A Hundred Flowers

Gail Tsukiyama's A Hundred Flowers is powerful novel about an ordinary family facing extraordinary times at the start of the Chinese Cultural Revolution China, 1957. Chairman Mao has declared a new openness in society: "Let a hundred flowers bloom; let a hundred schools of thought contend." Many intellectuals fear it is only a trick, and Kai Ying's husband, Sheng, a teacher, has promised not to jeopardize their safety or that of their young son, Tao. But one July morning, just before his sixth birthday, Tao watches helplessly as Sheng is dragged away for writing a letter criticizing the Communist Party and sent to a labor camp for "reeducation." A year later, still missing his father desperately, Tao climbs to the top of the hundred-year-old kapok tree in front of their home, wanting to see the mountain peaks in the distance. But Tao slips and tumbles thirty feet to the courtyard below, badly breaking his leg. As Kai Ying struggles to hold her small family together in the face of this shattering reminder of her husband's absence, other members of the household must face their own guilty secrets and strive to find peace in a world where the old sense of order is falling. Once again, Tsukiyama brings us a powerfully moving story of ordinary people facing extraordinary circumstances with grace and courage.

A Hundred Flowers Blossoming is a collection of literary essays written by faculty members of Xi'an International Studies University, China with two distinctive features. The first one is a Chinese perspective on Western literary works, which is normally not found in the scholarship in the West. The second is the feministic stance demonstrated in most articles, as most of the contributors are female. There are four parts in this collection. Part One is titled 'A Room of Her Own' and shows the feminist approach to literary works. Part Two is titled 'Through the Chinese Lens,' as it presents a Chinese perspective in the analysis of the literary works. 'Form Is Meaning' is the title of Part Three, which approaches literary works from a structuralist perspective. Part Four includes two articles: one exploring the theme of death in Joyce's Dubliners and the other reexamining the images of Faulkner's Trio of Hunting Tales.