Review for Do Not Say We Have Nothing: Love and Sensitivity

Hello! Welcome back! I hope those reading this are well rested during these cold and stressful December days (don’t forget to moisturize!). I know I’m feeling the stress through these endless papers and amounts of grading to do, but I digress.

Today, I’d like to write about an incredible piece of fiction rooted in history and written with profound care and consideration. Madeleine Thien’s 2017 novel Do Not Say We Have Nothing is one that I have had the privilege to read, present a seminar on, and now write about for one of my final papers. I’ve gone through it a couple times now, and even though I only skimmed it the last time, I still found new elements woven into it that I previously missed. And honestly, just as a disclaimer, I cried even harder the second time. Yeah, it’s one of those books. Again. I did a lot of crying this semester.

The novel opens with the tale of a young girl, Marie, who lives in Vancouver as a young girl in 1989. Immediately, there is grief in that year: her father’s abandonment of her and his subsequent death in Hong Kong. From here, Marie’s mother digs to find the father’s family in China and through this, the character Ai-Ming is introduced into the story. With her comes the epic Book of Records.

With this tool, Ai-Ming is able to transport Marie into a different world, filled with a multitude characters. There is Da Wei, the poet, and May Fourth, his love interest. There is Big Mother Knife, the tough one, and Sparrow, her gentle and musically inclined son. There is Wen the Dreamer, the calligrapher, and Zhuli, his strong and curious daughter. The story then produces this incredible mix of past and present as Ai-Ming reads her Book of Records to Marie (or Ma-li as she affectionately dubs her), detailing the realities of the Chinese Cultural Revolution and later Tiananmen Square riots through these vastly interesting and personable characters.

I cannot begin to describe how impactful this novel is. Thien’s ability to weave in grief, devastation, and sorrow into kind, beautiful words is something I had never experienced before. Her descriptions of music are so original, almost as if to designate the music being played to its own unique space, its own language.

Language, too, is a key element to this novel as there is so little of it. Of course there is dialogue, but what is far more meaningful is the space that the silence creates. It permeates the novel and provides time for the readers to reflect on what is happening, on what these characters could be thinking. The traumas and grief that the past provides are accentuated by these silences. In the moments that matter most, spoken language fails and touch, be it on piano keys or skin, fills the space in a profound way.

At its core, I think this novel is about love and sensitivity. There is always this sense of awareness, be it of an individual or the collective whole, sleeping side by side in Tiananmen Square. It is absolute. It broke me and then put me back together and even taught me about the different ways in which love can be expressed through boundaries, silence, and vulnerability.

Now, you see, the trouble with using books from my syllabi is that they were hand picked by my incredibly smart professors who know an insanely wonderful book when they see one. For now, then, I suppose you’ll all have to deal with my extremely high ratings (five out five, obviously).

See you here next Tuesday!