I learned that China has a long history of casting its women in shadow. Ancient Chinese folk wisdom has it, for example, that all women possess a power called nu hau, or female peril, by which they are able to drive men loony, kill off whole seasons of rice and cabbage, topple sturdy governments. . . .
"Secretly lock the postern gate. Restrict her to courtyard and garden. Then misfortune and intrigue will pass you by," went the traditional advice given to Chinese bridegrooms. . . .Foot binding, a practice introduced in the 10th century, ensured that a woman could not venture far enough from home to cause much ma fan, trouble. "Why must the foot be bound?" went a Yuan dynasty rhyme. "To prevent barbarous running around."
- Julie Checkoway,
in "Little Sister"
Julie Checkoway's mother died when she was just a little girl. Her father remarried. Her older sisters moved away and her father stopped contacting them. Checkoway really never knew her sisters until she grew up, went to China and began trying to know Chinese women. Then she started writing to her sisters, trying to get to know them, too.
Checkoway's memoir is titled "Little Sister," which is the way Chinese men refer to their female comrades. But she, too, was a little sister. So her story and her confusion and her rootlessness is woven into the stories of the Chinese women who eventually befriend her.
Checkoway went to China to teach English. She studied Mandarin before she left, wanting to be able to make friends. When she got to Shijiazhuang she was dismayed to learn that she would be forbidden from getting to know any women. The "little sisters" were discouraged, by the men who ran the university, from talking to her.
Checkoway writes beautifully. She describes a mysterious culture at the same time she is describing her own mysterious illnesses. She describes reaching out to her Chinese sisters at the same time she is re-establishing the ties with her actual sisters back in the United States.
There is a lovingly crafted pattern to the book. There are reflections. There are echoes. Checkoway makes us ache for these women, women she comes to know in spite of everything that divided them from her.