The Butterfly Healing: A Life between East and West by Julia Ching (review)

HUMANITIES 533 Verduyn confronts the issue of the invasion of the writer's privacy head on. Engel, she asserts, assumed her notebooks would be read. 'To write, and in particular to preserve what one writes, is to invite, indeed to intend, readership.' Her selection represents about 70 per cent of the original notebooks. Wanting to make a vivid and compelling book, she excised repetitive material and fragmentary and incoherent entries. But her deletions were also determined by 'the argument of privacy for individuals associated with the subject: In particular she was thinking of Engel's children. Verduyn does a superb job of editing. Each of the forty-one notebooks is introduced with a physical description of the cahier and its contents. Information is offered about dating, necessary since Engel's disregard for chronology and dates often made the editor's task difficult. Engel wrote in several notebooks at once, cross-referenced, and reread constantly. Verduyn's footnotes are illuminating and often engaging. The book delivers on its promise. Most exciting is to watch the evolution of a writer's imagination from that of the young girl who exhorted herself at the age of sixteen to 'live creatively' and make of her life 'a work of art: to that of the mature writer. We can see how Engel's novels evolved from her life and how her life was shaped by her fiction. There are notes about love and its failures, marriage, divorce, children, always written with an effort to understand the complexity of identity. Most powerfully, we watch a woman of courage confronting a premature death, feeling ill and scared, taking immense pride in her children, in her work. Engel spent her last Christmas in her beloved Paris with her children, still marvelling at the superb gargoyles on Notre Dame and French cuisine when it was good, still finishing her final novel. One of her last entries was: 'I don't trust all this kindness. It feels terminal.' She didn't want pity. She just wanted more time. (ROSEMARY SULLIVAN) Julia Ching. TIle Blftterfly Healing: A Life between East and West Novalis 199B. xii, 220. US $16.00 ... And you want to travel with her And you want to travel blind And you know that you can trust her For she's touched your perfect body with her mind. Leonard Cohen, 'Suzanne' Julia Ching is one of the world's leading authorities on China, an author of more than a dozen books on Chinese religion and philosophy. She holds the title of 'University Professor: the University of Toronto's highest honour for faculty. It was as an undergraduate student at Toronto in the 19805 that 1first got to know Professor Ching. Until reading this powerful work, 1had no idea that she was also a gifted poet. And 1can find no better 534 LETTERS IN CANADA 1999 reaction to her work than in the words of another Canadian poet, Leonard Cohen. You want to travel with her. This book is many things. First and foremost it is an autobiography of an extraordinary life, lived 'in a place called the world.' Second, it is a story of sickness and healing, both of the body and the spirit. Third, it is an introduction to the religions and cultures of the world. And finally, it is about the struggles in the academy of those of us who are not white, who are often welcomed in theory but not in practice. Ching tells her story, beginning with her birth in Shanghai, movements between Hong Kong and Shanghai as a refugee ('My earliest memories are of war'), and then to the United States to do university studies. It was there that she entered the convent (the Ursuline order of nuns), remaining with them for almost two decades. And it was during this time that she had her first experience with cancer. Much of the book is concerned with the various cancers and concomitant medical problems that she encountered. It introduces the reader to different medicines, to several technologies for dealing with illness. In this regard, the book is a survivor's story, told with courage and honesty. In telling her story, Ching provides glimpses into the...