Monday, June 18, 2007

June Book: "Snow Flower and the Secret Fan" by Lisa See



Foot binding, women's chambers, and laotong friendships. Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, is a wonderful journey through mid 1800's China and the often times, secret life of women a man's world.

Lily and Snow Flower are matched as laotong's early in life to help them each find success in marriage and life. They're deep "true love" friendship runs the span of nearly 40 years of trial, tribulation, joy, deceit, and enduring love, loss and the trouble with forgiveness.

If nothing else, this book taught me several important personal lessons:

  • Friendships are important and should be cherised because we don't have them forever.
  • It is a wonderful thing to be a woman in a country where we have a voice, a vote, and the opportunity to be educated. Being stuck in a "women's chamber" your whole life, having your feet broken to be beautiful, and being regarded as your parents problem instead of their joy is just too rough.
  • Having the right to choose who I marry and how I live my life takes on a whole new meaning after reading the book. Choice is such a key element of life, and even though we don't think about it very much during the day, we make so many decisions, large and small, that others could never even fathom.
What were some of your thoughts on the book? Please share!

Makayla wrote a great review. You can read it HERE

Interested in more information on foot binding? Check out these links:
Color Photos of Chinese Women with Bound Feet

Listen to a story on NPR about foot binding with this link

Wikipedia article on foot binding

9 comments:

Michele said...

I haven't read the book yet, so I didn't even read your post for fear there were spoilers, but I think its great we have a blog. Why didn't we think of this before?? Thanks for setting it up!

.::still blinking::. said...

Are you going to put the subheading, "The Non-Bishop Approved Book Club."

Annie said...

Good idea. I hadn't thought about it. We need a better banner/logo. Do you want to be in charge of that?

Unknown said...

didn't know you had a book club too! my mother in law gave all of us daughter in laws the same book so she decided it would be fun to start a blog. i thought it was funny because she's turning 60 this year and it was her idea to blog. so hysterical....so i invited my sister to blog with us because she's read the book as well. i don't think our book club is off to too great of a start though.....we are doing it chapter by chapter......to try to learn more from each other i guess...

.::still blinking::. said...

Yeah. I can change it, I would love too.

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