The Year of Finding Memory: A Memoir

Judy Fong Bates

abr 2010 · Random House Canada

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In the tradition of The Concubine's Children and Paper Shadows, a probing memoir from the author of the acclaimed novel Midnight at the Dragon Cafe.

An elegant and surprising book about a Chinese family's difficult arrival in Canada, and a daughter's search to understand remarkable and terrible truths about her parents' past lives.

Growing up in her father's hand laundry in small town Ontario, Judy Fong Bates listened to stories of her parents' past lives in China, a place far removed from their every-day life of poverty and misery. But in spite of the allure of these stories, Fong Bates longed to be a Canadian girl. Fifty years later she finally followed her curiosity back to her ancestral home in China for a reunion that spiralled into a series of unanticipated discoveries. Opening with a shock as moving as the one that powers The Glass Castle, The Year of Finding Memory explores a particular, yet universal, world of family secrets, love, loss, courage and shame. This is a memoir of a daughter's emotional journey, and her painful acceptance of conflicting truths. In telling the story of her parents, Fong Bates is telling the story of how she came to know them, of finding memory.

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Judy Fong Bates came to Canada from China as a young child and grew up in several small Ontario towns. She taught elementary school in the city of Toronto for over twenty years. While teaching, she honed her skills as a storyteller and has told folktales and original stories at schools and festivals throughout southern Ontario. Judy has also taught and mentored students in creative writing through the University of Toronto, Trent University, and Diaspora Dialogues. Her stories have been broadcast on CBC radio and published in literary journals and anthologies, and she has written for The Globe and Mail and The Washington Post. She is the author of Midnight at the Dragon Café, the 2011 One Book Community Read for the city of Toronto, the Everybody Reads selection for Portland, Oregon, and an American Library Association Notable Book for 2006; the critically acclaimed short-story collection China Dog and Other Stories; and her family memoir, The Year of Finding Memory. She lives in on a farm outside Toronto.