
Bookcase Favorites: Do Not Say We Have Nothing
Madeleine Thien’s Do Not Say We Have Nothing is a stunning work of historical fiction that brings to life twentieth century China in heartfelt, thought-provoking, and beautifully devastating ways. Spanning seven decades, the story traces three generations of two interconnected families amidst the backdrop of the Chinese Civil War, Mao’s Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, the Tiananmen Square protests, and modern-day China and Hong Kong. Thien deconstructs modern Chinese history with remarkable depth and insight, immersing readers in the past while grappling with timeless questions about politics, art, identity, and survival.
The novel begins in Vancouver, where the narrator, Marie, lives with her mother. Her father, a musician and Chinese defector who arrived in Canada in the 1970s, abandoned her family for Hong Kong in 1989. That same year, to his family’s shock, he committed suicide. The story weaves back and forth through time as Marie pieces together details of her father’s untold past.
The heart of the novel takes place in Shanghai in the 1960s, when Jiang Kai, Marie’s father, is a student at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music. Arriving in Shanghai from the provinces, Kai is a gifted pianist and child of rural peasants who died of famine during Mao’s Great Leap Forward. His life is closely intertwined with fellow Conservatory students Sparrow — a shy, sensitive, and brilliant composer — and Zhuli, Sparrow’s cousin and a passionate violinist and lively spirit.
Despite their different backgrounds — Sparrow’s father is a party official and Zhuli’s parents are wealthy landowners sent to reeducation camps by the regime — the trio share a special bond underscored by their love for music. But dynamics at the Conservatory shift when the political climate starts to turn against artists and intellectuals. “What good is this music, these empty enchantments, that only entrench the bourgeoisie and isolate the poor?” students ask. As the Cultural Revolution gains momentum, classical music is labeled counterrevolutionary and musicians are persecuted. At the height of the violence, students are tortured and humiliated by Red Guards, who force them to confess their treachery and vanity, denounce their friends and teachers, and destroy their instruments.
Amidst this violent assault on their identities, each character makes a different choice about how to survive under the crushing weight of the regime. Kai joins the Red Guards and participates in the persecutions — this allows him to pursue music within the limits deemed acceptable by the Party. Sparrow is sent to work in a radio factory in the South and copes by burying and abandoning his passion for music, choosing survival over art. Zhuli, unlike either men, refuses to conform or hide and commits suicide. “You could not play revolutionary music, truly revolutionary music, if you were a coward in your heart,” Thien writes. “You could not play if your hands, your wrists, your arms were not free. Every note would be abject, weak, a lie.”
Do Not Say We Have Nothing is a moving and extraordinary portrayal of China’s twentieth century revolutions and how they impacted individual lives. It tells a deeply human story about both the resilience and the vulnerability of the human spirit, and the moral dilemmas and difficult choices we make in attempt to survive and preserve ourselves in unimaginable circumstances. Thien hauntingly demonstrates how one’s humanity can be suppressed, fractured, and destroyed under the brutality and repressiveness of a totalitarian regime. Her complex and richly-drawn characters embody these struggles and the complicated decisions one must make when caught in the darkest tides of history. They also underscore the dangers of groupthink and the frightening speed at which society can spiral into dystopia.
The book is also a testament to the quiet persistence of history. The story speaks to how, as James Baldwin once wrote, we are trapped in history, and history is trapped in us. It ends with a poem: “Tomorrow begins from another dawn, when we will be fast asleep. / Remember what I say: Not everything will pass.” The past is with us, Thien demonstrates, in ways both known and unknown. It endures through the choices we make — what we do and do not do, what we say and do not say — the parts of ourselves we give to others, and equally, the pieces we cannot pass on, that are irrevocably altered by or lost to the harsh realities of the world we find ourselves in. Thien writes of Sparrow in Tiananmen Square, “Of all the people he had loved and who had loved him, of all the things that he had witnessed, lived and hoped for, of all the music he had created, how much was it possible to see?” As the book weaves through time, echoes of the past and future quietly reverberate through the present.
Thien deconstructs China’s twentieth century social and political history with extraordinary thoughtfulness and insight. Her work raises universal questions about art, politics, and persecution, and prompts meaningful reflection on the legacies we inherit.