A Couple of Reviews

Went to a talk given by Canadian-Chinese author Judy Fong Bates yesterday. She was there to read from and promote her third book, a memoir called “The Year of Finding Memory”.

The first thing she did was give tribute to the library of her childhood in Acton. A good move politically as the talk took place in the library, although I felt her gratitude was sincere, and made a nice launch into storytelling as she described the quaint details of the place and its people.

She was the only child of parents who were both on their second marriage, so she only had half-siblings. Her parents were not happily married but directed all of their love toward her. Her father committed suicide when she was 22, and it took her 30 years to come to a place of relative reconciliation with it. He was 80.

She talked about how she did not publish until the age of 47 (she is now 60). Hmmmm. Perhaps this was the reason I went to her talk – just to hear this...

The heart of her talk centred around her inner experience of a very young immigrant child growing up in small town waspy Ontario, seeking identification with someone like herself – an English-speaking Chinese girl – when there was none around in the 50s and 60s. This lack of a role model made her a latebloomer as a writer, and it wasn’t until she visited her parents’ ancestral homes in China in 2006 that she felt had a story to tell.

I can see from her presentation that she is an engaging storyteller and speaker, even if she didn’t get much depth into the story of herself. It left me with the feeling that she is still in the process of finding herself, starting with the desire to connect to her roots. I suppose we are all in that process, or sooner or later will be.

What I’ve learned also is that with or without conscious intention, she gave a talk on storytelling with the mastery of a born storyteller, and to me, the presentation could have been aptly headlined as: “The Art of Compelling Storytelling: An Introduction”. This is invaluable to me.
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Finished reading Robert Johnson’s “Transformation: the 3 Levels of Masculine Consciousness”, and my first sentiment is “Wish I had read it earlier” – my usual with Robert Johnson’s books. Always a load of treasures, in such slim volumes, but as soon I finish reading I feel I ought to read it again. This is a phenomenon very contrary to my typical gulp-and-go style of reading.