This will last longer than a flower
By Brittany Muller
IV Leader Staff
Every month, my aunt e-mails me a list of books she thinks I might like that she has read through her book club.
Well, a couple of months ago, she only sent me one title. She promised me, up and down, that I’d just love this book, maybe even obsess over it a little. She claimed I’d never be able to put it down. “Snow Flower and the Secret Fan” by Lisa See is simply and utterly amazing, beautiful even.
Last Christmas, I read “Memoirs of a Geisha,” and this book kind of has the same vibe, kind of the same history. In the Chinese culture, women are expected to bind their feet, which is a process that involves breaking, bending, and taping their feet until they are roughly the size of an adult thumb!
Women are expected to be submissive, petite and tamable, which explains why men want a wife with bound feet. However, women are allowed one luxury. They are allowed to communicate with other women through their own secret form of writing, which they may write on fans or even clothing. Even though it is presumed that some men can understand this text, they do not bother trying to decode it, classifying it as “silly.”
Women discuss their hope for bearing a male son to impress their new family, their pasts and their secrets. Coincidentally, it is easy to misinterpret a woman’s writing; it is easy to make assumptions without facts. Women may live their whole lives lingering on words that may have meant nothing at all… Lily, the narrator, explains, “The binding altered not only my feet but my whole character, and in a strange way I feel as though that process continued throughout my whole life.”
Our life is, essentially, a long process. We go through many situations, and we meet people that change us, make us better, make us worse, make us different. We are always changing, but some experiences will never leave us, never go away, and I felt as though the narrator wanted me to question my own life, my own decisions.
If you have ever felt lost or betrayed or jealous, you’ll love this book. If you have ever been scared or confused or felt regret, you’ll definitely love this book. This book is full of history, culture, love, loss, and raw emotions that we may have never thought we could put into words.
My aunt was right: “Snow Flower and the Secret Fan” is impossible to put down.