Homesick: My Own Story, Jean Fritz

This is the autobiography of an American girl, growing up in China in the 1920s, fiercely proud of being American. She is – like so many YA fiction heroines, like Caddie Woodlawn or Patty in Summer of My German Soldier, willfully different, stubborn, full of secret delight in the world. But while I found these traits — best expressed in the yearning for her grandmother, the summers at the sea, the little sister who died– easy to relate to in many novels, and especially inspiring in my favourite LMM characters… I simply found Jean a little annoying. Maybe I thought her bursts of patriotism were a little too immature and grating.

The backdrop for Jean’s childhood is Hankow, during the revolution. Jean’s father, who works for the YMCA, is directly involved in… helping out? But the revolution stays in the background of Jean’s own life and childhood dramas, which I think is effective. Jean’s friends disperse, she notices differences in the attitude of their Chinese servants, and Jean and her mother are forced to evacuate, but Jean’s world remains very sheltered: nothing happens to her immediate family or causes them delay. Instead her concerns are her best friend, Andrea’s parents’ divorce, Andrea’s stylish silk stockings, the loss of freedom in being able to wander all over Hankow, her cat…

The appropriate conclusion is that when Jean gets to her grandmother’s house, and begins 8th grade in Washington – she learns, as she combats the ignorance and insults of her classmates – the China was more a part of herself than she had acknowledged. Jean’s very minor troubles at school are still sheltered by the love and sympathy of her grandmother and aunt, and the book ends with laughter.

Upon rereading, each chapter does function nicely as a short story on growing up – each themed on a tiny grief, or milesone, of childhood, like singing the American national anthem, or the anticipation and death of Jean’s baby sister.