“There is something about her that can be rewritten over and over again.”
Jenny Tinghui Zhang’s Four Treasures of the Sky (Flatiron Books 2022) is a novel that I had to have when it was released, and a novel that’s sat on my physical TBR since. When curating my “ten before the end,” I pulled several selections from the older TBR (I have multiple stacks), and this cover, with the face in the waves and the shades of blue was an easy selection. I just didn’t expect it to be one of the more heartbreaking reads of the year.
Daiyu is named for a tragic heroine who dies of heartache when her beloved marries another. “They named me after a tragedy,’ I would complain to my grandmother.” “No, dear Daiyu, they named you after a poet.” And the novel brims with both tragedy and poetry – gorgeous writing that whispers in your ear like a lover and pulls you close only to cut your heart to shreds and leave you still bleeding out by the novel’s closing.
Daiyu is forced to rewrite herself over and over. When her parents are imprisoned, her grandmother cuts her hair and tells her to disappear into the city as a boy. She becomes Feng. As Feng, she works for a calligraphy teacher, learning lessons after her chores are done. She is smitten with the art and has a natural talent. As Feng, she is kidnapped at a fish market and trafficked to the United States, where, at 13, she is sold to a brothel that operates as a Chinese laundry during the day. She becomes Peony. She escapes with a young boy who, like every other man in her life, will let her down. But she leaves him behind, becoming Jason Li and making a home in Pierce, Idaho with two Chinese grocers and a Chinese violinist who was born and raised in Pierce. As anti-Chinese sentiment grows, even existing as boy becomes dangerous.
Struggling with her identity, Daiyu must reconcile the parts in her. She must find her name to claim her story, and this novel is that reclamation. Daiyu, like her namesake, is a beautiful and tragic character, one so tenderly depicted yet in sharp and bold strokes. And while the ending of the novel shattered me, leaving me whimpering for a page that was surely missing, for a happily after all that I wanted for her so much, I knew it hurt more because of how historically accurate it is.
Read this novel.
A Girl Named Tommi 