Daughter of Han Pruitt, I.

Daughter of Han

Pruitt, I. (1967). A Daughter of Han -- The Autobiography of a Chinese Working Woman.

Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Ida Pruitt wrote A Daughter of Han as both prose and social history. The book is filled with historical examples of real people and real events, yet because of the way it was written, from the point-of-view of an ordinary woman, Ning, we can view history from a more personal and social viewpoint and realize the great events are made up of a conglomeration of small events that surround real individuals. The most striking aspect of the book, however, was not the tremendous cultural changes towards the end of the Qing Dynasty, but like Amy Tan's Joy Luck Club, how similar people are regardless of their cultural heritage and geographic location. The book is also tremendously evocative of the pathos people must go through just to survive -- in Ning's case she gave birth and buried children, worked as a maid, begged for money and food just to be able to keep her children, and even had to sell one of her daughters that she could not afford to feed. We can only imagine what life was like during a time when most of the people in one's surroundings were so poor that they could barely feed themselves. Of circumstances so dire that, in this 21st century insulted world, see alien to us.

This reader was aware of the importance of family in traditional Chinese culture, but not to the extend shown in Ning's life. For her entire lifetime, in fact, Ning's sole purpose was to remain close to her children and grandchildren -- to pass on the wisdom of the elders and to ensure that the lineage of the family was carried to the next generation. Little did her family know just how much Ning gave up just to ensure that her family would have enough to eat and the children could grow up and have families of their own. This, too, is something that is not really present in modern American culture. While families still get together at holidays, and some are closer than others, the idea of "family first" is not a pervasive idea like it was for Ning. How likely, for instance, would it be that someone would give up a great job or a new life in a new place just to remain home with a child? Instead, the modern woman would find day-care and attempt to balance both.

This theme of balance is another predominant philosophy from Ning. When Ning was younger, she deferred to the wisdom of the elders and the ideas put upon her as a youth -- namely that tradition and destiny are predetermined. It was interesting to chart the manner in which Ning grew emotionally as she aged to realize that she made her own existence, her own present, and her own future. As Ning turned from a victim waiting for a husband to bring home money for food to a working woman serving many families, she found she had to cast out any dependence upon others for her own welfare and actively take charge of her life and make the future for her children the way she envisioned it. However, it was this dichotomy between independence and reliance on traditional values that separated Ning from many of her friends and relatives. At the same time, it strengthened her, giving us all a life lesson to contemplate.