The Bonesetter's Daughter

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The Bonesetter's Daughter is Amy Tan's fourth novel. It was published in 2001.

[edit] Plot summary

The Bonesetter's Daughter is divided into two major stories. The first one is about Ruth, an American-born Chinese woman, who worries that her mother, LuLing, is gradully becoming more and more demented. Ruth is a self-sufficient woman that makes her living as a ghostwriter for self-help books and lives with a man, Art, whom she's been in a relationship with for years. She acts as a step-mother to Art's two teenage daughters from a previous marriage but finds herself sometimes conflicted with the differences between the American culture of the girls and her own Chinese upbringing. Throughout the book, Ruth struggles to understand her mother and sometimes even resents her for the unhappy memories she has during her upbringing in which her mother would use her to make important phone calls, would criticize her harshly at times, and even try to communicate with the ghost of LuLing's nursemaid, Precious Auntie. Her mother's strong personality makes it hard for Ruth to deal with at times, and has led to several disputes, but nonetheless they manage to hold a strong loving bond with each other. Once Ruth learns her mother's mysterious past, she begins to understand and appreciate her mother more, as well as find the reason to some of her mother's erratic behavior.

The second major story is that of LuLing, which Ruth discovers in the form of documents her mother herself had written in Chinese and given to her several years earlier. It is LuLing's attempt to hold onto her past in China and never forget it. This story within a story describes LuLing's early life in a village called Immortal Heart; the secrets passed on to her by her nursemaid Precious Auntie (who, we learn, is also her mother); tales of ghosts and curses. Answers to both women's puzzles and problems unfold as LuLing's story is translated in its entirety, providing answers through memory and words that could not be spoken, only recorded.

[edit] Major themes

The Bonesetter's Daughter is another tale of the mother-daughter relationship, here, the particularly complex one between mothers and daughters raised in different cultures. Actually, there are several mother-daughter relationships explored in the novel: Ruth and LuLing, and LuLing and Precious Auntie. Precious Auntie is by far the most well imagined (and imaginative) character in the book. Other noteworthy aspects of the book are the relationship between aging parent and child. The fear and frustration Ruth expresses as she watches her mother's memory fade and her behaviors become more erratic are particularly well developed, along with her partner's response to the increased attention Ruth must give to LuLing.

In addition, LuLing's story of life in China is an interesting exploration of the power of memory and myth, and the strength of love between mother and child. However, the book follows too many patterns found in the author's previous work: the ubiquitous struggle between mother and daughter, the mother always situated in China, the daughter in the U.S.; and how the American daughter connects to a white man and must relearn or reconnect to her Chinese past through her mother's painful struggles.