Butterfly Tears, Stories by Zoe S. Roy

Review by Rose Gold

Inanna Publications, 2009

Butterfly Tears is a collection of fifteen short stories which oscillate between China and North America. Through memories, dreams, dialogue and the sparing use of symbol, these short stories speak of the almost unendurable hardship suffered in the “Cultural Revolution” of Mao’s China as well as the shock and bewilderment experienced by Chinese immigrants in North America as they struggle to come to terms with the new world they have found themselves in and the loss of the old world they have left behind.

The stories are simply told and move effectively and seamlessly through time and place. Throughout the pieces, we are given sometimes glimpses and sometimes enduring images of a lost world, of a new world as seen through the immigrants’ eyes, and of the relationships caught between both worlds. It is intriguing to learn about the Cultural Revolution in China and to see how ruinous and stultifying those years were. At times it is almost hard to believe the extent to which individual freedoms were suppressed. In several stories, public denunciations occur. In “Ten Yuan”, for instance, a man is denounced for telling a joke, and in Twin Rivers, a woman denounces her own husband. The paralyzing fear of the regime is an ever-present undercurrent in these stories, and some scenes seem almost prototypical of Orwell’s 1984.

There is a distinct feminine and feminist perspective in the stories. Many of them deal with women who cast off traditional values – Confucian or Maoist – to begin a new life in North America where they must confront unexpected challenges and troubles in family relationships. In “Butterfly Tears”, for instance, childhood memories of a crazed old man abandoned by his wife, entwine with an old Chinese myth of thwarted love and with disturbing dreams to torment a woman who is about to separate from her husband.

While later stories deal with the conflicts and fortunes in the relationships of Chinese women who struggle to adapt to North American society, many of the early stories take place in Mao’s China. One of these, “Yearning”, is an effective and gripping tale of escape from Communist China, and in “Frog Fishing” a very realistic and sickening denunciation is portrayed. “Twin Rivers”, straddling both worlds, is an effective story of jealousy, revenge and shame, which echoes and reflects an earlier tragedy.

This collection offers the reader many captivating cameos of the Chinese/North American experience as seen through women’s eyes. The stories are believable and direct and do not fail to engage the reader with their weave of dream, memory and often surprising turns of fate. Especially intriguing are the stories and scenes set in Mao’s China, which give us a rare glimpse in to the dark and frightening world of the Cultural Revolution, the totalitarian nightmare which in some way or another haunts every one of these stories.

Zoe S. Roy was born in China and was an eyewitness to the Red Trror under Mao’s regime. Her short fiction has appeared in several Canadian magazines. She currently lives in Toronto where she works as an adult educator and writer.

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