The Many Daughters of Afong Moy

The Many Daughters of Afong Moy: A Novel

By: Jamie Ford / Foreword and Afterword By: Jamie Ford / Narrated By: Jennifer Lim, Mirai, Cindy Kay, Natalie Naudus, Sura Siu, Emily Woo Zeller, Nancy Wu

Length: 13 hrs and 28 mins

5-stars for Stunning Imagery… but… the “Jamie Ford 2-by-4” of sublimely-written agony is just too much here

I LOVE Jamie Ford!!!!

When I saw he had a New Release, I had only 2-credits left, but you canNOT imagine how happily, how imMEDiately I chucked one out so I could get The Many Daughters of Afong Moy. Yeh yeh yeh, it’s a Jenna Bush Hager book club pick, and she’s into dreck, but oh gosh! Jamie Fooooooord!!!!

What I’ve adored about him is that he takes a tragic true period of history and he crafts, in lovely lovely LOVELY prose, with exTRAordinary imagery, beautiful characters who face what breaks the heart, and then No Pretty Little Bows but Love and Redemption at the endings of them all.

And epigenetics? Intergenerational trauma? Oh how soooo THERE I am! The “Jamie-Ford-2-by-4”-Journey O’ Pain-Bus? Beep beep, I’m on it.

So I was soooo onboard when characters were showing up and we meet Dorothy, she whose body mind soul have been beyond damaged: Generations of Chinese, Chinese-American girls and women who’ve suffered grievously. Dorothy suffers dissociative episodes; near-constant depression; has had pretty much every label tacked onto her ever-growing psychiatric file. I was ready, and I was engaged like crazy. EsPECially for Faye, who nursed in China during WWII, and helped pilots from the Flying Tigers amongst everyone else.

Okay… so here’s where m’ review is going to go all sideways-like. Cuz you see, if you start talking about the flaws, say with, like, your Big Sis… oh my how things DO go sideways. And if you stay to listen to Mr. Ford’s thoughts at the end, to how The Many Daughters of Afong Moy came to be? Oh dear! Part of the journey of this story, we’re told, is of Ford getting away sans any concrete ideas, crafting a 12-page synopsis, and then it all comes together with a bidding war and a 2-book deal. After pushing through some Well, That’s Unfortunate Kinda Thoughts throughout this story, that 2-book deal stuff had me thinking of Sara Baume: She had a great concept for her first book then slammed together Jenna-Bush-Hager-Sorta-Dreck for her second.

Soooo… I started worrying that Ford’s first three audiobooks were well-conceived, impeccably-written stories, but the 2-book deal got him soooo excited that he sorta slapped this all together in his unmitigated joy, kinda forgetting to keep his characters straight, kinda forgetting to craft women who weren’t victims of, say, EVERYTHING, kinda forgetting that No, really: Redemption is AWEsome but Neat and Happy Little Bows for Endings are… Well, they’re truly appalling after so very many heavy, heavy situations.

It’s like he went for every Chinese/Chinese-American Trauma that he could find during different eras and slap-banged ‘em all after just a wee bit o’ research that had him all excited (Yes, Jamie, I too listened to The Flying Tigers and know it ain’t enough to write an entire era of… just sayin’ ya know? I mean, I applaud the enthusiasm, but…?). For most of them (Here’s the first time he’s crafting All-Women Protagonists), truly… I’m wondering what he thinks of women. And, oh my, I’m very much hoping his future heroines don’t do stuff like endanger their children… or down an entire bottle o’ pills in solidarity for past traumas… thereby leaving daughters alREAdy showing signs of trauma uhm, well, further traumatized by a mom who decided it’d be jim-dandy-fine to Bite It during a typhoon…

Questionable characters going through a plethora of agonizing experiences, thus leaving them unfleshed-out stories, only to have male characters as the centerpieces they revolve around. And if the male ain’t a savior; why then he’s an abuser of the most notorious kind. Either way? Uhm, problematic.

And Big Sis, upon opening her own critique of The Many Daughters of Afong Moy, calls out the complete switching of character relationships (Hint: End of Chapter 14 is where the genealogical line starts going waaay wonky). Uhm, an editor going over the script before publishing?

Stellar narration, am NOT gonna fault that in the slightest. Tho’ Dorothy, who started the story off as sheer perfection for a character who’s carrying the weight of generations of trauma, soon descends into bouts of indignant outrage, followed by bouts of self-pity, followed by hellbent flights into the (Typhoon!) night with a (Jeopardized!) daughter, followed by the most extreme act of self-pity? Well, the narration was SO spot-on that I reeeeally wanted to add to her Many Traumas by throttling her. So well done, narrator…

Man! Big Sis and I started off our discussion with the sticking points, then we went on to express admiration for Ford’s writing style and for his truly preternatural abilities to stun the senses with urgent writing, metaphorical language, the just flat-out fanTAStic imagery… and then the discussion veered back to: Oh gosh… what was Jamie thinking to write such shallow characterizations for, say, Faye—whose story and experiences were so compelling but were then brushed aside so that he might bludgeon us over the head with the Suffering Suffering SUFFERING of all the rest? Wham! Upside the head, over and over.

And over.

Oh gosh, this is Jamie Ford who’s stunned me and has broken my heart in the first three audiobooks I snapped up. This is the author who’s whonked me with stories of Devastation that have somehow, through exQUISite writing and crafting, brought things together to end with Hope. Truly beautiful works. He has the talent, like, CRAZY big.

Just not this time.

Pleeeeeeease!!! Do NOT be swayed by the 2-book deal. Write your heart; write your soul; take your time, don’t rush the second book for a deadline.

You Can DO It!!!!!