Steer Toward Rock

Steer Toward Rock artfully fills in missing gaps in American history about the Chinese Confession Program. The story traverses across culture, language, generations, and distant lands. Fae successfully uncovers this untold history and brings to life a period when racism, politics, and survival all collide. Steer Toward Rock is sure to attract readers eager for art that resonates with their own histories and for literature that rings true to the complexities of family, immigration, politics, loyalty, and love--the complexities of humanity.

Steer Toward Rock is an exquisitely written novel. It is a great read and I highly recommend it. Fae Myenne Ng's concise prose is full of richness and insight. I felt compelled to read carefully, as I didn't want to miss anything. Her generational Chinese American characters have sharp and smart observations about themselves and their lives while living in San Francisco's Chinatown. They must navigate their way thru harsh realities during the McCarthy era, yet each character's journey is written with compassion; the joys, the obstacles and limitations voiced by indentured paper son immigrants and their fractured families. However, the question what is worth sacrificing regardless of the consequences, is at the heart of the novel. What happens when one chooses to rid a false identity and begin creating a new one? What kinds of options are truly available? Is the potential for love worth risking deportment or freedom?

Fae Myenne Ng is a genius. Her prose is almost sparse, but each word, each phrase is so thoughtfully crafted that action and feelings are expressed in deft strokes that build a picture, an impression, a quality of being. Her book is full of compassion and reverence for the depiction of a familiar figure that is well known but not understood - our immigrant Chinese-American fathers/forefathers. Like a master of pen and ink drawing, each line implies physical being and movement, emotional attitude and change, and spiritual orientation. The drawing moves from being lines on a page, to expressing 2 dimensions, 3 dimensions, then movement across time and space, to insightful awareness of the interior landscape of feeling, knowledge of life lessons, and living by your convictions and the experiences that shaped you. The prose is so poetic; this is a work to be savored. The way to read this book is not quickly all the way through, but gradually, so the comprehension unfolds and you can appreciate the depth and quality of feeling. For those who have grown up in San Francisco, esp. living by Chinatown, there are many familiar references to places (some that are no more), food and experiences that are delightful. There are also stories that are painful and brutal, but are nevertheless our truth in growing up here. This is a story about a man and his interior landscape, his poetic romanticism shown in the language of his thoughts, cares and worldview. This is about a man shaped by harsh beginnings, his acts in a world that doesn't understand him and the consequences of his actions. His is a world peopled by garrulous cronies, powerful enemies, and the women he loves. This is a powerful work that portrays the father figure that is not easily understood in the Western sense, but is so filled with compassion and a quiet strength that we end up respecting and admiring his steadfastness and sense of rightness. As perceived from his daughter's perspective, he can be unfathomable, stubborn, unreasonable, frustrating and irrational. Her perspective is that of another generation, with such different experiences and worldview that her difficulties in relating to him are completely understandable. But she too comes to understand, respect and admire him with all his foibles, and learns how to see and love him for all he is, and integrate this in being and interacting with him.

Stunning and stealthy! The pieces all fall together and you understand it with an overview you didn"t see coming. I wish I had this book when I was teaching in Chinatown in the 70's.

Shakesperian in scope - tragic, haunting, beautifully rendered with a wild, intimate velocity pierced with uncarted wisdom. A perfect novel.