Tracy Bowling
In One Note, Gabriel Blackwell asks writers to talk about the book they are currently reading and why. One Note 020: Tracy Bowling, Su Tong, Raise the Red Lantern.
In One Note, I ask writers for just that: one note, a single paragraph, on what they’re reading right now.
Today’s note comes courtesy of Tracy Bowling:
I’m reading a book of three novellas by Su Tong, titled after the first, Raise the Red Lantern. Each novella is set about a century ago in China, like Su Tong’s novel Binu and the Great Wall, and though in both cases I chose the books more for their form than their content (I thought I was going to write a lot of short novels and novellas–apparently not true at the moment), I do like what he does with the characters using traditional Chinese hierarchies as his backdrop. Where Binu’s long suffering under myth and social constraints made her into a hero by the end (though a thankless one), that same mix of fantasy and constraint in the novellas has created hazy, frightening worlds that the characters seem unable to fight through. It’s underscored for me the kind of frightful restlessness that comes with living under any structure defined by both myth and custom: it’s not just that it’s confining, it’s that it cannot be comprehended, and so it cannot be commanded or escaped. One of those structures, in Su Tong’s novellas, is the family. There are plenty of novels where the tiny misunderstandings between family are the source of trouble. In Su Tong’s novellas, it’s when you can’t even begin to understand your family, when your family is alien to you, that the trouble begins. It makes the book upsetting. It takes the ground out from under you. It’s been a wonderful read.
Tracy Bowling is co-editor of Uncanny Valley and has served as an editor for Puerto del Sol and Noemi Press. Her work has been published at PANK, Storyglossia, and Bluestem. She lives in Iowa City.
