Shanghai Girls' sequel, Dreams of Joy, picks up right where we left off, in the late 1950s. Joy, Pearl's daughter from the first novel, has recently learned a deep, dark secret about her family. Hurt by both her mother and her Aunt May, and still reeling from her father's suicide, Joy decides to go to China to discover her roots and to meet the man who she has learned is her biological father, Z.G. Li. When Pearl learns where Joy has gone, she has no choice but to go to China herself to bring her daughter home.
What neither Joy nor Pearl could predict was the chaos that was beginning in China. Under Chairman Mao's Great Leap Forward program, China has undergone tremendous changes since Pearl and May fled the country years before. The Communist regime is in full force and Joy's father, famous Chinese artist Z.G.Li, is being sent to the countryside to teach the peasants how to paint in the "Red" way. The story follows Joy, as she moves to a commune, falls in love, and marries, and Pearl, as she fights her way back to Joy and the family she cherishes.
Fans of Lisa See's earlier works will enjoy reading Dreams of Joy, if for no other reason than closure for Shanghai Girls. Dreams of Joy, however, is a novel unlike those See has written before. Her past novels, no matter what time period, show both the beauty and the less pleasant side of Chinese life. In Dreams of Joy, See only shows the ugly side. This is fitting, because the Great Leap Forward was one of the darkest times in Chinese history. With individual farms turned into communes, Mao's government sought to maximize the amount of crops produced each year. What follows is an unmitigated disaster: a combination of droughts, floods and farming requirements from city officials who had no experience with the land leaves China in a state of famine. By some accounts, as many as 40 million people died of starvation during the three-year period before Mao admitted failure.
See portrays this famine in vivid detail, so much so that it was difficult to read at times. While her earlier novels have had shocking and painful scenes, it cannot compare to the ravages of famine that See describes in Dreams of Joy. Lisa See traveled with author Amy Tan to research this novel, and it is clear that her trip to China and what she learned about this time period affected See deeply.
Dreams of Joy is a worthy read, especially if you have read See's earlier works. There is a happy ending, with a nice big bow. But a word of warning: beware the title, for "dreams" of joy are the best you can expect this in novel.
