Timothy Mo is a British novelist and journalist who is best known for his novel "Sour Sweet," which was published in 1982. The novel tells the story of a Chinese immigrant family living in London in the 1970s and 1980s, and their struggles to adapt to life in a new country while trying to maintain their cultural identity.
One of the main themes of "Sour Sweet" is the conflict between tradition and modernity. The main character, Johnny Ko, is torn between his desire to assimilate into British society and his loyalty to his Chinese heritage. This conflict is exemplified in his relationship with his wife, Mei-Mei, who is more traditional and wants to maintain their Chinese customs, and his daughter, Fong, who is more Westernized and wants to fit in with her peers.
Another important theme in "Sour Sweet" is the impact of immigration on family dynamics. The Ko family faces numerous challenges as they try to adjust to life in a new country, including language barriers, discrimination, and cultural misunderstandings. This causes tension within the family as they struggle to find their place in their new home and navigate their relationships with each other.
In addition to exploring the complexities of immigration and cultural identity, "Sour Sweet" also touches on issues of gender and power dynamics within the family. Mei-Mei is often subservient to her husband and is expected to adhere to traditional gender roles, while Fong rebels against these expectations and fights for her own independence.
Overall, "Sour Sweet" is a poignant and thought-provoking novel that offers a unique perspective on the experiences of immigrants and the challenges they face as they try to find their place in a new country. It is a powerful exploration of identity, culture, and family relationships that will resonate with readers of all backgrounds.
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I found Finally taken off the To Be Read list. Now they were truly reborn" 102. Day 2, 110 pages. There's not much nuance here, and the rather stereo-typical characterisation is heightened by the author's style of direct speech. Unlike so many other contemporary authors who have settled into a certain style and subject, Mo continually breaks his own conventions, a fact that makes any coherent critical overview of his work inherently flawed. The book itself - the first I've read of Mo's - is multisensory and filled with the the smells of Chinese takeaway, the images of late 1960s London, and the physical pain of gangland SUMMARY: A book as balanced as its title suggests, as a distinctive voice on immigrant experience that carries messages of universal relatability. I really enjoyed reading about the Chens - their observations about english life, and the relationships between the family members, particularly sisters Mui and Lilly, were funny and touching.
Leading Questions, Reading Questions, on Timothy Mo's "Sour Sweet"
But for a time, when she cannot understand, much less control, life in the modern world, she ignores its laws, for example, driving without a license or insurance. Mo suggests that ill-understood Western values do not necessarily destroy traditional Chinese Confucian social values, but can cause the Chinese to look at tradition li with new insight, recognizing what is corrupt and inessential, and thereby helping to clarify and subsequently recover the essential. On the one hand we have Chen and Lily, a married couple who have arrived from Hong Kong in 1960s London. Moreover, because of the tragic loss of her husband, as well as because of several years of life in England, Lily attains a more balanced outlook. The main character, Lily, personifies these tensions.
The other Sour Sweet tells an everyday story of the Chinese takeaway food-retail trade from what is an unusual angle in the Western world. They are both comparable to dance. Assimilation The yang -- yin movement and growth in the novel principally takes place between Lily and her sister Mui, even more so within Lily's psyche. This is my home now. In his novel, Timothy Mo shares the story of a Chinese family wife Lily, Husband Chen, their young son Man Kee and the wife's sister Mui attempting to build a life together in London, above the Chinese restaurant they've decided to open.
Tension is built up early on as we anticipate these worlds will collide. Lily aspires to greater things, and has been almost starving herself to save money on her meagre housekeeping allowance. It seems he doesn't write any more - what a loss!! Because Mui has no counterbalancing yang force, either internalized, like Lily, or present in a relationship with a husband, she is eager to assimilate. The Chen family also seems rational, mercenary, and formal, because it is in the grip of Neo-Confucian orthodoxy. For example, Red Cudgel explains that "Chinese don't talk to the devils. The parts dealing with the gangsters bored me sometimes-- but Lily and Chen with their family were rather refreshing.
The Triad considers itself the conservator of Chinese culture. Sour Sweet is a less optimistic, more mature work than The Monkey King and remains for many the quintessential Mo novel, securing his reputation as a writer. What a traitor she was to her family! We are told that "Mui would not have been so imprudent. The second plot contrasts the Tong or Triad, the Chinese secret society -- "we call ourselves Hung family" -- with the Chen family 70. The amoeba of the family remains intact. Slow start, but I was drawn in.
Impossible on your own. He had no history, no heritage to live up to, no goal to fulfill, no ancient burden to carry" 111. The chapters alternate between the different families but finally come together at the end. Red Cudgel puts it succinctly: "Your movements must be simple and efficient -- what suits you best, not what you have been taught" 118. In lieu of the ever present question of the legitimacy of the representative claim of postcolonial narratives, to what extent do Mo's views and conceptions that appear in Sour Sweet lessen the ethos of the novel, if at all? You could write what I know about China and its citizenry on the back of a soggy hob-nob, let alone about Chinese immigrants living in 60s London. This would ensure he was imbued with correct Chinese qualities, veneration for parents, for instance" 167. And there is the Hung family, ruthless gang members who are portrayed with equal sympathy by Mo who has the uncanny knack of zooming in and out of his various characters perspective and drawing our empathy even as we are cringing in dismay.
Sour Sweet Plots Sour Sweet more radically questions the viability of Confucian values by removing the cultural support of Chinese tradition. At that time, I was astounded to learn about the underworld of Chinese immigrants in Britain. If one did not understand the ritual procedures, he would literally not know where to stand li " 86. He is almost a non factor in the home, even though his culture would traditionally dictate otherwise. With Salman Rushdie and Kazuo Ishiguro, Timothy Mo emerged in the 1980s as one of the most important novelists writing about bi-cultural diversity, reflecting both his Anglo-Chinese background and his concerns for the effects of imperialism and colonial rule in South-East Asia.
Culture Shock and Response The member of the family most traumatized by culture shock, Mui's subsequent rapid acculturation illustrates the danger of too much yin, of compliantly renouncing one's formative culture li and instincts yi to uncritically embrace a foreign arbitrary culture in adulthood, which means that the adopted culture will always remain artificial and rational. The other thread follows the in-fighting among the leadership of a Triad gang, the Hung family. The pattern, in fact, of Chinese history repeated in microcosm" 15. It's such a moving story and the way it flips from the heartwarming and funny Chens to the darker forces at work is very well done. As a writer who has deliberately resisted incorporation by the establishment over the past fifteen years, Mo would, one images, derive a good deal of pleasure from this fact.
How effective is he in establishing a credible set of protagonists around which a narrative can evolve? The book describes London and it's inhabitants as seen through the eyes of Cantonese, and the thought process of newly arrived immigrants in a strange and different society and complex interplay of individua A book, I feel, that I will remember for a long time. The third plot is concerned with an experiential deconstruction of Neo-Confucian orthodoxy to uncover the authentic principles of Confucianism, something along the lines of demythologizing Christianity in the West. They meet silence when they ask their foolish questions. The Meeting of East and West: an Inquiry Concerning World Understanding. To subscribe to the newsletter, until further notice, please press the subscribe button. In what ways does the geography of Sour Sweet provide the narrative with a different aspect of postcoloniality than other novels we have previously read? I found the first half of the book a bit slow but I liked the second half as the family start their own business and begin to flourish.
