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Dreams of Joy: A Novel (Shanghai Girls Book 2)

Dreams of Joy: A Novel (Shanghai Girls Book 2)

byLisa See
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Top positive review

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Ellie B
5.0 out of 5 starsDreams of Joy Review
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on May 22, 2023
This second book follows Pearl and May's return to China. Due to so many unfortunate influences, their lives are Greatly challenged. Learning about rural life in China was unbelievable. Terrible Chinese government rules, poorly managed farm programs and poor life choices steer this story through very difficult times. The book's conclusion is unexpected.
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LysMO
3.0 out of 5 starsA little disappointed
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on May 18, 2014
I read Dreams of Joy in the hopes of capturing the same feelings that Shanghai Girls evoked but now I wonder if it would've been more satisfying to leave me with a dissatisfied ending but a great overall story. This novel is the follow up to Shanghai Girls and I read it immediately after -- it left me disappointed and took twice as long for me to read because of my annoyance with one of the two narrators, Joy the daughter of Pearl (no spoilers if you haven't read Shanghai Girls, okay?) She came across as a spoiled brat at times to me, manipulating those around her but not with the same charisma as her aunt May in the previous novel. When she repeatedly defies both her mother and father, I almost felt like I wanted her to get her come-uppance just so she'd be taught a lesson. She was hardly likeable and if it wasn't for the emotional attachment to Pearl in the previous novel, I would've completely abandoned the book altogether.

What I did enjoy about both novels however, was that See managed to paint a detailed but not pedantic portrait of a China in flux and transition. What made Shanghai Girls a stronger novel for me was the bond that was built between the two sisters while they overcame the odds together. Dreams of Joy, while giving room for the younger Chin daughter/niece to also carve a path for herself, felt more disjointed especially with the switching between narrators from chapter to chapter. I had a much harder time actually liking characters in this book and many of them came across as extremely pathetic. The ending felt contrived and inasmuch as there was the theme of returning full circle, I felt like the development of Pearl returning to her country of birth was less interesting than the time spent when they moved to the US.

I do however, prefer these novels over See's other novels that take place before Shanghai Girls and Dreams of Joy and will most likely read China Girls. I would recommend reading Shanghai Girls before this one though, as it is essentially a sequel and failing to do so would probably lead to more confusion -- especially for readers unfamiliar with See's previous work.
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From the United States

Ellie B
5.0 out of 5 stars Dreams of Joy Review
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on May 22, 2023
Verified Purchase
This second book follows Pearl and May's return to China. Due to so many unfortunate influences, their lives are Greatly challenged. Learning about rural life in China was unbelievable. Terrible Chinese government rules, poorly managed farm programs and poor life choices steer this story through very difficult times. The book's conclusion is unexpected.
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voracious reader
5.0 out of 5 stars Dreams of Love
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on February 17, 2013
Verified Purchase
Dreams of Joy is a story about love- a mother's love for her child. This novel is the sequel to Shanghai girls. Joy ,Pearl's daughter and May's niece learns that May is her true biological mother and Pearl is her aunt. She also learns that the father she adored was not her real father. Her biological father is a handsome, charming and talented artist named Z.G. who has carved out his own career in communist China. Joy also feels responsible for her purported father's suicide. He too never knew that Joy was not his biological daughter. Joy an idealistic University of Chicago student who has become a communist. The enchanting philosophy of communism appeals to her sense of charity and justice. She runs off to China both to escape the reality of her discovery, her guilt over her purported father's death, to find her biological father, and to participate in the new China. Both Pearl and May are horrified. They realize nineteen year old Joy's mistake and Pearl takes off after her while May stays home to look after their business interests. Joy finds her father,marries an illiterate and poor country boy, makes her home in the countryside, and gives birth to her own daughter in rustic impoverished circumstances. Shortly after her marriage, she realizes she made a mistake in choosing her spouse. He quickly becomes unfaithful and uncaring. Further, he becomes out right cruel to her when she bears him a daughter instead of a son. Even though the communists have tried to improve the status and importance of women in the culture, the strong Chinese bias in favor of sons persists especially in rural areas. Yet none of Joy's letters about her changed feelings and circumstances reach Pearl. By the time Joy realizes that Communism does not work and that she has made a terrible mistake, she is trapped in a famine in rural China. She and her child as well as all the villagers are starving. People die every day. They have taken to killing and eating their female infants and Joy realizes her daughter's very existence depends on her escape from the countryside. Correspondence is strictly censored. Pearl who is now living in Shanghai has no idea that her daughter is living in such dire circumstances. During his failing leap year program Mao tries to hide the famine rampant in China from the world. Hence Pearl cannot get a travel permit for the countryside even though she has never seen her grandchild who is only a one day's journey away. Even though food shortages have reached Shanghai, Pearl and Z.G. have no idea how dire Joy's circumstances are. None of her letters arrive in Shanghai and all the little correspondence Joy receives is strictly censored. The food and goods Pearl sends along with her letters are stolen before they reach Joy. Joy does not understand why her mother has not responded to her many requests for help, but she assumes that Pearl has not received her letters. Finally Joy finds a way to surreptitiously notify Pearl. Once Pearl learns of the disastrous conditions in which Joy is living, she and Z.G. devise a way to rescue her. Z.G. is a prominent communist artist and has been in the movement since before Japan's invasion of China. Together they rescue Joy and her daughter. They also rescue her husband. After saving Joy and her child from starvation and the privations of the countryside, Pearl and Z.G. begin to devise a method to get her and themselves out of China. May finances all of the work by running Pearl's cafe and her business in Los Angeles. She awaits them in Hong Kong. Meanwhile Pearl has truly fallen in love with the professor living in what was once her family home and where she now occupies one room. They marry before the escape plan is hatched. He is her true love. I will not tell the ending here. See pulls the bamboo curtain back and we see communist china with all its warts. This book is well written. These may not be pulitzer prize winning novels, but they are every bit as satisfying when read together as Snowflower and the Secret Fan. See has an excellent command of the English language. She paints a clear picture of life in pre-World War II Shanghai, war torn Shanghai, life for the Chinese immigrant in the U.S. and life in Mao's communist China. This story about life, love, betrayal and war covers all the emotions and is a satisfying read. Sure there are some contrived events, but sometimes that is just good story telling. See is a master story teller. Most readers will be truly satisfied.
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SANDY C.
5.0 out of 5 stars Great book
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on April 19, 2023
Verified Purchase
I read this book many years ago. I checked out at library. Now, I want to read again, and pass to my daughter. 5 star reading.
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Linda C. Wright
4.0 out of 5 stars A good sequel
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on June 6, 2013
Verified Purchase
Anyone who knows me and my husband, knows of our fascination with and love of all things Chinese. We've traveled around the world and one of our most memorable moments was standing on top of the Great Wall of China, soaking in the centuries of blood, sweat and tears of a civilization full of accomplishment and struggle. We were in awe of the history surrounding us and grateful for our freedom at home.

Joy is a twenty year old of Chinese heritage, raised in California. When she learns that her parents are not her biological parents, she rebels and sets off to China to find her real father. It is 1957 and Mao Zedong is in control. Finding her father, Z.G., is relatively easy since he is a famous artist in China. Foreigners are not able to move easily through the country so Z.G. takes her under his wing when he is forced to teach art to the peasants. Being young and idealistic, Joy joins the revolution in her homeland. Her assimilation into Chinese life, culture and politics proves to be much more than she bargained for.

Her mother, Pearl, follows to bring her back home. Their 3 year journey during the Great Leap Forward, takes them from the big city of Shanghai to a commune in the countryside. The basic necessities of living are controlled. At first Joy wants to return to her Chinese roots. As her freedom becomes increasingly restricted, she sees the danger she is in. The family pays a huge price in order to repair their past mistakes.

Dreams of Joy is the sequel to Shanghai Girls which is the story of Pearl and her sister May's journey from a China to America. Dreams of Joy brings the sisters full circle in their lives. I absolutely love to read about China and its culture. And Lisa See is my favorite. I'm not a serial reader but I have to admit I've read most of what Lisa See has written. She's a terrific writer and I love the subjects. I'm not as crazy about Dreams of Joy as I am about some of her other work. But in true Lisa See fashion I felt the love, hurt, joy and danger on every single page. And she kept me engaged right up to the very end.
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S. Agusto-Cox
5.0 out of 5 stars Another Lisa See Winner
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on July 12, 2011
Verified Purchase
More than a follow-up to  Shanghai Girls: A Novel , Dreams of Joy: A Novel  by Lisa See is about sisterly love, loyalty, and adolescence. Readers will see in Joy, Pearl's daughter, the headstrong young woman that many parents see in their daughters -- they know everything and cannot be told anything they don't already know and understand. However, what do young adults do when the times get rough in many cases? They run. Joy is no exception, but in her case, she not only runs from home when family secrets are revealed, but she runs to a nation she has never lived in and that is under the iron fist of communism and at the whims of Chairman Mao. Pearl heads to China after her daughter, in a country that tortured her and abandoned her when her family needed help most.

"Yes, I've escaped the blaming eyes of my mother and the reproachful eyes of my aunt, but I can't escape myself. The only things I can do to save myself are pull the weeds in the fields, let my emotions for Tao envelop me, and obey what Z.G. tells me to do with a paintbrush, pencil, charcoal, or pastel." (page 87)

Set in late 1950s to early 1960s China, Joy brings us on a journey through China in her quest to rediscover herself and find her biological father, while her mother searches for her and evades deportation, imprisonment, and other punishments for her capitalist ties and bourgeois thoughts and actions. See has taken these characters from China to America, shown us how Pearl and her sister May adapted and became American in Shanghai Girls, and in Dreams of Joy she has expanded their world and struggles, demonstrating how returning to the homeland is fraught with danger and has essentially left Pearl and Joy country-less. To enter China, they must renounce their U.S. ties, which were hard to win and maintain when Pearl and May arrived as immigrants.

Read the rest of this review on Savvy Verse & Wit, here: [...]
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LysMO
3.0 out of 5 stars A little disappointed
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on May 18, 2014
Verified Purchase
I read Dreams of Joy in the hopes of capturing the same feelings that Shanghai Girls evoked but now I wonder if it would've been more satisfying to leave me with a dissatisfied ending but a great overall story. This novel is the follow up to Shanghai Girls and I read it immediately after -- it left me disappointed and took twice as long for me to read because of my annoyance with one of the two narrators, Joy the daughter of Pearl (no spoilers if you haven't read Shanghai Girls, okay?) She came across as a spoiled brat at times to me, manipulating those around her but not with the same charisma as her aunt May in the previous novel. When she repeatedly defies both her mother and father, I almost felt like I wanted her to get her come-uppance just so she'd be taught a lesson. She was hardly likeable and if it wasn't for the emotional attachment to Pearl in the previous novel, I would've completely abandoned the book altogether.

What I did enjoy about both novels however, was that See managed to paint a detailed but not pedantic portrait of a China in flux and transition. What made Shanghai Girls a stronger novel for me was the bond that was built between the two sisters while they overcame the odds together. Dreams of Joy, while giving room for the younger Chin daughter/niece to also carve a path for herself, felt more disjointed especially with the switching between narrators from chapter to chapter. I had a much harder time actually liking characters in this book and many of them came across as extremely pathetic. The ending felt contrived and inasmuch as there was the theme of returning full circle, I felt like the development of Pearl returning to her country of birth was less interesting than the time spent when they moved to the US.

I do however, prefer these novels over See's other novels that take place before Shanghai Girls and Dreams of Joy and will most likely read China Girls. I would recommend reading Shanghai Girls before this one though, as it is essentially a sequel and failing to do so would probably lead to more confusion -- especially for readers unfamiliar with See's previous work.
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VINE VOICE
5.0 out of 5 stars This is the way to get a history lesson... and more
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on June 30, 2011
Verified Purchase
My, oh my! I have to admit that I've often found history boring, and I never really thought I'd like to read about the plight of the Chinese during the reign of Mao-Tse-Tung... all the starving, naive citizens that were bamboozled into believing in fortune at the end of the rainbow during the "Great Leap Forward" which took place in the PRC (Peoples Republic of China). However, with Ms. See at the helm, the journey you make with Pearl back into Red China is unforgettable, literally.

Very strongly recommend the reading of Shanghai Girls first, to get the most out of this work. It was also wonderful. This picks up where that one ends. Pearl has raised Joy as her own daughter, but in actuality, Pearl is Joy's Aunt. Pearls sister May gave birth to Joy and gave the child to Pearl to raise, a secret they both kept from everyone. Even the biological father, a famed artist in China, doesn't know about the child. This begins when Joy (an idealistic, American-raised 19 yr. old young/modern woman) has learned about her paternity and naively, sets out to find her bio-father, never fully realizing what she was walking into in Red China. She steals off in the night, and when her mother Pearl, realizes what she has done, she sets out after her. What transpires you will not easily forget.

The reader is emotionally bonded with Ms. See's engaging characters, albeit some of the historical events such as the long famine, were difficult to read about, but these events actually happened and are a big part of China's history. Ms. See devotes pages at the end of her novel of reference to her research, it's overwhelming to think about, but the end result is wonderful, authentic and compelling reading, highly recommended. Can't wait to see what she does next :)
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A.Bennett
VINE VOICE
5.0 out of 5 stars A wonderful Sequel to " Shanghai Girls" by Lisa See
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on June 14, 2011
Verified Purchase
Dreams of Joy  is the sequel to  Shanghai Girls: A Novel  and what a sequel! The setting is in the China of 1960 during the Great Leap Forward under Mao Ts. I did not know much about that period in China's history, but I learned much from this novel. Ms See gives us rich historical details about life during those times, in the country as well as in the city and there was a great difference between the two. The story takes off where Shanghai Girls leaves off; now Pearl's daughter Joy is nineteen years old and finds out some devastating facts about her background. She leaves for China without telling her mother at first and what follows is a story of a mother's love, the strength of women and the devastating conditions during the China famine of 1960. Pearl follows her daughter to Shanghai and eventually the countryside. The author's descriptions of the hunger and hardships during that famine are harrowing and very real but she manages to give you a wonderful picture in words of the love of a mother for her child as well as the enormous strength of women in spite of the lack of freedom and significance. She gives you an idea of how much we need to cherish those freedoms we still have here in our country by describing the narrow escape of Pearl and her family from the China of those days to a free Hong Kong. I loved this book by Lisa See the best of all her novels, along with  Snow Flower and the Secret Fan: A Novel  which deals with a different time in China but runs a close second to this one! I give it five stars and highly recommend it, especially if you are interested in China's history.
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NenetteU
4.0 out of 5 stars Great story; appalling revelations!
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on May 26, 2012
Verified Purchase
Shanghai Girls (this book's prequel) ended with high hopes. Dreams of Joy carried that hope to a beautiful conclusion.

I have never been political, so the first part of the book was not really up to my taste. But when it came to the part where the bad effects of the Great Leap Forward was related, then I started feeling it - the sense that one feels when the words on the pages starts to appear as not just words.

I had to review history so I looked up what really happened during the Great Leap Forward in China. Growing up, I knew about China being a communist country, but that was just that; I couldn't have been apathetic, I was just probably very young. Reading about it now, I am appalled at what happened - how can a leader stand it - to be full and contented while his community gradually dies of hunger? It may not be of the same magnitude as today, but it is still happening; there are still such leaders.

As in her other books, Lisa See did a great job of blending history and fiction. All the various topics taken up in the book were woven together as only one who knows them well or one who researched them well could have done - politics and political tactics, women's place in Chinese society, family, young love, blinded love, sisterly love, motherly love. This is so highly recommended.
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Suzanne Dobbins
5.0 out of 5 stars Gripping, wonderful and sad!
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on April 15, 2013
Verified Purchase
The story begins where Shanghai Girls left off. Joy, the American daughter of a Shanghai born mother, decides to leave her home in search of her father and a new life - in Red China. The time period is the late 1950′s and this is the China of Chairman Mao and the Great Leap forward. Joy's mother, Pearl, of course chases after her. The tale that follows is classic Lisa See. It is gripping, wonderful, sad and everything See fan's have come to expect from her.

This is an important work for a number of reasons. First, there is little information out there about life in China during these early years of Mao Tse Tung. See gathers information, written and oral, to put together an impressive historical account of the downhill slide of China's economy. Second, I really appreciated how the main character, Joy, did not immediately see the havoc that China's political decisions were wreaking on the people. It was a slow realization - and for most of China's population, that's exactly how it happened. It's easy to look at history in hindsight and claim that we would never fall prey to that kind of indoctrination. But it happens all the time, and that is why a book like 
Dreams of Joy: A Novel  is so important. It reminds us that we need to be extra vigilant, and above all, to understand that a human life is the most valuable thing on earth. No matter the age, the race or the class, we must fight to protect these ideals.
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