Deb­bie Ja­cob

A book can lead you in a thou­sand di­rec­tions. Take, for in­stance, Pao by Ker­ry Young, our cur­rent Sun­day Arts Sec­tion (SAS) Book Club choice.Pao is a light, en­ter­tain­ing Ja­maican nov­el that al­lows read­ers to ex­plore Chi­nese and West In­di­an his­to­ry while un­der­stand­ing the role of Chi­nese im­mi­gra­tion in the Caribbean. It's not a far stretch of the imag­i­na­tion to vi­su­alise read­ers tak­ing the plunge, af­ter read­ing it, to ex­plore Glo­ria, the pre­quel to Pao, and then one of Amy Tan's nov­els like The Joy Luck Club, The Kitchen God's Wife or The Bone­set­ter's Daugh­ter, all books about the Chi­nese-Amer­i­can ex­pe­ri­ence.

There's noth­ing like com­par­ing his­to­ry and cul­tur­al ex­pe­ri­ences through lit­er­a­ture. It helps to put his­to­ry in a whole new light.A good ex­am­ple of this is Yang Pao's mar­riage to Fay Wong and his re­jec­tion of Glo­ria, the pros­ti­tute that he fell in love with in the be­gin­ning of Young's nov­el. Yang Pao's ac­tions as a fic­tion­al char­ac­ter re­veal much about how West In­di­an men view women in gen­er­al. In spite of Glo­ria's qual­i­ties, Yang Pao can­not shake so­ci­ety's man­date to mar­ry some­one of a cer­tain so­cial class. Pao demon­strates time and time again just how much so­ci­ety dic­tates our path in life.

It is one of those rare books that cap­ture the essence of one cul­ture while pro­vid­ing a frame­work for un­der­stand­ing oth­er cul­tures. Pao pon­ders the col­li­sion of cul­tures through his­to­ry and demon­strates how cul­tures that come crash­ing to­geth­er force us in­to new and un­ex­pect­ed di­rec­tions. It demon­strates that sur­vival re­quires a cer­tain mask, the mask of brava­do that Pao wears, yet we all car­ry our his­to­ry and our sense of self with us. This is what makes life a con­stant art of ne­go­ti­a­tion.In the au­thor's note in the end of the book Young writes, "Han Suyin once wrote that we Chi­nese are his­to­ry-mind­ed. And as the world knows, we Ja­maicans are pol­i­tics-mind­ed." So it's no sur­prise, she tells read­ers, that her first nov­el was a po­lit­i­cal his­to­ry."In the end though, in true Taoist style, Pao is a book about Ja­maica's his­to­ry, and it is not a book about Ja­maica's his­to­ry. It is a book about Ja­maican peo­ple, and it is not a book about Ja­maican peo­ple. What it is, is a book about the world and the uni­verse and the ten thou­sand things."

Pao is much more than a nov­el. It's an in­valu­able his­tor­i­cal re­source as well. At the end, Young in­cludes a list of key his­tor­i­cal sources she used while writ­ing it. She al­so in­cludes a list of 15 provoca­tive book-club ques­tions and a sug­gest­ed read­ing list from the books that in­spired her to write Pao.Pao is avail­able in lo­cal book­stores and it is on­ly US$2.99 on Kin­dle. Join the Sun­day Arts Sec­tion's SAS Book Club group on Face­book to dis­cuss Pao and the books you are read­ing.

Next week: Ker­ry Young's read­ing list is a gold mine of pos­si­bil­i­ties for book club choic­es.Our next SAS Book Club choice will be Sav­ing Fish from Drown­ing by Amy Tan, a strange, mag­i­cal read about a clair­voy­ant and group of Amer­i­can tourists lost in Bur­ma.