“Homesick: My Own Story”
by Jean Fritz, illustrated by Margo Tomes.
G.P. Putnam’s Sons, New York, 1992, 176 pages, Grades 5-7.
Immigration is constantly in the news. We see people fleeing from Syria, Africa and Latin America. Since no one flees from a good situation, immigrants usually suffer from economic, religious, or ethnic oppression.
What people from the countries of destination may see is the desire of the immigrants to benefit from monetary, political and sociological benefits of new countries. What people in these settled countries may not see is the pain immigrants often suffer when leaving their old lands. For there is a loss as well as a gain in immigration.
Jean Fritz, a famous children’s literature author, was born in China. Her father worked for the Y.M.C.A. in China for many years. Jean was born in China in 1915 and did not leave the country until 1927. Her return to the United States was not without its cost as she relates in her autobiography, “Homesick: My Own Story.”
Hankow is the old capital of the Hubei Province in central China. The Yangtze River flows through the province and next to the city of Hankow. As a young girl, Jean walks down the main street known as The Bund bordering the Yangtze River. All of the administrative offices of Germany, Russia, Japan, France and England are located on this beautiful street. Nearby are the five areas of land, the concessions, that the countries forced China to give them in the late 1800s. These modern sections stand in sharp contrast to the sprawling, messy neighborhoods of Hankow, and are a source of national embarrassment for the Chinese.
However, all of this is unknown to young schoolgirls like Jean. She attends the British School and studies all of her subjects in English. Upon returning home, she begins speaking Chinese with the cook and with Lin Nai-Nai, her amah (nanny). Since she speaks Chinese nearly as well as English, she converses with people she meets while walking along the Bund. The nearby Yangtze River holds a particular fascination for the child and the ships (junks) on the river attract her attention. Jean is quite familiar with different Chinese gods and customs and feels completely at home in Hankow.
But at the same time, her grandmother writes to her about all that is happening at the family farm in America and how glad they will be when Jean and her parents return. Once a letter arrives telling her of the 25 chicks born that day. She quickly writes her grandmother back and tells of seeing a Chinese magician swallowing three yards of fire on the same day. These are very different worlds.
As the years continue, the family is finally to be sent back to the USA. But as they get ready to leave Hankow, a violent war erupts and Jean changes from an American girl fluent in Chinese, to a hated “foreign devil.” When she finally gets back to America she is called a Chinaman and a “chink” by one American classmate. When she is asked to speak Chinese, the students laugh at the language. Jean is so hurt and angry that she then curses her American classmates in Chinese.
So, who is she anyway? What has she gained and what has she lost? She discovers that she is homesick. What should she do?
Jean Fritz has written more than 50 books, and virtually invented the children’s literature biography. Though a great deal of this book explores the feelings of a young teenage girl and is not particular to any culture, other sections discuss real problems people face when living in two very different cultures. Do they belong to either culture or do they belong to both cultures? Jean Fritz accurately describes these painful feelings in her well-written autobiography. This book would be very useful in a social studies class in middle school and I hope you encourage your middle-school students to read it.
