The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane
The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane
By: Lisa See
I rarely leave a book unfinished, but I had to do that with this one.
This isn’t how I wanted my first book and review of the year to go.
But I read 34 pages of this book and I was upset. Disturbed.
So I asked a Facebook reading community for insight on whether or not I should continue based on the concerns I had. Turns out a few people agreed with me, but most of the people loved this book and author and encouraged me to continue, even saying it was one of their favorite books though didn’t really say why or give any concrete reasons for finishing.
Ultimately, I decided not to continue reading it.
Here’s where I’m at:
The Tea Girl of Hummingbird starts out in a mountain village somewhere in China, the home of the Akha tribe.
We learn about a variety of their cultural practices including spirit worship, the superiority of males over females, and all the superstitions surrounding these elements. For example, they encourage husbands to climb trees a lot because they think that will help their pregnant wives have a boy.
Within the first 34 pages the main character, Li-yan, is helping her mother, the village midwife, deliver her sister-in-law’s baby. She is having a hard labor. They call the village shaman who says that an outside spirit was insulted when Deh-ja made a mistake in her ancestral offerings. So they make her— during labor while she is in severe pain and bleeding— get up and sweep the room with a broom to sweep away the “malevolence.”
She eventually delivers a baby boy. Great news! But then they realize she has another baby inside her. Twins. Bad news. The worst news. Here’s what they say:
“Twins. Human rejects… Twins are the absolute worst taboo in our culture, for only animals, demons, and spirits give birth to litters.”
“These are our rules… Human rejects need to be sent to the Great Lake of boiling blood. This is how we protect the village from idiots, the malformed, or those so so small they’ll only prolong their own deaths. it is us— midwives— who keep our people pure and in alignment with the goodness of nature, because if human rejects are allowed to do the intercourse, over time an entire village might end up inhabited by only them.”
And so they murder the twin babies. And then they banish the parents of the human rejects and burn their house down.
Just. What in the actual heck??
Yes, I’m a mother of twins. Twins who came early and were very tiny and are now four and thriving. That is part of my disgust with these cultural practices. But killing ‘undesired’ humans across the board is wrong. Period. Regardless of circumstance or culture.
And bottom line is: I didn’t feel good about reading a book about it.
I asked the online community if this was going to be a book that tried to portray the Akha culture as beautiful and valid because I knew I wouldn’t be able to handle that. I didn’t get a lot of clear answers on this. At least one person claimed that the characters acknowledge the wrongness.
Li-yan eventually has a baby of her own (out of wedlock) that would also require murder, but she decides to rebel against her culture and give her baby up for adoption. The story then (based on the summary) follows the daughter and the mother’s life and their yearning for each other.
Honestly, I don’t know a lot about the book. Maybe what I read is such a small snippet and not the main focus of the book at all.
I don’t know what kind of redemption is found or not found in this book. It could be that I should have given this book a full chance.
But I have too many books to read to spend my time reading one that makes me upset. I largely read because I ENJOY reading. This book did not bring me joy.
I do like reading a variety of genres and historical fiction is one of them. I have read some hard books that talk about hard things. I fully understand that history is not neat and tidy. I do think it’s important to read about things or people that are different from me.
However.
Murdering babies is not just something ‘different’ than me and my beliefs. It’s evil. The worship of spirits is evil. (Which is why I avoid horror books and books with devils and witches and stories that glorify their existence)
I decided that it would be wiser for me to forgo the rest of the book than to endure more of the same thing.
The summary says the mother and daughter both look for meaning in studying the tea that shaped their heritage. If that is the only hope this book provides, I’m still not seeing anything worth sticking around for. I can’t imagine there’s much deep and solid meaning for broken people in a farming process.
Further, it’s not really just reading the history of something that happened but is no longer a thing. Wikipedia says this culture ‘stopped’ this practice only 20 years ago and now puts the babies up for adoption instead. It also says that people from Laos claim the practice isn’t completely eradicated.
I will pray for the Akha people and for all the babies growing in the wombs of the Akha women that they will see life, but I cannot read this book.
I’m not saying this specific book does this (because I didn’t read the whole thing) but I often feel like there is this idea held by lots of people that all cultures are equally valid. That we can’t critique another culture. Who are we to say what other people do or believe is wrong?
‘Fascinating’ and ‘interesting’ can be words used to describe the way the Akha tribe builds their homes or cooks their food or how they make tea. They cannot be used to describe their other cultural practices that are evil.
Culture has to be able to be critiqued. My own American culture has to be critiqued. There is no culture that should be immune from the questions- Is this right? Is this good? Is this true? I hope that people write about the American and European culture of killing babies via the method of abortion as abhorrent. Essentially abortion is the same thing the Akha tribe is doing and we should be equally disgusted by it because life is something to be treasured. Always.
If there is ever a book that tries to portray the evil elements of culture as purely ‘interesting’ or ‘worth learning about’ and then moving on with our day, I will gladly never read it.
This may or may not be that book, but I didn’t want to take the chance.
Is this decision perfectly consistent with my reading choices in the past? Probably not. I don’t know. I think it’s impossible to really read consistently across time. I can only do my best every time I pick a book to read.
I chose this book originally because it fit my reading challenge prompt of ‘a book set in a different culture than your own’ and it definitely qualified, but there are plenty of other cultures that I would rather read about and I think that’s okay.
Recommendation
I don’t really recommend this book based on what I read.
There is clearly many people who feel differently about this book and that may describe you. If you feel you can handle reading it, you are now going into it more informed and you can make the best decision for you. Maybe you can separate out the evil from the good and focus on other elements.
But let my review be the permission you need, if you feel similarly to me, that NOT reading this book is okay too. It does not mean you don’t care about the Akha people or other cultures in general. It does not mean you choose to be ignorant about hard things. It just means you won’t enjoy the book and have chosen something different.
[Content Advisory: as of 34 pages there is spirit worship and the killing of infants]
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