The Tiger’s Choice: Finishing The Happiness of Kati
As I finish my preparations to return to Bangkok, I find myself thinking about this month’s Tiger’s Choice. The Happiness of Kati depicts a lifestyle that I have never seen in Thailand, and I find myself wondering if it is a realistic depiction.
Kati and her grandparents live as people in Thailand have for centuries–up until the present day. Their world is clean and quiet and filled with the blessings of nature. When Kati and her grandfather go out in their boat, they row through unpolluted waterways that Kati can dabble her toes in after she and her grandfather finish their picnic lunch. They live in a world untarnished by satellite dishes, cable TV, or mobile phones. There’s not a fast food venue or a 7/11 convenience store in sight. It is a world of the past that all Thai people yearn to return to, and it is portrayed in loving and idealized detail in Jane Vejjajiva’s novel.
And yet within this ideal world, harsh truths intrude and are handled fearlessly. Death, disease, desertion–these are examined carefully and unshrinkingly, through the eyes of a little girl and the family who loves her. It is the softened world that Kati lives in that makes it possible to look at grief and loss with a feeling of acceptance and hope. And it is the well-constructed characters who take life within a matter of sentences who take this book well beyond the realm of moral instruction into the enduring community of classic children’s literature.
September 30th, 2008 at 2:33 pm
I haven’t read The Happiness of Kati, but your comments about it have deeply moved me. I can only imagine how I will feel when I actually read the book! I look forward to reading it with my daughter, but I guess I’ll wait until she’s Kati’s age (9) and a little more able to grasp the depth I sense in it.
I love stories that sensitively portray children, in all their wisdom and resilience, and stories set in other cultures. That feeling of being carried, geographically and emotionally, to a new world is worth so much!…
August 10th, 2009 at 4:37 pm
[...] to the best literature by Southeast Asians. Read Janet’s three posts about the book (1, 2, 3), as she gets deeper into the beautifully layered story of a Thai girl and her family. And for an [...]
March 8th, 2010 at 7:26 am
“They live in a world untarnished by satellite dishes, cable TV, or mobile phones. There’s not a fast food venue or a 7/11 convenience store in sight.”
Actually, the author does mention mobile phones and the internet quite frequently. Also, the idyllic existence described by Vejjajiva is also ostensibly the result of Grandpa’s former job as a renowned attorney and Grandma’s previous employment as the manager of a five-star hotel. When sailing on the boat in the scene you describe, Grandpa alludes to Monet’s Water Lilies series. There is a clear theme of erudition which runs through Kati’s idyllic riverside life. Grandpa also mentions earning frequent flyer miles at one point.