A literary discussion about The Flame Tree

Pamela, a student who is studying The Flame Tree at Uni wrote to me to ask a literary question: "In what way does the novel seek to rewrite the cliches of the diasporic Bildungsroman? Do you think irony is prevalent in the novel?"

I’m posting my thoughts on this on the blog as my other readers may also like to be involved in this literary discussion.

Hi Pamela

I take your reference to "diasporic Bildungsroman" to refer to the fiction of overseas Chinese which focus on growing up and coming of age, much like those of Amy Tan and others. "Cliches" is strong word for the overall arc of those stories but I think you are getting at the general image of one gets from those books of a young Chinese girl growing up in difficult circumstances within a Chinese tradition that disempowers girls and women, enduring much suffering and heartache in the process.

While those stories are important and need to be told, and have been told by many talented writers such as Tan and Maxine Hong Kingston, they do tend to dominate the bookshelves and thus, tend to disproportionately represent Chinese women as downtrodden, suffering and hard done by - ever the victim. It was very important to me to represent a modern, young Chinese woman that you might see every day in South East Asia or the West - one who is empowered, educated, articulate and financially independent. I like to think that my two books at least in their small way add a counterweight against the predominant image of Chinese women as victims.

Many year ago, in the ’80s, an Englishwoman who came to know my mother arranged to have tea with her and brought along her son, a young man. During this tea, it turned out that the young Englishman was looking for a wife and they had heard that my mum had a daughter of marriageable age - namely, me. He was looking specifically for an Oriental girl as he wanted a wife who was not like those power-suited, outspoken, shoulder-padded Western women. My mother came home laughing uproariously. She was sensible enough about his safety that she did not arrange for me to meet him - or I would have bitten his head off for his presumptious, patronising preconceptions.

Within the framework of The Flame Tree where Jasmine is a dynamic, modern woman, she is still the object of other people’s fantasies - Harry has an idea in his head about what she should be like. This fantasy taps into the archetype of the controllable, colonialised oriental female which he plays out in the scene with the prostitute. For Jasmine, while she is a modern woman, she is also caught within the "good daughter" expectations that her mother and Chinese tradition generally foists onto girls. Her journey is to emerge from those expectations of others, individuating to becoming her own woman.

As for irony, I guess it’s not really irony if I have to explain or point it out so I’ll have to leave you to look into that one for yourself. Just one pointer, though. The role of Mrs Fung is steeped in irony that many people generally miss.