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The Moon Pearl — A Tonic for “Chic Lit”

Ruthanne Lum McCunn. Photo by Yihai Lai.

By Kendra Chung

Ruthanne Lum McCunn is not a “lit” star. That is not to say that she has toiled, as most writers do, in never-to-see-light-of-day obscurity. With the publication of her first novel, Thousand Pieces of Gold, she entered the Asian American literary scene at the age of 35, only a few years after she began writing. On the “Recommended Reading List” for California schools and widely used in college courses, Thousand Pieces was made into an independent film in 1991. Five books later, McCunn’s pen paused in 1995. But perhaps the early success of her latest novel, The Moon Pearl, which published September 2000, is a hint of changes to come.

I first met McCunn in 1989, as an undergraduate student at Cornell, where she was the visiting instructor of the university’s first Asian American literature class. Here is an image from that semester: a classroom full of Asian American students with near-comatose response to the recent anti-Asian attack on campus, and the visibly shaken teacher protesting, “Why don’t you guys say something!”

Flash forward to a recent February evening. McCunn and I are sitting in the living room of her Noe Valley home, which her husband Don has spent over two decades lovingly restoring by hand. For the first time in 26 years, the roof no longer leaks. This is important because her mother, who died this past August, always did want her daughter to have a job with security, a house without a leaking roof.

One Writer’s Beginnings

Born to a Scottish American father and a Chinese mother in San Francisco in 1946, McCunn spent her childhood in Hong Kong. Her father, a merchant marine from Idaho, was almost always at sea, so she grew up surrounded by her mother, sister, and her extended maternal family. It wasn’t an environment that included books, however.

She credits her father, a voracious reader who gave her a leather-bound journal when she was seven-years-old, for having introduced her to writing and reading. “Writing in my diary was the first time I recognized that I liked to write,” she says. But she was discouraged by her maternal family, who, like many parents, hoped that she would have a safe career and a comfortable life. “Nobody was trying to be cruel. They were just trying to teach me to be practical,” she says. But the lessons stuck, and it wasn’t until many years later that McCunn attempted to pursue writing again.

At 16, a year after her father’s death, McCunn came to America to attend college. In order to support herself, she worked as a janitor, short-order cook, and waitress. At 19, she married Don. Three years later, she finished her degree in English in Texas, and eventually earned her teaching credentials in California.

By the time McCunn started writing again, she was 30, with a decade of experience as a librarian and teacher, and settled in San Francisco with her husband. It was finally Chinese American history that pushed her to write. Don also gave her a lot of encouragement. “The only way you could fail is if you don’t try,” he said.

She took a creative writing class at San Francisco State University . “It was like the very first time that I sat down to write. I thought, ‘This is it.’ All the frou-frou in my life, all the muck fell away. And I decided this time, I’m not going to give up. I’m just going to keep at it.”

She’s been at it ever since, publishing her first book, An Illustrated History of the Chinese in America in 1979. Two years later came Thousand Pieces of Gold, based on the life of a Chinese American pioneer woman named Lalu Nathoy, who was shipped to America as a slave. Then the illustrated children’s book Pie-Biter, the first Chinese American folktale in print; Sole Survivor, another biographical novel about a Chinese sailor who survived 133 days alone on a raft after his ship was sunk during World War II; Chinese American Portraits: Personal Histories 1828-1988; Chinese Proverbs; Wooden Fish Songs, a novel based on the life of Lue Gim Gong, a Chinese American horticultural innovator; and most recently The Moon Pearl, about three girls who assert their independence by resisting marriage, set in southern China’s Pearl River Delta.

Influences and Discoveries

In a flurry of “chic lit” titles following the success of books such as The Diary of Bridget Jones and Girls’ Guide to Hunting and Fishing, The Moon Pearl is a refreshing tale about girls who defy conventions. Based on historical accounts and interviews, the book tells the story of the first girls working in the famous silk industry in the delta region’s Sun Duk district, who make commitments to lives of self-rule and lifelong spinsterhood.

It is a story that has intrigued McCunn for years. As a young girl, she was familiar with independent spinsters, some of whom had migrated from the delta region after the silk industry’s decline, and worked as servants in Hong Kong. “I always remembered admiring them,” she says. “They walked tall. It always struck me that even though they were servants, they had more freedom than the wives they were working for.”

While independent spinsters were models of courage and strength, other women present during McCunn’s childhood also had a deep influence on her life and work. There is her amah, who cared for McCunn upon her arrival in Hong Kong as a one-year-old baby. “I used to call her mahmee,” she says, smiling, explaining how close they were. Originally from a village in China, the amah taught young, city-bred McCunn about life in the countryside — lessons that would later affect her writing as nearly all of her books are about rural life. Now 85-years-old and still living in Hong Kong, her amah still remains a very special person in her life.

As is her mother Rita Drysdale (“She is at the heart of all my work,” says McCunn), who died this past year after a long struggle with illness. Although her mother had initially discouraged McCunn from becoming a writer, she quickly became very supportive once her daughter became committed. “She was always interested and told me she believed (my work) had value and was glad I was doing it.” Among her many gifts, her mother included her in the sphere of women who often came to visit. As a person of mixed-blood shunned by other Chinese and Caucasian kids, young McCunn spent a lot of time in the living room, listening to the stories told by these women. “No one ever booted me out. Nobody ever said, ‘you’re not supposed to listen to this,’ so it made me privy to a lot of stuff that I wouldn’t have known otherwise”

The environment also contributed to the development of McCunn’s writing style, she recently realized. “My writer’s voice really comes from the oral storytelling of my childhood. Books were very hard for me to come by because we had no public library and books were very expensive, but everybody told stories. And I loved to listen to them.”

Although not physically present by the time McCunn was born, her great-grandmother was always a strong figure in the consciousness of all her family members. A former slave who ran to freedom, her great-grandmother also ran away from her husband with her children. When she became blind in her 30s, she continued to work and support her children. “She was an extraordinary person. I really admired her; we all did,” she says. “She is yet another reason why freedom is such an important part of my thinking.”

Finding Independence Within a Community

In May of 1995, McCunn suffered a near-fatal car accident that threatened to shatter the very independence and freedom that she valued. Hospitalized for six weeks, she was then wheelchair-bound for six months. Yet, during her recovery, she was able to work on The Moon Pearl because of a very caring circle of friends and family.

“My accident really helped me understand community in a way I hadn’t before,” she says. For about two months, she and Don lived with their front door unlocked, so that their friends, who were taking turns to be with McCunn, could trek in and out. “It was because of their working together that I was able to be out of the hospital and have a measure of independence. And that really helped me to understand that independence doesn’t mean being by yourself, that independence can be a community effort.”

Now with the painful struggles of her accident and her mother’s long illness behind her, she is hard at work on another novel in her leak-proof study. “The work is where the satisfaction comes from,” she explains. “All the rest is too subjective, reliant on other people, their opinions, and so forth. One’s independence lies only in the work.”