Cloud Mountain

Liu, Aimee

ISBN 10: 1570424802 ISBN 13: 9781570424809

Publisher: Hachette Audio, 1997

Synopsis

Defying cultural taboos in turn-of-the-century California, an American woman and a well-to-do Chinese man marry and move to China, where their love is tested by prejudice, revolution, and their own divided loyalties. Simultaneous.

About this title

From AudioFile

Based on the story of her grandparents' marriage, this epic tale tells of forbidden love in the time surrounding the first World War. Hope Newfield is a young English teacher who falls in love with Liang Po-yu, a Chinese scholar and revolutionary. B.D. Wong's fluid voice seems to melt into Hope's character, and he's equally adept at portraying the earnest Liang. Because of Wong's tone, the entire production takes on the quality of reverie, well suited to Cloud Mountain's retrospective structure. Almost meditative in its overall presentation, Liu's story touches the part of us that understands how moving and powerful love can be. R.A.P. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine

From Kirkus Reviews

From Chinese-American writer Liu (Face, 1994, etc.), a riveting, bittersweet second novel about a marriage tested by race, culture, and history as an American woman and her Chinese husband navigate the treacherous waters of politics in the pre-Mao years. Loosely based on Liu's own grandparents' experience, the story begins in 1941 when Hope Newfield, living in Los Angeles, receives a three-year-old letter from her husband in China asking if she still has a place in her heart for him. The letter moves Hope to look back over the events that brought the couple together and tore them apart. They had met in 1906, when she was living in Oakland and tutoring Chinese students. Leong Po-yo, a new pupil, is the only son of a noble family and a follower of Dr. Sun Yat-sen. Teacher and student are soon attracted to each other, and when Leong rescues Hope after the 1906 earthquake, they admit their love and decide to marry. They do so in Evanston, Wyoming, one of the few towns that allows ``mixed'' marriages, but they're quickly subject to racial slurs from both Americans and Chinese. Still, life is sweet, and the first of several children are born; but then, in 1911, revolution breaks out in China and Leong hurries back, followed shortly by Hope. From then on, their lives are shaped by Leong's political activities. Hope becomes a photographer and journalist; she and her children are shunned by both Chinese and European society. The marriage is further tested when China is pulled apart by civil war. Dispirited, Hope returns with her children to California in 1932, and though she goes back in 1942 in response to Leong's letter, she accepts that the two of them, victims of time and place, will always be ``separate and distinct.'' A moving tale of true love, besieged by politics and prejudice, that nonetheless survives the tumultuous times Liu so vividly and intelligently describes. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Hachette Audio
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 1570424802
• ISBN 13: 9781570424809
• Binding: Audio Cassette
• Number of pages: 2