Ching Yeung Russell,
Tofu Quilt
Lee & Low Books, 2009.

Ages 8-12

The thirty-eight poems in award-winning author Ching Yeung Russell’s Tofu Quilt make a quilt themselves,  patching together memories of Russell’s Hong Kong childhood in the 1960’s and her growing aspiration to become a writer. Each poem is a vibrant vignette; together they create a lively collage of images, impressions, and inspiration to tell a story that entertains and educates—and overcomes any child’s intimidation by free verse.

Russell’s childhood was not privileged, but her mother’s fierce advocacy of her daughter’s right to an education offered her opportunities beyond what girls of that era usually received. A taste of an expensive and rare treat, dan lai, on a visit to her mainland relatives, provides strong inspiration for this irrepressible child’s literary inclinations. She realizes that as a writer, she could afford to eat dan lai whenever she liked, and that’s much better than being a saleslady.

The book’s title refers to leftover squares of fabric, “…as big as my palm and as square as chunks of tofu” that her tailor father sews “one by one,/ piece by piece,/ into a big quilt/ with different colors and/ different textures.” The quilts don’t look like the ones from the store, and she hides them when friends come to visit. “But the quilts from the store/ don’t have the same feel/ as those made with/ Ba Ba’s labor of/ love.”

From a nosy woman who weighs her neighbors’ wealth by what they serve for supper, to the mirrors families hang for warding off bad luck, to her repeated readings of Tom Sawyer, Russell details a Hong Kong girl’s realization of the material with which she will lay a path to her future as a writer. She writes about her first cup of coffee and her traumas with math. Even her first glimpse of her future husband, she confesses in an author’s note, inspired a poem: “A kwailo tourist/ in faded blue jeans/ and a pair of dirty sneakers/ puts his big camera case on the ground/ and kneels in the middle of our narrow street,/ his rear stuck up in the air.”

A glossary of Chinese terms with pronunciation follows the text. Russell’s lively, humorous verse will delight young readers and particularly inspire those with secret, maybe not-yet-admitted-even-to-themselves literary aspirations.

Charlotte Richardson
December 2009