My dear reader,

I know it’s been a while since my last book recommendation. I’d love to tell you that this was all because of some big stuff I’m preparing in the background to bring even more stories to you. But in all honesty, I didn’t do anything to push or promote this page — in truth, I didn’t make enough time to produce anything meaningful. I got carried away by what life demanded from me — and by the stories I let myself get lost in.

Whispering Voices

But even though I wasn’t writing, stories were still finding me. And some of them refused to leave quietly. I hope that over the next weeks I’ll be able to bring some of them directly to your inbox or internet browser.

When I started this newsletter I set out to explore foreign cultures and find untold stories. Reading through the last book recommendations, I really find myself circling back to stories that are told from an unexpected perspective or that give a voice to people who often go unheard.

And among all these whispering voices, one voice stood out — not because it was loud, but because it was unmistakably clear. Lisa See’s novel Snow Flower and the Secret Fan is a perfect example of what I wanted you, dear reader, to find in this newsletter.

A Bond that Lasts a Lifetime

The story I want to share with you today is one that has deeply moved me. It’s the story of two women whose friendship grows, endures, breaks and revives over the course of their lifetime.

Lily, a beautiful girl from a poor family, enters a laotong relationship with Snow Flower, an equally beautiful girl from a rich and prestigious family. A laotong bond is an official sisterly relationship between two women and it helps to massively improve Lily’s marriage prospects.

From their first meeting on, the two girls are very close — sharing many of life’s challenges — until it is time for them to marry. As soon as they get married, however, their life’s circumstances and roles are reversed: While Lily gets to marry into a prestigious family, Snow Flower who had been hiding her family’s impoverishment from Lily can only secure a marriage into a butcher’s family, which at the time was the lowest profession in society.

Suffering in Silence

The bond between Lily and her laotong shapes their girlhood, but it is adulthood — and the weight of the world around them — that truly tests their friendship. We follow Lily and her friend through their joint and individual hardships like footbinding, war, sickness, miscarriages, and betrayal.

To improve and secure their marriage prospects by having perfect lotus feet, the girls have to go through the painful footbinding procedure. The procedure is not only painful but also dangerous because infections can easily fester in the broken and torn feet.

During the Taiping Rebellion, the rural communities in Hunan province, where our story takes place, had to leave their homes behind and flee to the mountains. The suffering people endured then is hard to put into words.

What stayed with me most was not only the women’s hardship itself, but how little any of it seemed to matter to the world around them. Throughout the whole novel it is made clear that women’s lives and their hardships are of no relevance to anyone but — maybe — themselves. They are utterly powerless and have no voice.

The Voice without Sound

This feeling of powerlessness and irrelevance hit me hard. Sometimes, I wanted to shout at Snow Flower and Lily to just break free from the shackles that they were wearing. But — of course, and that’s the point — for them, there was no way to break free — at least on the outside.

And yet, even in all this silence, something unexpected stirs beneath the surface — a quiet refusal to remain unseen. Taking a closer look at what was going on between the women behind closed doors, we find that they did find their voice. Some women in the region, Lily and Snow Flower among them, learned the secret women’s script known as nu shu — a syllabic writing system, partly derived from the male ‘official’ script. The women use this language to secretly communicate: they write letters to each other, embroider handkerchiefs, and paint on fans. Lily and Snow Flower commemorate the most important joint memories of their friendship on a secret fan.

Through this secret writing, women get to step outside of their very narrow lives, to be creative and to reach across distances. By that they — confined to the upstairs room and utterly powerless — can find their own voices. This is especially true for the protagonist, Lily, who learns the secret women’s writing early in life and later teaches it to the next generation.

Narrating a Story, Commenting on Life

We meet the protagonist, Lily, as an old woman who tells the story of her life and especially her most meaningful friendship. The story being told in retrospect allows the narrator, the 80-year old Lily, to reflect and comment on the events. We’ve also seen this in Memories of a Geisha where Sayuri later interprets the events in a different way than in the immediate moment.

That way, we clearly experience the story from Lily’s point of view, but at the same time, the narrator is not limited to exploring their immediate experience of a given situation but can interpret it differently at a later point in time or even correct themselves. This adds depth and lets the story move closer to or further from each moment.

For your own Research

Websites

Articles

Movies & Documentaries

Finding your Voice

While first and foremost, Lisa See’s novel Snow Flower and the Secret Fan is about a deep and powerful friendship between two women, it’s also a story about finding your voice. The narrator is honest and aware of her own limitations in life. However, she has found a way to express her deepest voice and thoughts through nu shu. For me, this was also a very hopeful message that even in the darkest of times and even in the most limited circumstances people can create something for themselves and make it their own.

Let me Hear Your Voice

If this story sparked thoughts, memories, or questions — I’d love to hear from you. Just reach out via mail or owl.

If you’d like to help keep the lantern lit on this journey through time and story, feel free to visit my Contribee page. Think of it as dropping a coin in the storyteller’s hat — no pressure, just a small gesture of appreciation.

And if you know someone who loves to get lost in good stories and explore the world through books, feel free to pass this newsletter along. There’s always room for a fellow traveler.

See you at the next campfire,
Kalypso