Review of 'Do not say we have nothing' on Goodreads
5 stars
1) "By February, Ai-ming had been with us only two months, but it felt as if she had been there always. One night, I remember, Shostakovich's Symphony No. 5 came on the radio. Partway through the third movement, Ai-ming sat down and gazed into the speakers as if into the face of a person she knew. Even I, as young as I was, felt disturbed by the music and the emotions it communicated. Or perhaps this is all hindsight, because later, through the Book of Records, I learned that Shostakovich had written this symphony in 1937, at the height of Stalin's Terror when more than half a million people were executed, including some of Shostakovich's closest friends. Under terrible pressure, he composed the symphony's third movement, a largo that moved its audience to tears by restating and dismantling the theme of the first movement: what initially had seemed simple and …
1) "By February, Ai-ming had been with us only two months, but it felt as if she had been there always. One night, I remember, Shostakovich's Symphony No. 5 came on the radio. Partway through the third movement, Ai-ming sat down and gazed into the speakers as if into the face of a person she knew. Even I, as young as I was, felt disturbed by the music and the emotions it communicated. Or perhaps this is all hindsight, because later, through the Book of Records, I learned that Shostakovich had written this symphony in 1937, at the height of Stalin's Terror when more than half a million people were executed, including some of Shostakovich's closest friends. Under terrible pressure, he composed the symphony's third movement, a largo that moved its audience to tears by restating and dismantling the theme of the first movement: what initially had seemed simple and familiar, even artless, was turned inside out and refolded into another dimension. The first movement had been deceptive. Inside, concealed and waiting to be heard, were ideas and selves that had never been erased."
2) "In Canada, no amnesty had been passed since 1983, and Ma didn't have the financial resources to help Ai-ming in the ways she needed. In America, we all wanted to believe, Ai-ming would have the best chance for a stable future.
Before she left, she hugged me for a long while. She had been with us so short a time but now that she was leaving, I saw how deeply, how effortlessly, she had altered us. I feared that Ma and I could not take care of one another on our own.
'There's no shame in crying,' Ai-ming whispered. 'No shame in remembering. Don't forget, Ma-li. Nothing's gone. Not yet.'
Her arms released me. I opened my eyes. Because I loved her, I said goodbye. I held on to the character she had drawn for me, 未 (wèi), not yet, the future, a movement or a piece of music, a question still unanswered.
Afterwards, I lay on the sofa. I didn't cry. Poetry and memory, Ai-ming had said, were strong in me; I had been made for mathematics. I set myself to remembering everything she had told me, the beautiful, cruel and courageous acts, committed by her father and by mine, which bound our lives together."
3) "My mother died fifteen years ago but I have been thinking about her more than ever, the way it felt when she put her arms around me, about her qualities, especially her loyalty, pragmatism and quickness to laughter. She wanted to give me a different example of how to live my life and how to let hers go. And so, at the end, her words were contradictory. Look forward or look back? How could I find Ai-ming and also turn away from my father? Or did she think both acts were the same thing? It's taken me years to begin searching, to realize that the days are not linear, that time does not simply move forward but spirals closer and closer to a shifting centre. How much did Ma know? How will I know when to stop looking? I think it's possible to build a house of facts, but the truth at the centre might be another realm entirely."
4) "'But why give the authorities an excuse?' Zhuli asked. 'If the neighbourhood can turn in one family of counter-revolutionaries, the whole block might be saved. People are just trying to get by."
[...] 'Because, Zhuli,' the Old Cat said, 'these books were bequeathed to me by my beloved father. At some point, a person must decide whether they belong to the people who loved them, or whether they belong to the emperors. The truth is, my ancestry is long and my past is complex because this country is old. Ah, our country is old! How can the Party convince me otherwise? I know who I am and I know what old means. If the Party knows it too, well, good for them. I must meet the destiny that was written out by my lineage. If they want to hurry me into the next life, okay. I'm old, I'll go. I would only miss my little Ling.
'The things you experience,' she continued, 'are written on your cells as memories and patterns, which are reprinted again on the next generation. And even if you never lift a shovel or plant a cabbage, every day of your life something is written upon you. And when you die, the entirety of that written record returns to the earth. All we have on this earth, all we are, is a record. Maybe the only things that persist are not the evildoers and demons (though, admittedly, they do have a certain longevity) but copies of things. The original has long since passed away from this universe, but on and on we copy. I have devoted my miniscule life to the act of copying.'"
5) "Sleep became impossible. Sparrow took to walking at night. Even at two or three in the morning, bicycles roamed the streets, students flitting from one place to another. Time felt elastic, stretching into unfamiliar shapes, so that he could be both in Beijing and in Shanghai, an old man and a young man, in the world and in his thoughts."
6) "Many lives and many selves might exist, but that doesn't render each variation false. I don't believe so. If Ba were still alive, this is what I would tell him.
Throughout my life I have struggled to forgive my father. Now, as I get older, I wish most of all that he had been able to find a way to forgive himself. In the end, I believe these pages and the Book of Records return to the persistence of this desire: to know the times in which we are alive. To keep the record that must be kept and also, finally, to let it go. That's what I would tell my father. To have faith that, one day, someone else will keep the record."
