Storytelling, Family Connection, and History Theme Analysis

Madeleine Thien’s Do Not Say We Have Nothing tells the stories of two families who are subject to political oppression during China’s Cultural Revolution. The story is narrated by Li-ling, a first-generation Chinese Canadian woman whose father, Jiang Kai, survived the Cultural Revolution and escaped to China, only commit suicide when Li-ling was 10 years old. Kai left behind scores of documents for his family after his death, including The Book of Records, a mysterious text that begins as fiction but gradually turns into a record of Kai’s histor, and the family history of his close friend and music teacher, Sparrow. When Sparrow’s daughter, Ai-ming, arrives in Canada to live with Li-ling and her mother, she begins reading The Book of Records to Li-ling, which is what initially interests her in exploring her father’s story. Thien describes the evolution of The Book of Records from fiction into a narrative account that preserves Sparrow’s family history and highlights Li-ling’s dedication, as an adult, to piecing together her father’s story. By drawing readers’ attention to these aspects of the novel, Thien highlights how storytelling is an important tool that allows family histories to survive even in the face of oppressive regimes that seek to erase them.

Wen the Dreamer is the character who first introduces The Book of Records to the storyline, and over the course of the novel he uses the book to unite family members with one another and to record family history that otherwise would have been forgotten. Readers are first exposed to The Book of Records when Wen sends chapters of it to his future wife, Swirl, in an effort to woo her. The two meet for the first time at the Old Cat’s bookshop as they try to find the missing chapters of the book, and they are married soon after. This is the first of many examples throughout the novel in which The Book of Records serves as a tool to unite characters with one another. Indeed, after Swirl, released from the re-education camp where she was sent as punishment for being a rightist, hears that Wen has escaped from his own re-education camp, she goes about trying to find him by scattering altered copies of The Book of Records throughout the region of the country in which she believes Wen is hiding. She encodes a secret location, her friend Lady Dostoevsky’s plant and flower clinic, into the chapters of the book. Wen ultimately finds the book and hacks the code and is reunited with his long-lost wife. Although the Chinese government had indirectly attempted to separate the couple by placing them in separate concentration camps with life-threatening conditions, Swirl and Wen are able to reunite in the face of such oppression due to their creative use of storytelling.

The Book of Records doesn’t just connect family members to one another within generations; it also helps future generations have access to the stories of their ancestors. When Wen the Dreamer resolves that he can no longer find more chapters of the original book, he begins copying his family’s stories into the book. Because many members of the family do things that go against the government’s wishes—he and Swirl are convicted rightists, Sparrow and Zhuli, Wen’s daughter, are labeled counterrevolutionaries because they Western classical music—Wen’s choice to tell their stories honestly is an act of resistance. The government’s purpose, through the Cultural Revolution, was to eliminate “rightists” and “counterrevolutionaries,” completely erasing the place in China’s culture and, consequently, China’s history. In telling their story, Wen maintains a true record of the family’s history, preventing the government from erasing his family’s story.

It is thanks to Wen’s transcription of the family history into The Book of Records that Li-ling is able to better understand her late father. In this way, The Book of Records serves to connect family members to one another across generations. Through her descriptions of Li-ling’s character, Thien conveys to readers that an understanding of family history is integral to Li-ling’s understanding of herself. Over the course of the novel, Li-ling states multiple times that she tries to forget about the book, her father, and Ai-ming—who disappears from her life after leaving Canada to seek asylum in the United States—by burying herself in her work as a mathematics professor. However, Li-ling’s efforts to ignore family history always fail, and she ends up taking multiple trips to China to try to find Ai-ming and discover what happened to her father. By emphasizing the fact that Li-ling cannot allow herself to avoid engaging with her family’s history, Thien implies that the impulse to preserve and understand family history is an inescapable part of finding one’s own identity. Ultimately, Li-ling follows in Swirl’s footsteps, leaving altered copies of The Book of Records on the Internet and in cities across China that have encoded messages that, she hopes, will help Ai-ming to find her. In this way, Li-ling preserves family history both by recording herself into The Book of Records and by repeating the actions of her ancestors.

While Thien does paint integrating and understanding family history as an integral part of Li-ling’s development, she is careful to emphasize the importance of individual development as well. The novel ends with Li-ling writing that she “continue[s] to live [her] life, to let [her] parents go and seek [her] own freedom.” In this moment, Thien highlights the importance of balancing individual identity with family identity. Indeed, the reason that Li-ling’s family is so persecuted during the Cultural Revolution is, in large part, their dedication to their own individuality. Thus, the use of family storytelling in the novel serves both to connect family members with one another and to record everyone’s full, unique, identity, giving them space to be themselves and to be remembered for their individuality.