The Bitter Sea
The Bitter Sea by Charles N. Li is a captivating memoir that tells the story of his growing up in a China during the Communist takeover. Firstly, I would like to mention that the title confused me at first – I could not see a connection to the story itself. There was no bitter sea mentioned at all throughout the entire memoir and I did not have a clue as to what it meant until after I finished reading it. Charles N. Li did an excellent job in selecting the title because it gives the reader room to hypothesize and think about what is really meant. Every reader could have his own interpretation of what the title means to him or her. To me, the bitter sea is the sea of bitter tears that have been cried during the period in China that Li describes in his memoir.
Most of Li’s story is very dismal and, oftentimes, I questioned whether or not I wanted to flip the page and keep reading. The little bits of humor that he threw in here and there make the reader question whether or not Li is exaggerating the stories he tells. It is hard to imagine a person who is honestly able to talk about getting frostbite and endless diseases (that could make the strongest of humans suffer horrible pains and death) and later in his memoir look back at those times and claim they were the best ones of his life. Part of reading a memoir includes having only one view of what went on, and I understand that, but most authors admit that their memory could be fooling them or that some parts are exaggerated on purpose. Li does not do so, telling the reader that he, in fact, recollects all the events in their entirety and tells nothing but the whole truth.
What would touch any reader’s heart, however, is Li’s detailed relationship with his father. He takes us down the road of their relationship and we feel every bump and ridge, every high and low, that Li felt. Having a first-hand account of what the relationship meant to Charles and how he felt gave the reader his own sense of connection with the family. When he embraces his father for the first time, we the readers feel genuinely happy for him. When we discover that Li’s father betrayed him by sending him into a communist camp only to “test the waters,” we feel just as devastated and shocked as he was. He truly does an excellent job at taking us on this roller coaster ride that he calls his life, as though we were sitting right there in the front row with him.
Much like a roller coaster, we are kept in suspense of how the story will end until the big drop. In Li’s memoir, he keeps the action rising higher and higher until the last few pages of the memoir where everything gets resolved. One would anticipate an abrupt ending, but Li ended his epic story within a couple of pages and left the reader satisfied (and partially relieved) of how things concluded. Overall – it was a mighty fantastic read that left the reader with a great sense of fulfillment and a deeper insight into the history of China.
