Mai Lin
by
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Marie sat listening. She had forgotten her coffee. She lifted her cup to her lips and took a sip. There wasn't much left and it was only slightly warm. She motioned for the waitress to refill their cups. Aunt Ho continued, "in China it not easy to be a girl. I was born first. My mother was very young, only seventeen. She accept one baby girl, they want a boy very much. Next year she try again. Twin girls born. No, she can't have three girls. They did not have a lot. She pinch their tiny nostrils shut, held them closed, herself. The midwife wrapped them up together, in a sheet, and took them away. Next year my brother was born, Han' s father. For them, good sign, boy born." Marie didn't say anything. She was still caught on the image of the two tiny infant girls struggling for life, suffocated by their own mother. Gestated together, born together, dead together. She closed her eyes for a moment and shook her head. She couldn't loose the image. She took a sip of her coffee, which the waitress had just finished pouring. It almost burned her tongue and tasted very bitter. Marie thought of Han's grandmother fussing over a lo mein in her tiny little kitchen. Chopping and dicing the raw vegetables with her thin blue-veined hands. Those same hands, at eighteen, had pinched the little nostrils closed. It seemed not to fit, to make any sense at all. Marie could not connect the two. Ho sat across from her, just staring straight ahead, not happy, not sad, a neutral look on her long, pointed face. Ho took a drink from her coffee, then went on talking, "It much better for girls here. It also very different. A girl like Mai Lin, she struggle, she want her own way all the time. In China they would keep her down, almost suffocate her, like her twin aunts. But here, it is hard for her parents. American girls she sees are so free. She want to be like them. Parents don't have the control they had in China. I like it better. But the change is hard." Marie kept seeing the two dead baby girls. The young adolescent girl Mai Lin, murdered. Somehow they seemed linked in her mind. She wasn't quite sure what to say. She was grateful when Ho continued. "You know, it is funny. I've been here long time, but, when I get angry I get angry in Chinese, and sometimes, when I dream, I still dream in Chinese."
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About the Book
In Mai Lin, a white outsider enters into the mysteries of Chinese culture. This is a story of Cantonese assimilation into American culture. It is also a story of the merging and blending of two distinct cultures through marriage. Why is the young murdered sister never spoken of? This is in sharp contrast to the way the dead honorable ancestors are revered. The outsider Marie, becomes obsessive in her quest to find out more about Mai Lin. The more curious Marie grows, the more closed-mouth her husband, Han, becomes. In her search to uncover Mai Lin’s story, Marie learns about herself and what she really values, and profoundly affects her relationship wit her husband Han by stirring up memories that torment him. She, finally, comes to understand more fully both his culture and him. The "story of Mai Lin lives in my head and heart . . . I got so excited as I read (the) revisions that I was practically dancing in my seat . . . Mai Lin . . . immerses us in a believable, nuanced world of sympathetic characters where egos, needs, and priorities collide and miscommunication and misunderstanding lead to conflict . . . (the author) cares about these characters and gets us to care about them, too . . . The dialogue, sensory detail, exposition, and character behavior all work in concert to drive the plot forward and keep us engaged . . . " – Wally Lamb, author of She’s Come Undone & I Know This Much is True. "Correnti’s . . . writing is strong and flavorsome . . . I found Mai Lin both skillful and soulful, with an intriguing premise and a fascinating central character – or rather a double central character, which is what makes for the intriguing premise . . . and American life in a Chinese family complicated by drugs, tattoos, easy sex, and freedom . . . " – John Crowley, author of Daemonomania, Aegypt, and Beasts
About the Author
I am an unpublished author and Mai Lin is my first novel. I studied with the novelist Wally Lamb at the University of Connecticut, and also with the fantasy science fiction writer John Crowley. I have also been a member of the "Storrs Writing Group". I am married with children and live in Mansfield Center, Connecticut. One of our children married into a Chinese family so in addition to research, I have had interactive experience through visits to relatives in Chinatown and in Brooklyn. My story was written from an intensely personal perspective. Mai Lin actually began when Wally Lamb had us do a cluster writing exercise in his class. All the bright images and exotic smell of afternoons in Chinatown surfaced from my subconscious onto the page. The exercise grew into a four-page short story and it was, in fact, Wally Lamb who urged me to develop it into a much longer work.