One of the great things about books is how they educate us, introduce us to new ideas, and challenge our preconceptions. You would have to be a rather close-minded person to love reading and yet never allow the books you read to change your mind about something. Many books have changed my mind over the years, but thankfully that doesn't mean that I had difficulty choosing a book for this post. Actually there is a book that I've been wanting to write about, specifically with regard to how it changed my perspective on something, for a while now, so this post seems like the perfect opportunity to do so. This perspective-altering book is Dreams of Joy by Lisa See.
Dreams of Joy is the second book of Lisa See's that I have read, the first being Snowflower and the Secret Fan. When I saw Dreams of Joy for sale in a real life bookshop (how I miss those), I decided to buy it for two reasons: because I had enjoyed See's work previously, and because the cover was absolutely gorgeous. What I didn't realise at the time was that Dreams of Joy was actually a sequel to another of See's books, Shanghai Girls. In a way, I'm glad that I didn't know this, because that knowledge may have prevented me from reading what became one of my favourite books I'd read that year. That said, I should mention that describing the plot of Dreams of Joy will inevitably spoil the events of Shanghai Girls, so if you haven't read that book and are bothered by spoilers, perhaps you'd better turn back now.
With that out of the way, the plot of Dreams of Joy (as always supplied by a Goodreads summary) is as follows:
Nineteen-year-old Joy Louie has run away from her home in 1950s America to start a new life in China. Idealistic and unafraid, she believes that Chairman Mao is on the side of the people, despite what her family keeps telling her. How can she trust them, when she has just learned that her parents have lied to her for her whole life, that her mother Pearl is really her aunt and that her real father is a famous artist who has been living in China all these years?
Joy arrives in Green Dragon Village, where families live in crowded, windowless huts and eke out a meagre existence from the red soil. And where a handsome young comrade catches her eye... Meanwhile, Pearl returns to China to bring her daughter home - if she can. For Mao has launched his Great Leap Forward, and each passing season brings ever greater hardship to cities and rural communes alike. Joy must rely on her skill as a painter and Pearl must use her contacts from her decadent childhood in 1930s Shanghai to find a way to safety, and a chance of joy for them both.
As you can tell from this description, Dreams of Joy is something of a historical novel. I only knew a bit about the history of China under Mao and specifically the Great Leap Forward before reading it, so I can't attest to the accuracy of the book in that respect. In some ways, this historical context is only the background to a moving story about family. However, it was See's description of the famine resulting from the Great Leap Forward (an ambitious economic plan that aimed to rapidly increase the productivity of agrarian industry in China) that impacted me the most and stuck with me long after reading the book.
The description of the famine in Dreams of Joy, which is brutal and uncompromising in its detail, is the part of the book which changed my mind. I am a little embarrassed to admit what my mindset had been prior to reading the book, and there isn't really a much better way of putting it than saying that, simply, I didn't think hunger (and particularly large scale famine) was that bad. If this sounds strange and callous now, the only defence I can offer is that I was young and ignorant of the reality of something which I was lucky enough to have avoided experiencing in my own life.
When I say that I didn't think hunger was that bad, what I mean is that I felt the focus put on world hunger by charities and the like was disproportionate, and if non-profit organisations really wanted to help people then they should focus on things like education, which might help societies to lift themselves out of poverty and famine in the long term (presumably through some vague idea of social mobility), rather than just feeding people. While I'd probably still agree to this day that humanitarian aide should go beyond just food, my belief at the time seems like some sort of social Darwinist extension of the "give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime" proverb. Needless to say, I don't feel this way any longer.
The way that Dreams of Joy changed my mind was not by facts or polemic but by emotion. Even though it has been years since I first read the novel, I still vividly remember the descriptions of how the famine impacts Joy and those around her. Through Joy's eyes, we see first-hand the effects of starvation: the physical pain; the emaciation and premature aging; the desperation and subsequent willingness to do anything to get even a scrap of food; and the inability to focus on anything except the constant, mind-numbing hunger. It was this last point, more than anything, that changed my mind. How could I argue that education was more important than food, when this book showed me that true hunger obliterates the desire for anything else. I had seen pictures of Maslow's hierarchy of needs before, but somehow it took a novel to show me that without those basic physiological requirements at the base of the pyramid being fulfilled, everything else comes tumbling down.
As I said earlier on, I am not proud to admit the strange and detached views I held on this subject before. To dismiss suffering without truly knowing about it or acknowledging the reality of those who have experienced it is not only cruel, it is dangerously ignorant. Thankfully, Dreams of Joy did what fiction does best and bred empathy in my young mind, not only for victims of famine and starvation but also for any person whose pain I might have previously been too quick to deny.
Not having read every post, this comment might be superceded once I have read more. This strikes me as on of the best posts so far largely due to an obvious strength of feeling on the subject. It was enjoyable to read and would like to have read more. Again informative and makes you want to know more.
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