Regarding the question from another member (below), my Temple's book group is currently reading *Peony* for our next meeting June 1. One member read it and recommended it. Then, one of the facilitators read it and supported the recommendation and when we put it to the members we heard back from several who had been interested in reading it and others who thought it was a good choice.
I'm only about 1/3 through it and it's a bit of a slog: its style is dated and melodramatic for my taste. I suppose that might reflect not so much that it was published in the 1940s but that it seems to be trying to reflect cultures and manners of a 100 years earlier. More of a concern is that Buck is writing about the intersection of two cultures, neither of which is hers. I haven't read anything else by Buck who lived in China as the daughter of missionaries which leads me to read her with skepticism. The synopsis says it is told through the eyes of Peony, a Chinese "bondmaid" in a Jewish household, and that provides a strong thematic element, but you also hear the inner thoughts of all of the main characters. While a significant part of the story focuses on how the Chinese servants view the customs of their Jewish masters and mistresses, there is a considerable thread about tensions among the Jewish characters about what it means to be Jewish. That thread seems (so far as I've read) to address the tension between adherence to peoplehood and tradition versus assimilation and secularism. I think it notable – problematic? – that for the most part the women in the story represent the traditional side of the equation while the men largely tend towards secularism and assimilation. Let's just say that the characterizations of both the Jewish and Chinese communities made me uneasy. It's easier for me to articulate what about the Jewish part makes me uneasy – though still difficult to be precise – while my discomfort with the Chinese part is based more on my ignorance of the culture and a subsequent inability to judge the portrayal. Let's just say that I'd be more comfortable with a narrative that tries to explain cultures as Buck does in *Peony* where the author was part of at least one of the communities portrayed. To answer the original question, I wouldn't recommend putting this on a reading list for Asian-Jewish relations because of its questionable authority about Chinese culture. Lee Jaffe, Temple Beth El, Aptos (Calif.) From: Petite Safranit <petite.safra...@verizon.net> To: hasafran@lists.osu.edu Cc: Bcc: Date: Tue, 11 May 2021 08:41:04 -0400 Subject: [ha-Safran] Peony by Pearl S. Buck Would Pearl Buck's *Peony* be acceptable for this coming month's reads? Has anyone read this lately? (*Peony* (or *The Bondmaid*) is set in the 1850s in the city of Kaifeng, in the province of Henan, which was historically a center for Chinese Jews. The novel follows Peony, a Chinese bondmaid of the prominent Jewish family of Ezra ben Israel's, and shows through her eyes how the Jewish community was regarded in Kaifeng at a time when most of the Jews had come to think of themselves as Chinese) On 5/10/21 4:11 PM, Heidi Rabinowitz via Hasafran wrote: In honor of Jewish American Heritage Month and Asian Pacific American Heritage Month (both May), The Book of Life podcast has an interview about the Jewish Chinese family in the middle grade novel Not Your All-American Girl (the companion to This Is Just a Test). I spoke to co-authors Madelyn Rosenberg and Wendy Wan-Long Shang about how they write together, about racial justice, and about hula hoops.
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