Dreams of Joy by Lisa See
Nineteen-year-old Joy Louie has run away from her home in 1950s America to start a new life in China. Idealistic and unafraid, she believes that Chairman Mao is on the side of the people, despite what her family keeps telling her. How can she trust them, when she has just learned that her parents have lied to her for her whole life, that her mother Pearl is really her aunt and that her real father is a famous artist who has been living in China all these years?
Joy arrives in Green Dragon Village, where families live in crowded, windowless huts and eke out a meagre existence from the red soil. And where a handsome young comrade catches her eye… Meanwhile, Pearl returns to China to bring her daughter home – if she can. For Mao has launched his Great Leap Forward, and each passing season brings ever greater hardship to cities and rural communes alike. Joy must rely on her skill as a painter and Pearl must use her contacts from her decadent childhood in 1930s Shanghai to find a way to safety, and a chance of joy for them both.
GUIDE
THEMES
An idealistic young woman gets trapped by communism.
SETTING
Set in Communist China during the 1950s.
SERIES
Book 2 of the Shanghai Girls series which is best read in order.
Review
Dreams of Joy is the sequel to Shanghai Girls focusing on Joy’s plight in communist China and Pearl’s efforts to get her daughter back.
The chapters which relate the plight of the villagers during the subsequent famine are horrifying and Lisa See is brutally honest, right down to the accounts of how families would swap their children so they wouldn’t have to eat their own flesh and blood. In the afterword, See reveals there are no exact numbers on how many people died but it is estimated to be around 40 million which is just absolutely tragic.
As Joy becomes a mother herself, she begins to realise just how much her own mother loves her and the old wounds finally begin to heal. Pearl becomes Joy’s only salvation and her determination to live leads her into a desperate attempt to get a message through to Pearl who has remained in Shanghai. Pearl, understanding her daughter’s plight, manages to rescue her in the nick of time and makes arrangements to get them all out of China and safely back in the States.
Dreams of Joy isn’t just about Joy’s journey though since Pearl has to return to the country of her birth and face a few ghosts from the past. She is heartbroken when Joy refuses to reconcile but she loves her daughter so much, she can’t bear to leave her behind so she endangers her own life to stay in Shanghai. The Shanghai Pearl knew is almost completely gone but she manages to return to her family home where she finds unexpected love.
As with Shanghai Girls, the characters have to face a great deal of hardship but the human spirit has an amazing propensity to survive and at the heart of it all is the resilience of love. Sisterly love gives way to motherly love in this novel and there is nothing stronger.
