It wasn’t until Chen, now a full-time writer, started working on his memoir that he realized he didn’t deserve any of the cruelty directed at him when he was young. While his childhood was plagued by poverty and political persecution, writing about it made Chen rediscover its unexpected highs–small acts of heroism and kindness, the awesome strength of his family, his luck and his triumphs. “Colors of the Mountain” is a completely engrossing coming-of-age tale that’s surprisingly free of cynicism or bitterness. His stories are made all the more poignant by the wonder and vulnerability in the voice of their child narrator. Though he wrote in English, some passages are wholly Chinese: “You’re like a frog in a deep well, hungry for a passing swan in the sky.” What is most astonishing in a memoir set during the Cultural Revolution is that it is a defiantly happy book, bighearted and sincere, just like its author.
Chen, 38, was born in a tiny village on the southeastern tip of China during the “Year of Great Starvation.” Because his grandfather was a wealthy landowner, his family was a prime target during the Cultural Revolution, Mao’s disastrous attempt at political reformation. State authorities sent his father to labor camp, hauled his grandfather out for public beatings, sent his siblings to the fields to scoop manure. Neighborhood boys threw rocks at him, and his teachers repeatedly tried to throw him out of school. Still, Chen quickly became the best in town at everything he tried: academics, violin, flute, Ping-Pong. When he finally took the college entrance exam, he scored in the top 2 percent of his province.
“Colors” ends with Chen’s boarding the bus for Beijing on his way to college. After graduating from the Beijing Language Institute–at the top of his class, of course–Chen got a fellowship from Union College in Lincoln, Neb., to study and teach. As he recalls what it was like seeing America for the first time, it’s clear that he hasn’t lost his sense of wonder and innocence, even now. “Everybody had a car,” he says. “The supermarket had watermelons all the way from Florida. I could buy a whole bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken. I wasn’t hungry anymore; I thought it was paradise.”
From Lincoln, Chen won a full scholarship to Columbia Law School, where he studied Brown v. Board of Education, the case that outlawed segregation in schools. “I cried reading that brief,” he says. “I said, ‘This has to be the best country in the world’.” And like many young, ambitious Manhattanites looking to become the best of the best, he decided that Wall Street was the next world to conquer. He recalls attending a dinner party during his investment-banker days, eating filet mignon prepared by a chef from Lutece, chatting with a member of the famously wealthy Rothschild clan. All he could think about was how he had once been too poor to own a pair of shoes. “Occasions like that,” he says, “make you feel like a fake in your life. I wasn’t comfortable. I didn’t like investment banking, and I wasn’t good at it.” So he quit. For the first time in his life, he got out of the race.
When Chen started having kids (Victoria’s 5, Michael’s 1), he realized he wanted them to know his real story, and he started writing. “The more I wrote, the angrier I got,” he says. “I never cried so much, not even going through it.” His wife, a Chinese-American doctor, learned the details of his past only when she edited his manuscript. “I looked at him completely differently,” she says. “There was this sense of, Oh, poor boy, but there was also respect for this unusual man who’d accomplished so much. He’s so much happier. Writing is therapy for him.”
“Colors” collected dust for three years; a few rejection letters convinced Chen that there was no market for memoirs. Then one day he noticed a group of aspiring writers convening at his local Barnes & Noble. For six months he sat in their meetings without saying a word, listening to everyone read about white suburban angst. When he finally got up the nerve to read his first chapter, he was met with an amazed silence. One woman raised her hand and said, “Frank McCourt.” Ambition reignited, Chen wrote to an agent, who opened the envelope only because the return address was near her summer home. Ultimately, Random House chief Ann Godoff paid $400,000 for the book and edited it herself. Now Barnes & Noble, Borders and the ABA (the association of independent booksellers) have chosen “Colors” as one of their favorite new books of the season, which means it’ll be showcased in most of the bookstores in the country.
There’s a photographer at the Chens’ house this January afternoon, but the author doesn’t seem too interested in getting his picture taken. He plays his bamboo flute, does some Chinese calligraphy and presses the newly inked parchments into the hands of his guests. The photographer finally gets him to pose and barks out directions: where to look, where to put his hands. “This is making me feel like a fake again,” he says. His mother, who lives with him, stands watching in the doorway as her grandchildren try to hide behind her. “I know that anything can be taken from you just like that,” he says. “But it makes me appreciate a smile much more. In the winter of my childhood, a smile meant everything to me.” He looks over at his own kids, combed and scrubbed, decked out in velvet and bows. He smiles, and the photographer snaps the picture.
Colors of the MountainDa Chen (Random House) 310 pages. $25.
