Growing up, I gravitated towards certain books without really understanding why aside from the simple truth that I liked it. It wasn’t until I read The Jade Peony that I started to grasp why I loved Alice Walker’s The Colour Purple, Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray or anything and everything by Toni Morrison.
The Jade Peony is a story of a family growing up in Vancouver, Canada. Told through the perspective of its three children, life in the 1930s and 1940s unfolded in their daily activities. The children lived in Chinatown. I grew up in Chinatown. They spoke Toisanese to their grandmother. I spoke Toisanese to my grandmother. They faced racism. I had daily servings of racism from primary to high school. They didn’t have blonde hair, blue eyes and ate meatloaf on Sundays. The Jade Peony is a story with characters who looked and felt like me. It blew my not-quite-yet-a-teenage mind that the pages held stories so similar to my own.
In the 90s, it felt as though literature and race only intersected during Black History month. Even then, the message was diluted down to only address blatant racism. Racism was something from the past and we’ve moved passed that now. That’s what I thought the prevailing opinion was of the time. I had no name to name the growing discomfort I felt as I navigated life as a visible minority.
The Jade Peony changed that. The Chinese Exclusion Act was Canada’s racist legislation that broke generations of families and lives of men and women. Those who, quite literally, built the railroad that tied Canada together were not welcomed as citizens nor given the same rights on the same land. Heavy topics not directly discussed, but laid in the background like wallpaper was written by Wayson Choy. The only daughter lives between two cultures; the oldest son feels like an outcast in more ways than one; the youngest child’s naivety is yet to be broken.
This was the first time my own experiences were reflected in print. And not only that; it was beautifully written with grace and complicated simplicity. This was validation that people of colour needed while those in the majority have never gone without.
Wayson Choy passed away on April 27, 2019 and I wanted to recognise what he and his work meant to me. I’ve had the honour of meeting and seeing him multiple times during book tours. What a wonderful man to show a piece of Chinese Canadian life and history. Read his non-fictions (Paper Shadows, Not Yet) to see the subtle humour he brings to difficult topics like death. Read the novel that changed my perspective (The Jade Peony, All That Matters) and likely that of others.
Voices like that of Wayson Choy’s matter. It matters in print, on screens and whatever else is communicated to the public because the public sphere isn’t one colour, one idea or one history. It’s a voice that speaks for those who are learning the words of their experiences. Wayson Choy has helped me find mine.
