Young Adult Fiction — Review

Red Lacquered Chopsticks

by Betty Warrington-Kearsley
TSAR Publications, 2006
$16.95, 80 pp, ages 14+
ISBN 1-894770-331
www.tsarbooks.com

High school English teachers will welcome this book of poems spanning a Chinese childhood (in Singapore) and a Canadian present, with some Japanese images slipping in between. Betty Warrington-Kearsley draws her childhood images of markets, apothecary shops, tea-merchants so clearly that you can almost smell and taste the produce. Her Chinese scenes and legends, oddly enough, blend in quite smoothly with her Canadian landscapes. Chinese stories, a Zen legend, Canadian obituaries all sit contentedly side-by-side, while the rites of passage—births, marriages and deaths, rooted in her Chinese tradition are liberated from traditional ways of thinking about them, by her mixed upbringing. She respects and questions her inheritance, both at the same time, as in her witty poem, “Family Menagerie.” As her father pointed out “You are not Eurasian. You are not half anything. You have inherited the best of both cultures.” These accessible poems show clearly this double inheritance. Red Lacquered Chopsticks would be useful in classes in which the students are from many cultural backgrounds.

Reviewed by Naomi Wakan

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