Xujun Eberlein's powerful memoir, The River Drowns the Able Swimmer, chronicles three generations of her family's history and experiences in Communist China through the lives of three brave women: her grandmother, her mother, and herself. Eberlein's narrative shows the sweeping social, cultural, and technological changes brought about by the Cultural Revolution, the continuing echoes of family secrets, and the complications of personal expression under a repressive regime.
Eberlein (Apologies Forthcoming) begins with her grandmother, known as "Gaga," born without a name in the 1890s in a remote mountain village. She shares Gaga's early rebellion against foot binding and her later dedication to working the fields on her husband's farm. Eberlein's mother, called "Eighth Girl" or simply "Girl" during her childhood, became the first in her family to attend school--unusual for a poor female child. Her early education motivated her to continue her studies, eventually giving rise to Eberlein's own hunger for knowledge. The shifting governments and alliances in China during the 20th century had a profound effect on all three women, and Eberlein details a world almost completely obliterated by those changes.
In her own part of the account, Eberlein traces her relationship with her older sister Ruo-Dan, whom she admired and who later joined the paramilitary youth-led Red Guard. Despite her high regard for her sister, Eberlein struggled to understand Ruo-Dan's devotion to the cause, especially after her sister's eventual death by drowning. She returns repeatedly to this incident, as well as to a different trauma her mother suffered as a young woman, juxtaposing their struggles against the larger hardships faced by the people of China. In both cases (as well as in other instances), the official narrative of events directly contradicted the truth. Eberlein muses on the lasting effects of this cognitive dissonance and the strain of keeping certain truths concealed. Eventually, she shares the story of meeting her American husband and their experiences traveling together across China before moving to the U.S. to marry and start a family.
Eberlein's distance, literal and metaphorical, from the land of her youth gives her memoir a feeling of the long-distant past or the retelling of an ancient myth. At the same time, the personal details--her grandmother's gnarled fingers, her mother's sparse school lunches, her own complex relationships with her sisters--feel immediate and compelling. For readers interested in life in Communist China or simply drawn to layered family sagas, Eberlein's memoir is a fascinating journey. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams
Shelf Talker: Xujun Eberlein's powerful memoir traces the political and social changes of 20th-century China through the lives of the iconoclastic women in her family.