The complex emotional landscape of this book centers around Min-Zhan Lu — both the immigrant who has crossed over to America and the tale-teller. In each of four sections, she tells us the intergenerational story of these women, each of whom crosses over time, history, custom and geography to come into her own. This overall frame is a vehicle for a woman trying to recite the family stories for her daughter — partly to heal the complex divisions between them, partly to understand her own past and how it has shaped her identity, partly as an act of the larger love she longs to represent, partly to sing the past into the future.
But Shanghai Quartet, amazingly, is even more than such a vehicle for a mother-daughter dialogue and story. This book paints a less-than-familiar portrait of Chinese life in the last century. Here, as we come to know Min-Zhan Lu’s family, we find credible lives, not propaganda or stereotypes. We see so much: a Chinese Catholic family in Shanghai; the events of the Cultural Revolution through a child’s family experiences; the decision to come to America and be separated from family; and the next, postmodern generation of young Chinese abroad.