This book was incredible. I learned so much about the culture of what was previously known as Yongming County in remote China in the late 19th century. I also learned so much about the hearts of women and the deep complexities our lives contain. I am almost a 30 year old woman and yet I never cease to be amazed at how the hearts and minds of people work.

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan follows the story of Lily from about age 6 onto age 80–an incredibly old age for that time. She starts as the daughter of a very poor farming family and feels utterly worthless since she is a daughter. She knows even at that young age that she’s considered to be a burden on the family and, being very young still, her family knew she was still at great risk of dying since children often died at that time.

The story follows her life as she gets matched in a laotong pair with a girl from another village named Snow Flower. Laotong pairs are rare and very special. They’re considered to be more intimate and long lasting than even marriage to a husband. Lily loves Snow Flower and when they’re young she greatly admires Snow Flower because she knows much about more refined living coming from the nearby and more affluent village of Tongkou.

The story chronicles their journey as they get their feet bound at age 7 which was immensely interesting to read about. It’s so interesting to think of the many ways in which different cultures across the world have created customs pushing people, particularly women, to modify their bodies as symbolism and for other purposes. Footbinding shows the future mother in law that a girl is obedient, it shows her future husband’s family that she can withstand pain and will be able to manage childbirth, and it also served as a major factor in the physical attraction for her future husband. No matter the region or time period, there are ways in which women are expected to alter their bodies to prove their value to the world.

This leads me to something that irritates me about several other reviews about this book and other books that similarly focus on cultural norms of different times and places. Often when westernized readers read and review books about other cultural practices they act shocked and appalled and act as if no similar cultural practices took place in their own country’s history or aren’t still currently taking place today. I absolutely think the pain and danger of the process of footbinding is terrible, however, it is no different than the wearing of corsets to get as tiny waists as possible that took place in Europe. It’s no different in essence than the pressure to get the perfect body or face through plastic surgery, dieting, and extreme exercise that goes on across the world today—perhaps especially in the US.

People also act aghast at the way China did not value daughters. As if the undervaluing of girls and women in our own society today is not still a major issue. There are many complexities and differences of course, but there are also more similarities than not. While the cultural way in which this book shows how people openly spoke poorly about girls and wished to have sons is so sad and cruel, in our society today, we show girls every day—particularly girls of color—how little value they hold and that so much of their worth is based on how appealing they can be to men. People like to act as if violence towards women and rape is not still incredibly common today.

I loved the honesty of this book and beyond the process of footbinding and the cultural disregard of girls and women, this book contains so much heart and covers so much. At one point, Lily must survive and protect her children during a terrible Typhoid outbreak in the region. Soon after that, a rebellion reaches their area and she must escape to the mountains where she lives separated from her own family and with Snow Flower’s family for three months in the winter.

The struggles were immense and yet these were not the core of this story. At its core, this was a story of love and friendship, heartbreak and grief. Lily does not develop her mind enough throughout the story to be able to be a proper laotong and lifelong friend to Snow Flower. Snow Flower has a much more difficult life than Lily, but Lily cannot relate and tries to help by simply relying on cultural norms to insist that if Snow Flower just did more and was a better wife and daughter in law that she could better her life.

This book is the story of Snow Flower and Lily’s love and pain and Lily’s journey throughout life. Her regrets, her happiness, her strength, and her weakness. This is a very human story and I enjoyed it immensely.

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan - Likewise Book Reviews

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