Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Do Not Say We Have Nothing, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Individual Identity Under Communism
Class and Communism
Freedom of Expression vs. Propaganda
Political Oppression, Isolation, and Divided Communities
Storytelling, Family Connection, and History
Summary
Analysis
In February of 1991 in Canada, Ai-ming has been living with Li-ling and her mother for two months. One day, Ai-ming and Li-ling hear a symphony on the radio, and Ai-ming shares with Li-ling that when she was young, there were only a few pieces of “approved music” that played on the radio in China. These were the “revolutionary operas.” But, Ai-ming says, she and her father often listened to “illegal music.” Li-ling is surprised at this and asks, “But, Ai-ming, how can music be illegal?”
Here, Thien introduces readers to yet another way in which the Chinese government sought to impart propaganda to the people. The fact that they tried to make even classical music—which has no lyrics and, therefore, arguably cannot communicate a direct message—propagandistic demonstrates the extremism with which Mao went about spreading Communist ideology. Li-ling highlights the tension between creative expression and propaganda in the novel when she asks how music can be illegal.
Themes
Ai-ming continues, sharing that after the Shanghai Conservatory was shut down, Sparrow, who used to work there, began working in a factory that made radios. Still, Ai-ming would always hear Sparrow humming, and she realized later that the music was what was left of her father’s own scores. Sometimes, Ai-ming would sing the songs she knew were illegal just to wake up Big Mother Knife and get her attention. Ai-ming always wanted Big Mother Knife to tell her stories, and occasionally, after much pestering, the old woman obliged her granddaughter. Once, Big Mother Knife told Ai-Ming the love story of her sister, Swirl, and Wen the Dreamer.
The fact that Sparrow goes from being a classical musician to working in a factory that makes radios further highlights the tension between creative expression and propaganda. Radios are essentially tools through which the government can spread its propaganda to the people in China, while classical music is one of the few ways in which Sparrow and others were able to creatively express themselves. The fact that Sparrow continues humming his own music even after having his right to creative expression repressed suggests the resilience of his creative and artistic spirit in spite of the political repression and propaganda that seek to drown it out.
Themes
Back when the war has just ended, Wen the Dreamer lives in a small village. Born to a prosperous family, his grandfather had been selected in 1872 to go study in America. He went to Yale, studied engineering, and worked at the Shanghai Armory for 10 years before dying of consumption. Luckily, Wen’s grandfather’s brothers knew how to fend for themselves and acquired they dozens of acres of land to provide for their family once their brother had passed away. Although Wen’s mother wanted him to take after his uncles and become a landowner, Wen had other ideas—he was more interested in poetry than property. When the war began, Wen’s poetic spirit made it hard for him to endure the cruelty. Although in Wen’s village of Bingpai there was the “worst famine in a century,” Wen never experienced hunger due to his wealthy family.
While this passage doesn’t address class during China’s communist era, it does paint a portrait of the type of class inequality that preexisted Mao’s regime and which the Communist Party sought to destroy. Wen the Dreamer’s wealth sets him entirely apart from the rest of his village—although people around him were literally starving to death, his wealth protected him from facing the same fate. This suggests extreme class inequality, and a lack of interest among the wealthy classes to support or assist the working classes.
Themes
One day, Wen goes to a teahouse and sees Swirl singing. He is captivated by her voice, which to him is transcendental. Later that month, Swirl receives a package postmarked to her but with no return address: in it are the finely-copied pages of a novel which traces two characters, Da-wei and May Fourth, as they navigate the fall of the Chinese Empire. The selection begins and ends midsentence, but a new chapter arrives every few days.
Here, Wen the Dreamer’s choice to woo Swirl by sending her chapters of a book speak to art and storytelling not only as tools that link one generation of a family with the past, but also as things that serve to connect people with one another and help them to develop relationships.
Themes
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After the 31st chapter arrives, Swirl doesn’t receive any more packages in the mail. She has come to love the story, telling Big Mother Knife about the enthralling adventures of Da-wei and May Fourth. Big Mother Knife worries about the fact that the packages are anonymous and she asks Swirl if she thinks this might be a political trap. Meanwhile, at the teahouse where Swirl performs, rumors circulate wildly. People worry that Chairman Mao will denounce teahouses as “bourgeois frivolities” and that he will monitor the lyrics of each and every song. But Swirl can only think about the mysterious novel and she searches all of Shanghai to find it. One day, she goes to the Old Cat’s bookstore and discovers that someone else, Wen the Dreamer, is also looking for further installments of the story of Da-wei and May Fourth.
Big Mother Knife’s concerns that the story could be a “political trap” give readers an idea of how strong censorship was in Communist China at that time. Although the book Swirl is receiving seems to be an innocuous novel, Big Mother Knife’s concern implies that literature and other forms of art are so persecuted by the contemporary government that reading a novel could get Swirl in political trouble. Indeed, the threats to close the teahouses—which, to most readers, are innocuous places for community building and artistic expression—emphasize the government’s extreme repression of creative and artistic expression.
Themes
Swirl goes to the Old Cat’s bookshop every day but doesn’t find the novel. One day, she meets Wen the Dreamer there—he is looking for the same book. She discovers that Wen the Dreamer has copied the book—called The Book of Records—by hand but he is not the original storyteller. He has been sending Swirl the chapters of the book because he thought she would like them, but when he started sending them he didn’t realize the novel was unfinished. Dismayed, Wen has tried to write his own installments, but unfortunately—in the Old Cat’s words—he doesn’t have the level of talent. “You’d be amazed at how few people can tell a story,” the Old Cat continues, “Yet still these new emperors want to ban them […] Don’t they know how hard it is to come by pleasure? Or perhaps they do know. The sly goats.”
Here, Thien illustrates the importance of storytelling in two ways. First, the excerpts from The Book of Records are so compelling that they have succeeded in drawing two people together—Swirl and Wen meet because they are both obsessed with the story. Secondly, the Old Cat’s quote suggests that she believes that storytelling is such an important source of pleasure for people that the government, recognizing its power, seeks to limit people’s access to it. Her choice to call the Communist Party “new emperors” suggest that she is cynical about the new form of government and might not feel as liberated as the Communist Party would want its people to feel.
Themes
Soon after they meet, Wen the Dreamer asks Swirl to be his wife, saying, “Our country is about to be born. Let us, too, have the chance to begin again.” Swirl accepts his proposal.
Wen the Dreamer believes that the country’s ability to begin again will correlate with his ability to do so as an individual, suggesting that he has faith that Communist rule will be beneficial to his ability to build the life he wants for himself and his future family. Individual identity and communism are not yet at odds in this moment for him.
Themes
