Dandelion

Paperback, 336 pages

English language

Published Aug. 7, 2022 by Arsenal Pulp Press.

ISBN:
978-1-55152-881-6
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(2 reviews)

When Lily was eleven years old, her mother, Swee Hua, walked away from the family, never to be seen or heard from again. Now, as a new mother herself, Lily becomes obsessed with finding out what happened to Swee Hua. She recalls the spring of 1987, growing up in a small British Columbia mining town where there were only a handful of Asian families; Lily’s previously stateless father wanted them to blend seamlessly into Canadian life, while her mother, alienated and isolated, longed to return to Asia. Years later, still affected by Swee Hua’s disappearance, Lily’s family is nonetheless stubbornly silent to her questioning. But eventually, an old family friend provides a clue that sends Lily to Southeast Asia to find out the truth.

Winner of the Jim Wong-Chu Emerging Writers Award from the Asian Canadian Writers’ Workshop, Dandelion is a beautifully written and affecting novel about motherhood, family secrets, …

1 edition

Beautiful and bitter

I grabbed this book because it came up at my library for Canada Reads and I'm really glad that I submitted to my impulses even though I have a lot of books to read at home already.

The story is about being an immigrant, but it's also about being the child of an immigrant and what things both parties gain and lose from that experience. Another layer is added onto the story by the fact that the main character's father is originally stateless.

I think that statelessness is something that isn't normally talked about in the media in a positive light and I think that's particularly true now. People always want somebody to blame for their problems and don't stop for a moment to consider how other people feel or that other people may have different experiences from them.

That's what this book is about. It's about motherhood and the …

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