Do Not Say We Have Nothing by Madeleine Thien
- Emma Q Zhou
- 8月11日
- 讀畢需時 4 分鐘
Madeleine Thien's Do Not Say We Have Nothing covers a lot of Chinese history, from the Communist Revolution in 1949 to the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s and 1970s and the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989. The book tells the stories of musicians, intellectuals, and dissidents, with Li-ling (Marie), a young woman in Vancouver, and her relationship with Ai-ming, a refugee from China, at its center. Thien looks at how political upheavals leave scars on both people and the collective memory of a nation through a family history that is passed down from generation to generation. The "Book of Records," which is an unfinished, constantly growing manuscript in the novel, serves as both an archive and an allegory, holding stories that cannot be erased.
The "Book of Records" is one of Thien's most powerful tools. It's a text-within-a-text that changes hands over time and is changed by each reader and writer. Marie says, "The Book of Records was infinite... it would grow and grow, containing all our lives" (p. 74). The manuscript is a metaphor for history itself, which is never fixed but always being rewritten, with things being added and taken away. Thien asks if history can ever be definitive or if it is always a palimpsest of competing voices by making this manuscript the main focus of the story.
The form is similar to what happened in real life in Chinese history, when official state stories tried to erase other stories. Ai-ming says, "The government erased the past... they cut up pictures, burned letters, and said you were never here" (p. 201). The Book of Records becomes a counter-archive, a weak effort to keep what the state would rather forget.
The characters in the novel depend on music but also have problems with it. Sparrow, a talented composer, says that the Cultural Revolution's strict rules about ideas kept his music from being heard: "They said my music was bourgeois." But it was mine. "I knew it was true" (p. 156). Thien uses musical themes to show how hard it is to be true to yourself and follow the rules at the same time. The fact that Bach's Goldberg Variations are played over and over again in the novel shows how much the characters want structure, beauty, and meaning in a world that is bent on dissonance.
For Sparrow, Zhuli, and Kai, music is a way to quietly resist and keep their sense of self when speaking in public is dangerous. But music also puts them in danger; playing a forbidden score could lead to disaster. Thien says, "They could take your scores, your piano, and your violin." "But they couldn't change how you heard the world" (p. 178). This close connection between music and memory means that listening is still subversive even when voices are quiet.
The violence of the Cultural Revolution is not shown in general terms; it is shown through personal betrayals and moral compromises. Characters have to turn on their friends, watch their work get ruined, and live at the cost of their dignity. Kai tells Ai-ming, "I thought if I did it once, just once, I could go back to who I was," when he admits to signing a false confession to protect his job. But there was no way to go back (p. 239). This moment shows Thien's main tragedy: political systems can destroy not only people's bodies but also the moral structure of their lives.
The Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 are the book's modern-day echo of earlier repression. Marie finds out that Ai-ming is involved and is leaving, and she realizes that state violence continues through time. Not only are the protests seen as a turning point in politics, but they are also seen as a trauma that will last for generations, a reminder that the cycle of oppression is hard to break.
Marie in Canada gets bits and pieces of China's political turmoil through family stories that are only half-told, letters that are lost, and long periods of silence that are kept for survival. Jiang Kai, her father, is an important but mysterious figure. His life in China is full of choices he can't fully explain. Marie remembers, "There were things he would never tell me, and I learned not to ask" (p. 15).
Ai-ming's arrival breaks the silence, but only a little. The stories she tells are also incomplete because of her own losses. Thien is like the reality of diaspora in that the past can never be fully recovered, but putting it together across borders, languages, and generations is a way to fight against forgetting.
Do Not Say We Have Nothing is a complex and deeply human novel about how history can't be kept secret. Thien shows how music, memory, and political trauma are all connected and how art and storytelling can keep what official stories leave out.
Marie thinks about how the Book of Records is never really finished: "There will always be pages missing." But maybe that's the point (p. 465). Thien gives us the idea that history is never finished, but it can still be shared, carried, and imagined in new ways. Remembering, which is flawed, incomplete, and ongoing, is a way to stay alive.
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