Like other Lisa See novels, this is a story as much about relationships between mothers and daughters as it is one about individuals and their homeland.

See’s China is daunting, frightening and thrilling all at once– with the spectre of Mao’s Cultural Revolution looming terrifyingly close. Remember Shanghai Girls? Remember how you didn’t want to let go of Pearl and May? See brings them back in Dreams of Joy, and moves the story forward to the late 1950’s, as young Joy leaves her mother Pearl in Los Angeles, and heads to China to find her father. From her thrilling family story, On Gold Mountain, to her new novel, Dreams of Joy, Lisa See has mined individual, familial and collective Chinese American stories to produce a most wonderful window into what it means to be part of both cultures as a woman in the 20th and 21st centuries. ( A recording of this event will be uploaded to the Festival YouTube channel in a few days.) These poems were written during Lockdown and the Coronavirus pandemic, at a time when it seemed the whole country, and in fact the whole world was going through the same crisis. No one, however, has done it with as much variety, depth or reach to a wide audience. Only a handful of writers in America have explored the Chinese immigration experience as fully as Lisa See.

The age of dreaming by nina revoyr