Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, Week 1, Post B

Dear Ms. Lisa See,
I just started reading your novel, “Snow Flower and the Secret Fan” and it is absolutely enthralling! I literally cannot put it down, and it was really hard to force myself to stop so I could blog about it. Your writing style really captivates me, I love the details you put into each character yet there are not so many as to clutter the characters identities. I am curious as to why you don’t use the first names of the family members? Is it part of the Chinese culture to call your siblings by birth order? I am also wondering if you chose the names of the characters, like Lily and Snow Flower, because you enjoy flowers or if that too is also part of the Chinese culture? One of the smaller details I noticed was the way you dated Lily’s birth date, “the fifth day of the six month of the third year of Emperor Daoguang’s reign” (9). It reminded me of a novel I’m reading in school, “In the Time of the Butterflies” by Julia Alvarez, because she too dated events in the year of the dictator Trujillo’s rule in the Dominican Republic. Anyways, you can really pull the reader’s heart strings and I think that is an excellent trait for an author to have. I felt absolutely horrible for Lily when her feet were bound, even though she was rather old at just seven years of age. When you described the situation through Lily’s eyes it made it even worse, “The freshly created space where once there had been a joint was now a gelatinous infinity of torture” (30). That quote made me realize just how horrifying that experience must have been for Lily, and millions of other young girls. Why did you decide to write a novel about a young Chinese girl? Did you apply characteristics of yourself into Lily? I cannot wait to read more of the novel and find out what happens to her and her family, hopefully their future is filled with happy events!
Sincerely, Rachel