{"id":1423,"date":"2023-06-18T15:58:05","date_gmt":"2023-06-18T15:58:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.authorfreeman.com\/blog\/?p=1423"},"modified":"2024-08-18T05:08:10","modified_gmt":"2024-08-18T05:08:10","slug":"novel-excerpts-my-herbalist-father","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.authorfreeman.com\/blog\/novel-excerpts-my-herbalist-father\/","title":{"rendered":"Novel excerpts: My herbalist father"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Digital

Ng Tin Sheung (1913-2012)<\/p><\/div>\n

On this Father’s Day, 2023, I’d like to share two excerpts from my forthcoming novel about the Chinese immigration experience through Angel Island in the early 1900’s (Bridge Across The Sky<\/a>, <\/em>Atheneum Books for Young Readers, Fall 2024) that were inspired by memories of my father.<\/p>\n

The opening stanza of the novel is based on the only story I ever heard my father tell about his younger days. He wasn’t in the habit of talking about his past, at least to his children, but one day, I overheard him telling a visitor about how he used to swim in a river rapid as a young man. He told the story with relish, seeming to plunge once more into the blinding whitewater as he told it.<\/p>\n

I was amazed. It was not a side of him that I’d ever seen or suspected. He was in his 40’s by the time I was born; I’d known him only as a hardworking, cautious man of simple domestic pleasures.<\/p>\n

When I sat down to write this novel set in 1924, my most vivid impression of life in China during those days was my father’s story about swimming that river. So I began the narrative with my teenage protagonist thinking back to his own attempts to brave chaotic waters:<\/p>\n

I picture yesterday\u2019s river,
\noutside the village that was once
\nmy home, beyond the grove
\nof dove trees with their long blossoms
\nhanging like wrinkled paper bats,
\nthe river our parents
\nforbade us to swim, where we\u2019d plunge
\ninto the churn, blinded by cold
\nand the bright froth, propelling ourselves,
\ncrossways to the current,
\nto rise, arms lifted, shivering,
\non the rocks of the far side.<\/p>\n

My father was an herbalist. My strongest childhood memories involve the smell of the herbs he stocked and the teas he brewed with them, the clanking of the bottles my mother washed, filled with the teas, and then packed into paper bags for his patients, and his heavy footsteps as he walked back and forth between the kitchen and the front part of the house that he used as an office.<\/p>\n

And the touch of his fingers on my wrist taking my pulses, his method of diagnosing a person’s health.<\/p>\n

Early in the novel, the Chinese detainees are put through medical exams that are traumatizing to them because of how unused they are to western medical practices. In this poem, I contrast that experience with my protagonist’s memories of the doctor who served his village:<\/p>\n

my heart<\/strong><\/p>\n

The house
\nof our village doctor was filled
\nwith the dried-out smell
\nof root and leaf and twig,
\nor sometimes with steam
\nfrom the teas he brewed, bitter
\nwith potency.<\/p>\n

He diagnosed our illnesses
\nthrough nothing more
\nthan his touch on our wrists
\nas we sat across a narrow table made
\nof a hard, lustrous wood carved
\nwith designs of flowers
\nand dragons, fancier
\nthan anything else
\nin the village, but whose fourth leg
\nwas a plain wooden stump.<\/p>\n

Sow Fong tells me
\nthe exams we underwent,
\nthe needles
\nand the nakedness, are just
\nhow medicine is practiced here
\nand not some special torment
\nthe pale powers reserve
\nfor those they see
\nas livestock.<\/p>\n

Not<\/em>, he adds,
\nthat they don\u2019t<\/em>
\nsee us as livestock.<\/em><\/p>\n

I\u2019m lying
\non my upper bunk. We\u2019ve been
\nto breakfast, but I came right back
\nand have no wish (for now
\nat least, I tell
\nSow Fong) to be shown
\nany more
\nof the barracks or to go
\noutside.<\/p>\n

Sow Fong stands
\nat the very end
\nof the bunk. His shifting feet
\ncome close to tripping
\nover mine, as he tests
\nhow far along
\nthe upward sloping ceiling
\nhe can touch.<\/p>\n

Maybe it\u2019s for<\/em>
\nthe best<\/em>, he says. It\u2019s <\/em>
\nprobably better,<\/em>
\nright? I\u2019m sure<\/em>
\nwe\u2019ll get used to it<\/em>
\nsoon enough.<\/em><\/p>\n

I think of the man
\nthat everyone
\nin the village, elder
\nto child, calls \u201cDoc,\u201d
\nmy wrist on the worn
\ncloth pad he sets
\non the wooden table
\nbetween us (the pad
\nthat smells\u2014I smelled
\nit once, when he
\nwas out of the room, holding
\nits softness up
\nto my face\u2014like
\nthe skin and sweat
\nof everyone else
\nin my village),
\nand he\u2019s asking me
\nhow I\u2019ve been eating,
\nsleeping, with utmost tact
\nhow I\u2019ve been shitting.<\/p>\n

I tell him all, feeling
\nhis fingers, soft
\nas a warm breeze, precise
\nalong my veins, learning
\nall he needs to know
\nfrom the beating
\nof my heart.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On this Father’s Day, 2023, I’d like to share two excerpts from my forthcoming novel about the Chinese immigration experience through Angel Island in the early 1900’s (Bridge Across The Sky, Atheneum Books for Young Readers, Fall 2024) that were inspired by memories of my father. The opening stanza of… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1430,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,9],"tags":[39,38,42,40,41],"class_list":["post-1423","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-my-writing","category-the-writing-life","tag-angel-island","tag-bridge-across-the-sky","tag-herbal-medicine","tag-herbalist","tag-novel-excerpts"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.authorfreeman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/dad-smile-3.png?fit=1095%2C1369&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.authorfreeman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1423","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.authorfreeman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.authorfreeman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.authorfreeman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.authorfreeman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1423"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.authorfreeman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1423\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1635,"href":"https:\/\/www.authorfreeman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1423\/revisions\/1635"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.authorfreeman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1430"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.authorfreeman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1423"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.authorfreeman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1423"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.authorfreeman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}