Weaving Politics, Culture, and Story: A Review of The Vine Basket

15814464Writers who take on political stories—stories that focus on conflicts within and between communities—face daunting challenges. How does a writer keep the focus on the story rather than the political issue? How does he or she present background information without the story grinding to a halt? How does the reader come to empathize with individual characters when the conflict is between nations or groups? Josanne La Valley’s impressive debut novel The Vine Basket, published by Clarion, serves as a model, showing that political stories can be and need to be told.

La Valley’s close third-person narrative focuses on 14-year-old Mehrigul, a Uyghur girl living in the region known to Uyghurs as East Turkestan, and to the Chinese government and growing number of Han Chinese settlers (“invaders” may be a better word) as Xinjiang Province. Ever since her older brother left for parts unknown, Mehrigul has worked on her family’s small plot of land and sold produce and crafts at the market to help her alcoholic father and depressed mother, and to pay her younger sister’s school fees. Because Mehrigul does not attend school, she risks being sent by local Communist Party officials to a factory in southern China. One afternoon, Mehrigul sells a useless but decorative woven basket to an American tourist who owns a fair-trade shop, and the woman promises to return in three weeks in order to buy whatever Mehrigul can make during that time. With the help of her frail grandfather, a master basket weaver, Mehrigul rushes to fill the visitor’s order, but a series of obstacles—including a violent sandstorm, her father’s betrayal, and blistered hands from farm work—threaten to crush her dreams of a better life. Along the way, she learns some harsh truths about her family’s history and the circumstances of her brother’s sudden disappearance.

The “ticking clock” of the order for baskets, and the multiple setbacks, keep the pages turning. Mehrigul’s persistence and devotion to her family, particularly to her younger sister, garner the reader’s sympathy. The author weaves political and cultural information into the story seamlessly, where it gives a rich background to Mehrigul’s individual struggles. At the same time, readers come to understand the larger forces—the Party officials seeking to fill their quotas for young female factory workers, the Uyghur farmers fighting to hold onto what little land that hasn’t already been taken away—that give power and urgency to Mehrigul’s work.

Josanne La Valley at a book launch party with Clarion editor Dinah Stevenson.

Josanne La Valley at a book launch party with Clarion editor Dinah Stevenson and Uyghur crafts.

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