Do Not Say We Have Nothing

Do Not Say We Have Nothing is a novel by Madeleine Thien published in 2016 in Canada. It follows a 10-year-old girl and her mother who invite a Chinese refugee into their home. Critically acclaimed, in 2016 the author was awarded both the Scotiabank Giller Prize and the Governor General's Award for this novel. It was short-listed for the Man Booker Prize as well as the Women's Prize for Fiction.
Plot summary.
The novel begins with a girl named Marie living with her mother in Vancouver, Canada. The year is 1991, and the addition to their household of a Chinese refugee fleeing the post-Tiananmen Square crackdown, Ai-Ming, is the catalyst that sets the rest of the plot into motion. The novel quickly fractures into a number of different sub-plots, introduced by Ai-Ming, which span generations of both Marie and Ai-Ming's families, who are later revealed to be intrinsically connected. These sub-plots are set during a tumultuous period in China's history, from the beginning of Mao Zedong's reign in the late 1940s to the aftermath of the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. There are four main eras that the novel focuses on, though they do not necessarily occur in chronological order. The first involves Big Mother Knife, her sister Swirl, and Swirl's husband Wen the Dreamer during the land reform campaign and the executions that were involved. Secondly is the era focusing on Sparrow, Kai and Zhuli during the Cultural Revolution which centers around the Shanghai Conservatory and their experiences there. Thirdly is Sparrow and Ai-Ming, his daughter, during the Tiananmen Square protests and aftermath. Finally, the last era is the "present" which is Marie discovering her connection to all these stories. As well, the story contained in the Book of Records is a constant presence throughout all these other narratives. While Wen the Dreamer is the principal translator and contributor to the book, as the novel progresses the stories of all the characters become so incorporated into the Book of Records that the line is blurred between fact and fiction, past and present.
Historical contexts.
Thien references numerous songs and texts from Chinese history. These include Sima Qian's "Historical Records". The title, "Do Not Say We Have Nothing", is a reference to the Chinese version of the left-wing anthem: "The Internationale", which has been a staple anthem of the Communist Party of China after Qu Qiubai’s translation of the Russian version in 1923. Within the plot of the novel this anthem occurs at numerous points, particularly as a rallying cry for the student protesters at Tiananmen Square, at which Ai-Ming and Sparrow are present: "The people around her were weeping. At the front, the student leaders began to sing the "Internationale"." (Thien 438). Also referenced in the novel is the song "The East is Red", which was used as the unofficial national anthem during the Cultural Revolution within which many of the events in the Kai and Sparrow's subplots occur. Additionally, the novel refers to "Song of the Guerrillas", a Chinese anthem that describes Chinese guerrilla fighters during the Second Sino-Japanese War. In a 2017 interview, Thien created a "Book Note" playlist that included numerous musical artists who influenced her writing of the novel. These artists included J.S. Bach, Ros Sereysothea, Sinn Sisamouth, Dmitri Shostakovich, Leonard Cohen, and Sun Belt.
Awards and honours.
"Nous qui n'étions rien", a French translation of the novel by Catherine Leroux, won the Governor General's Award for English to French translation at the 2019 Governor General's Awards.
Reception.
Jiayang Fan, a staff writer of "The New York Times", called "Do Not Say We Have Nothing" "a powerfully expansive novel", specifically calling Thien's "Book of Records" the root of the novel's "remarkable authenticity". Jennifer Senior, another writer for "The New York Times", wrote that the book "impresses in many senses. ... It successfully explores larger ideas about politics and art. ... It has the satisfying, epic sweep of a 19th-century Russian novel, spanning three generations and lapping up against the shores of two continents".
On a similar vein, Brian Bethune, a writer for "Maclean's", called the novel "a worthy winner of the Governor General's Award". Highlighting the novel's interaction "with history and memory in [an] extraordinarily delicate fashion", Bethune claimed that "it is a story of such beauty that it provokes a paradoxical hope".
Following the announcement of the 2016 Giller Prize, Mark Medley of "The Globe and Mail" wrote that "while Ms. Thien has long been considered one of [Canada]'s most talented young writers, with her books receiving critical acclaim, the country's major literary awards had eluded her - until this year".
Lawrence Hill, a juror on the panel for the Giller Prize, called the novel a "beautiful look at the salvation of music and love and life in the face of genocide. It’s a huge epic novel told in an unusual way – without a single protagonist, without a single struggle. It’s a challenging book, and you have to work to read it".
Bronwyn Drainie of the "Literary Review of Canada" wrote that Thien "[creates] a memorial for the millions of lives lost, disappeared, shriveled or wasted during not just the years of Mao’s reign but back to the famine of 1910 and forward to the dashed hopes of Tiananmen in 1989. That is some accomplishment".