The Immortal Woman by Su Chang | The Miramichi Reader

The titular Immortal Woman is one of Lemei’s favourite pieces of folklore growing up; forbidden in the China she lives in, but still one her mother tries to impart on her. Su Chang’s novel travels from the mid-late 1950s in the throes of the Cultural Revolution in China, to late 1990s and early 2000s in North America, circling back to modern China. The Immortal Woman is a densely packed novel focusing on generational trauma, loss of identity (self-inflicted and societally), and mental health, wandering through decades and different daughters.

The novel starts with Lemei, growing up in Shanghai during the Cultural Revolution as part of a family known to be loyal and red, but struggles with her own doubts and desire to read forbidden literature. After her brother betrays the family by reporting her mother’s shrine, her life tumbles away from her: becoming a Red Guard captain to protect her mother, and working as a journalist for a propaganda paper. She later pours her hopes into her daughter Lin: Lin will get away, Lin will go to America and work a safe job. And Lin does, but not without absorbing her mother’s feelings about China, and trying to manage them in a new, foreign context.

Chang’s writing is extremely lyrical as well, and coupled with the shifting timelines and the occasional narrator switch means that it was easy to get lost in the text

This is a violent novel. It’s complicated and eventually gives way to joy and care, but there’s a lot of violence (murder, rape, abuse) which is hard to take in. Chang’s writing is extremely lyrical as well, and coupled with the shifting timelines and the occasional narrator switch means that it was easy to get lost in the text. I think I ultimately have complicated feelings about this book too: it was compelling, it did not shy away from the different ways violence can be held in your body, it explained experiences that I and my own family do not have, or have had in smaller ways, and it was both informative about the effects of the Cultural Revolution and the reverberations through later generations. But it was also violent, and Lin’s part of the novel was less interesting than the first section on Lemei. The narrative felt shakier once Lin left for the United States, and struggled to regain its feet until Lemei had gone to Canada to take care of Lin post-partum.

Chang opens up a lot of tough conversations in this novel. Because I don’t have the necessary cultural background, I did have to look up a number of references, though having a basic handle on the Cultural Revolution was enough most of the time. I appreciate the work that went into portraying it. The Immortal Woman is certainly a weighty read and one that I’ll be thinking about for a while to come.

SU CHANG is a Chinese Canadian writer. Born and raised in Shanghai, she is the daughter of a former (reluctant) Red Guard leader. Her fiction has been recognized in Prairie Fire’s Short Fiction Contest, the Canadian Authors Association (Toronto) National Writing Contest, the ILS/Fence Fiction Contest, and the Masters Review’s Novel Excerpt Contest, among others.

Publisher: House of Anansi Press (March 4, 2025)
Paperback 5.25″ x 8″ | 384 pp
ISBN: 9781487013172

Alison Manley

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Alison Manley has ricocheted between New Brunswick and Nova Scotia for most of her life. Now in Halifax, Nova Scotia, she is the Cataloguing and Metadata Librarian at Saint Mary's University. Her past life includes a long stint as a hospital librarian on the banks of the mighty Miramichi River. She has an honours BA in political science and English from St. Francis Xavier University, and a Master of Library and Information Studies from Dalhousie University. While she's adamant that her love of reading has nothing to do with her work, her ability to consume large amounts of information very quickly sure is helpful. She is often identified by her very red lipstick, and lives with her partner Brett and cat, Toasted Marshmallow.