Review: Dreams of Joy by Lisa See

Surviving the Great Leap Forward and Chinese Famine

Background

When I finished reading Lisa See’s Shanghai Girls (2009), it was obvious that there would be a sequel. Shanghai Girls explored the arduous efforts taken to immigrate from China to the U.S. in the early 20th century, escaping the Japanese invasion of China, and forging new lives in Los Angeles. Dreams of Joy (2012) follows Joy and her mother Pearl returning to China, now Communist China.

At the end of Shanghai Girls, Joy, a Chinese-American college student, is thrown into emotional turmoil. She feels guilty for causing her beloved father’s suicide, then she overhears her immigrant mother and aunt reveal that they have been hiding the truth about her birth. Her “aunt” was actually her birth mother and the woman she thought was her mother, was actually her aunt. And her biological father was in China — Communist China. In college, she learned a romanticized version of Communism, and heads to China to meet her “father” and to join the Communist effort. Pearl, her mother, (the one who raised her as her mother) goes after her.

Living in Communist China

The time period in Dreams of Joy is the Cold War. A civil war resulted in victory for the Communist Party and Mao Tse-tung is the President. The…