Saving Fish from Drowning, Amy Tan
Believe it or not, with my love of Asian-themed fiction, I have never read any of Amy Tan's work before. I have some in my TBR pile, but this was the first to surface, and I think it was a good one to start with. It's interesting how the other authors I have read, though not connected to this story at all, give background information that becomes relevant in this story. It's like reading this type of fiction can help you learn and retain more history and geography.
Anyway, this book starts out with a foreword by the author, explaining how she came across a story written by a ghost and written down by a medium. (That could have put me off, but part of Chinese lore/beliefs is that when someone dies, their spirit stays around for a while before being released to the underworld/afterlife and they can communicate with the living at times. This was kind of along the lines of the book written by Lisa See, Peony in Love....so knowing that she was just using this as a literary device and it wasn't in fact how she got the idea for the book, I went along with it.) The book is written as a narrative by the ghost, Bibi Chen, and is about a trip to China and Myanmar that she was supposed to guide with her friends; however, she died right before the trip. She decided to tag along as a ghost anyway so she could watch over them.
Her friends go on this trip after Bibi's funeral, starting out in China and moving on to Myanmar (Burma) and there is one debacle after another, and eventually they all, except one, go missing.
This book shows how if you travel into another culture and you don't understand that culture, you can commit a lot of wrongs and offenses, and often, Americans do this, thinking that people think and act the same way that Americans do about everything...and they don't.
I don't want to give away the true meaning of the title. It literally comes from the story of a fisherman who says that by catching fish, he is saving them from drowning, being noble...but by the time he catches them all and saves them from drowning, it is too late, they have all died, so he shouldn't waste their bodies, and so he sells them for money so he can go out and save more fish from drowning.
This idea comes to fruition near the end of the book, I initially thought it would be about Americans trying to reform other cultures to progress in society, but has more to do with someone well-intentioned trying to save those he loves. I am going to leave it at that because I don't want to give it away.
I really enjoyed this book, and having traveled to another country with a culture far different from my own, I could understand how necessary it is to be considerate of the country's culture in which one is visiting.
I look forward to reading more of Amy Tan's books.
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