ninharris writes:

reviewed by Nin Harris
 

 

Eugie Foster's Returning My Sister's Face is uniquely situated as an anthology of graceful tales based on Chinese, Japanese and Korean folklore, history and mythology. What sets Returning My Sister’s Face apart is that Foster utilises a multiplicity of cultural markers in order to seed the deceptively simple and innocent narrations of these tales. Foster, an American writer of speculative fiction pays homage to her roots in this collection of elegant and poetic tales. The writing is filled with both the graceful simplicity I have come to associate with Far Eastern literature and poetry as well as the modern edginess which comes with the meeting between two cultures.

Foster accompanies each story with a contemporary commentary on how she utilised each bit of historical detail or myth to create the story in question. This allows the reader to look at the seeming dissonance between a contemporary westernised existence, which is the reality of any diasporic and hybridised writer, with the enduring myths and traditions of home. Foster is self-aware that these tales are not pure representations of either Chinese or Japanese myths. For her, the challenge is that which must affect every writer of diaspora who is trying to pay homage, respectfully, to the cultural underpinnings of tales from the place of origin.

Returning My Sister's Face captures the pulse of Eastern folktales, those faraway places where celestial beings wear robes more delicate than morning dew and where the onset of love is as seamless and incidental as one breath to another. But this innocence is often deceptive and Foster does not pull any punches to reveal the darker undertones of folklore. A case in point is the opening story, 'Daughter of Botu', a glimpse into the world of the Middle Kingdom in Chinese mythology, where rabbits and foxes shift into the shape of humans and vice versa. It is a story that starts innocently, builds into what seems to be a love story, but ends with betrayal; a mother loses her child and rejects the world of humans. An-ying, the protagonist, inadvertently saves a nobleman from being killed by a member of the Fox clan. He ends up as a guest in her family’s home, as they entertain him in human guise. The romance occurs in the natural progression one comes to associate with Middle Kingdom classics. But the story ends in darkness, which occurs after An-ying follows Bei Huangong home and finds that the life of human nobility is cruel and full of hardships.

The pathos found within the shifting of time and custom is most acutely felt in 'A Thread of Silk', which merges both present times with the age of Japanese legends. In 'A Thread of Silk', the heroine makes an oath to avenge the deaths in her family, an oath which renders her immortal, leading to some startling consequences. Foster’s style of writing overlaps realities, she makes the reader aware that while she leads us into the lush, seemingly traditional landscapes of Chinese and Japanese history, mythology and folklore, there is a contemporary edge because her interpretations are informed by her hybrid background. In the afterword to one story, she makes references to an influencing plot feature within Buffy, the Vampire Slayer; in others she notes rather overtly the links to geek culture. As such, I feel this anthology is a testament not just to the growing interest in tales from Asia and Africa within the science fiction and fantasy communities, but also to the shifting of cultural norms, and to writers from the diaspora who are not afraid to grow, to overlap, and intersect ontological frames of narration and culture.

Shapeshifting and ontological thresholds are crossed and re-crossed within Foster’s tales. Some of the other stories of note in this anthology which contain these themes include the cheeky and irreverent love story 'The Tanuki-Kettle', the two Yuki-Onna stories, 'The Snow-Woman's Daughter' as well as 'Honor is a Game Mortals Play', which show two variations of the Japanese snow-woman myth. The Kitsune (fox-woman) myth is represented by the subtly homo-erotic 'Year of the Fox', while one of the most enduring stories in Chinese mythology, one of the framing narratives for the Mooncake Festival, is lovingly retold as 'The Archer of the Sun and The Lady of the Moon'. In all of the stories, Foster has struck a balance between remaining true to the spirit of the myths while creating readable stories. If it errs sometimes on the side of sentiment, it does not linger on it, jarring the reader back to the stark politics of court dynamics and the integral condition of loss which is part and parcel of human nature.


Love is one of the predominant themes in this anthology, but it is often an additional colour or texture within the narrative which allows the reader to experience the true tragedy of the human condition as is inherent in most folktales and what so many now overlook. Folktales, tales of wonder and mythology always draw attention because they contain that core of humanity that defines us – hope, the longing for wonder which is often betrayed by the complexities of history’s ebb and flow. At the core of Foster’s anthology is the humanity which straddles both the Eastern and Western divide. It succeeds because Foster is unflinching not just in the darker elements of her stories but because of her tender romanticism. Jeff Vandermeer included the anthology in his 'Best of 2009' in Locus Magazine, one of the leading magazines in the science fiction and fantasy genres, and in my opinion it was well-warranted, for I read this anthology with a feeling of inexplicable joy. If 2009 was an exciting year full of upheaval for the science fiction and fantasy genres, then Returning My Sister's Face remains one of the brighter sparks in the output of published writing for the year.

 

Returning My Sister’s Face: And Other Far Eastern Tales of Whimsy and Malice
(2009)

By Eugie Foster
Norilana Books
ISBN: 9781607620112
208pp US$ $10.75

 

Nin Harris is a writer, poet and visual artist when she is not a perplexed PhD student in literature. She also moonlights as a webgremlin who helps with the day to day running of Cabinet des Fees, an online journal of fairytales.

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