Review: "Colors of the Mountain" by Da Chen

[megwrites]

Title: Colors of the Mountain
Author: Da Chen (DaChen.org)
Genre: Non-fiction
Page Count: 320 pages
Publisher: Anchor






Basic Premise - Colors of the Mountain is the autobiographical memoir of Da Chen, who grew up in the small town of Yellow Stone in China during the Cultural Revolution. Because his family comes from the reviled landlord class, he endures many hardships growing up. The book follows his earliest days in school living in a world that is under constant political pressure and his struggle to succeed when so much is stacked against him.


The Positives - I simply loved this book. There were so many things that were fascinating, heartbreaking, and even informative about it.

It was not only a peak into rural China during the Cultural Revolution and how the changing of a people and a nation affected Yellow Stone, but a study in how the political becomes deeply personal, especially to those who are at a disadvantage. I was particularly struck by the passages pertaining to Mao when the narrator recalls the day of his funeral. There is a hate but also a strange admiration for someone who did, as far as the narrator is concerned, so many terrible things to his family but was the most powerful, important man anyone knew.

At moments, the book could almost read like fiction because it is so brilliantly written. The prose is plain but stunning and the descriptions of everything from the river to the fields to the feelings of a young boy growing up under dire circumstances, desperate to succeed, come out boldly and brightly.

It is, also, a very feel good novel. And while I usually don't enjoy stories that are meant to tug my heartstrings, this one got to me. I do not feel any emotional manipulation was employed. After all, Chen does not come to the reader seeking sympathy, pity, or anything else. Rather he is telling the story of his life and how he came to be.

I also appreciated that even though I do not know as much as I should about China's recent history and the Cultural Revolution, I was easily able to immerse myself in the world of Yellow Stone in the 60's and 70's and came to, in a way, feel like it was a sort of home for me, too, where I grew up with Chen, watching his struggles and triumphs.

Like I said, a very feel good book.


The Negatives - I have almost nothing bad to say about this book. There are times when I think some bits of dialogue don't come out quite right in translation, but it's nothing that would pull a reader out.

Also, it helps if you do have SOME knowledge of the Cultural Revolution in China. Chen does not stop anywhere in the book to explain modern Chinese history. I list this as a negative not because it is any fault of Chen's - but because it is something that a reader who knows absolutely nothing about that particular topic may get hung up on.

Other than that, I can think of precious few negatives.


CoC Score - 10. A person of color telling their own story. There are few other mentions of any other racial groups. Westerners are mentioned in passing with a sort of odd fascination. Japanese people are also mentioned (twice, I think) as a way of describing something. I didn't pick up any negative connotations from it. One passage merely describes something that a person was singing as sounding like "a Japanese folk song".

Of course, the subtleties and history of Chinese-Japanese relations may be completely lost on my ignorant self, but I did not see any truly problematic areas.


Gender Score - 7. The women in this book are regarded very well. It is very much a tale of a boy hero, but because the author is male, I don't fault him for this. He has a very close, respectful, loving relationship with his sisters and mother. He admires the Chinese Baptist woman who teaches him English.

There are instances where he, along with his childhood friends, leer at girls and talk about how short their skirts are or how they want to see their legs (or in one instance, how they would like to lick them). There is also a brief passage where Chen overhears a sexual encounter between two adults and is not entirely sure that it is consensual. He seems sympathetic to the woman, and there is no 'victim-blaming' so far as I can see.

I was not bothered by these things because I understood that they came from the developing mind of an adolescent boy.

Though I was keenly aware that the author and his brother, Jin, were encouraged to be the ones to go to university while his sisters were not - the author does not comment on this one way or the other.


GLBT Score - 0. No GLBT characters, issues, or situations shown or mentioned. The book focuses on heterosexuality, mostly adolescent.