“Letters From Thailand”
“Letters From Thailand” is a lovely novel wrtten in 1969 by “Botan”, a pseudonym of the Chinese-born Thai female writer, Supa Sirisingh, and recently translated into English by Susan Fulop Kepner, an academic on Southeast Asian studies from UCLA.
The book is written in the form of self-revealing letters to the beloved mother of a young man who leaves rural China to make his fortune in Thailand at the close of World War II. In Tan Suang U’s starkly honest account of his daily life in Bangkok’s bustling Chinatown, deeper themes emerge: his determination to succeed at business before all else; his hopes for his children in this strange new culture that sickens him by what he sees as it’s drunkeness, laziness, gambling and sexual depravity and his resentment at how easily his children embrace urban Thai culture that is becoming increasingly Westernized at the expense of their Chinese heritage that he holds dear.
Westerners will recognize the cross-cultural themes that emerge… the desire to hold on to cultural heritage in the midst of an alien land, the stereotypes that keep groups separated one from another and the struggle of oppressed women to transcend their own culture and live life on their own terms.
“Not to eat another man’s rice but to hate him” is something to be ashamed of, Suang U learns. “I was of the opinion that a good heart was not money in the bank,” Suang U says toward the end of the book. But he learns that “two baht worth of rice with love at the supper table is a feast.” Finally, a lonely old man, after he has passed his business on to the ungrateful son that he himself mentored, he discovers that “to be alone is terrible, but it is not so terrible as to be a guest in a son’s house.”
The strongest survival instinct is self deception. After a long sorrowful road to self-discovery he is astounded to learn two things: one is that money is not the most important thing in life; the other is that what we believe does not necessarily reflect what and who we are.
“Letters From Thailand”
1969 by Supa Sirisingh
Susan F. Kepner English Translation 2002
Silkworm Books Chiang Mai
http://www.silkwormbooks.info
Tags: Chiang Mai, China, Reading, Thai Culture, Thailand
Zoe