MCLC: Paper Sons and Daughters

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: Lupke, Christopher <lupke at wsu.edu>
Subject: Paper Sons and Daughters
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Colleagues may be interested in this example of global sinophonic
reportage.

Christopher Lupke

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Source: http://www.ohioswallow.com/book/Paper+Sons+and+Daughters

Paper Sons and Daughters ‹ 2012

Growing up Chinese in South Africa
Ohio University Press € Swallow Press
By Ufrieda Ho

Ufrieda Ho¹s compelling memoir describes with intimate detail what it was
like to come of age in the marginalized Chinese community of Johannesburg
during the apartheid era of the 1970s and 1980s. The Chinese were mostly
ignored, as Ho describes it, relegated to certain neighborhoods and
certain jobs, living in a kind of gray zone between the blacks and the
whites. As long as they adhered to these rules, they were left alone.

Ho describes the separate journeys her parents took before they knew one
another, each leaving China and Hong Kong around the early1960s, arriving
in South Africa as illegal immigrants. Her father eventually became a
so-called ³fahfee man,² running a small-time numbers game in the black
townships, one of the few opportunities available to him at that time. In
loving detail, Ho describes her father¹s work habits: the often mysterious
selection of numbers at the kitchen table, the carefully-kept account
ledgers, and especially the daily drives into the townships, where he
conducted business on street corners from the seat of his car. Sometimes
Ufrieda accompanied him on these township visits, offering her an
illuminating perspective into a stratified society. Poignantly, it was on
such a visit that her father‹who is very much a central figure in Ho¹s
memoir‹met with a tragic end.

In many ways, life for the Chinese in South Africa was self-contained.
Working hard, minding the rules, and avoiding confrontations, they were
able to follow traditional Chinese ways. But for Ufrieda, who was born in
South Africa, influences from the surrounding culture crept into her life,
as did a political awakening. Paper Sons and Daughters is a wonderfully
told family history that will resonate with anyone having an interest in
the experiences of Chinese immigrants, or perhaps any immigrants, the
world over.

³Paper Sons echoes the domestic realism in Amy Tan¹s best-selling The Joy
Luck Club; we taste the food and we are educated in all things Chinese
such as the observance of rituals. For the Ho family, the strong adherence
to ancient traditions gives meaning and comfort when the silence of stigma
proves too oppressive.²
Words Etc

³In the years since apartheid ended, many of South Africa¹s formerly
hidden histories are being uncovered. These are the stories of communities
who were forced to evade the public gaze; living lives, in Ufrieda Ho¹s
words, of Œshadows and scars¹. In Paper Sons and Daughters, Ho unfolds the
story of her family and, more broadly, of the Chinese community in South
Africa in the latter half of the twentieth century. It¹s a deeply moving
narrative, filled with love, pain and a delicate wistfulness.²
David Medalie ‹ author of The Mistress¹s Dog and The Shadow Follows

³The best writing is personal and this story does just that, telling the
tale of growing up of Chinese, not welcomed but tolerated in officially
white areas. But for all the political headlines, this book is also
humorously personal.²
Business Day

Ufrieda Ho is an award-winning journalist and one of the daughters of Ho
Sing Kee. In this wonderfully textured memoir she explores her family¹s
history and arrival in South Africa. Ufrieda describes growing up with her
siblings in a world in which she is too white for some and too black for
others, and the question of ³who belongs² haunts this evocative account.