My mother’s copy of The House That Tai Ming Built is inscribed: to my favorite niece. Though, when I call to ask her about what she remembers of her aunt Virginia Lee, she tells me that her brothers would be better sources, that one of my uncles can take a list of questions to Virginia’s sister, still alive in a nursing home in San Francisco. When I tell her that I’m writing an essay about the novel, she perks up a bit.
Did you read it? She asks. Did you like it?
It’s complicated, I tell her.
The first time I tried to read auntie Virginia’s novel, one of the earliest published by a Chinese American writer, was right after my Gung Gung’s funeral in 2017. I was interested in our family’s history. I was a writer. I had recently graduated with my Masters in Asian American Studies. I had just won an award for a short story about intergenerational grief and trauma and memory. How beautiful, how powerful, how perfect to have this kind of legacy, especially as a Chinese American writer, especially as a Chinese American woman.
I read the first chapter, one that describes a tender relationship between a grandfather and his most beloved granddaughter, whom he had wanted to name Shui Heung, “Fragrance from Books,” instead of her given name, Bo Lin, “Precious Lotus.” In these opening pages, Grandfather Kwong tells his granddaughter that he had hoped she would become a writer. But when Lin, who loves both her grandfather and books, asks him to call her Fragrance, her brother starts to tease her. “I’ve thought of something very funny,” her brother says, “Heung Heung; Chai Chi; Fragrant Fragrant; Smelly Smelly.” This makes Lin cry, but her grandfather quickly makes things better and “in a gesture of deep affection, Grandfather Kwong picked up a piece of pork with his chopsticks and fed the little girl. She was deeply touched and she thought secretly: What matters what my name is, as long as he is always there to…
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