my whole head throbbed. My forehead had banged into the dirt pretty hard when we fell. In the gray light of dusk, I could see my mother sitting by the window, rocking a bit, as if she had to go to the bathroom. "Omma." My voice was a puff of air. My mother turned toward me, then crept up to the bed. Something about her looked different, scary. Her eyebrows, I realized, were completely white. She had put some kind of powder on them; flecks of it dusted her eyelashes, her cheeks, her collar. After I walked to the bathroom, I was startled to find my own eyebrows white, as well. They looked strange on my much darker face, like a powdered sugar decoration, frosting on a gingerbread cookie. A scrape ran across my forehead, an oblong abrasion, speckled pink and red. I touched a finger to it; pain shot behind my eyes. I began to feel dizzy. My mother grabbed me by the arms and led me back to bed. "If you take nap at New Year," she told me as she tucked me under the covers, "the story says your eyebrow turn white. Is joking to put on flour if you fall asleep." My mother didn't look happy to me, not like someone telling a joke. "Did you fall asleep, Omma?" I asked. She shook her head. A tear carved a streak through the light dusting of flour on her face ... The Book of Dead Birds A Novel . Copyright © by Gayle Brandeis. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold. Excerpted from The Book of Dead Birds: A Novel by Gayle Brandeis All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
