The World In Between

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During a Hong Kong summer in the late 1960s, there are reports of bombs exploding in the streets, rumors of dead bodies floating "down the Pearl River, from the fighting in Canton," and the buzz of an increasing onslaught from the "Red" East: "Little Red Books of Mao Zedong's edicts wave in the air. Red bursts of firecrackers. Red drums. Red Guards." In this summer in the city Alice Greenway sets her slim and lyrical debut novel, White Ghost Girls. Greenway's book depicts the coming-of-age of two American girls, Kate and Frankie. Amidst the faint rumblings of violence and revolution, the sisters explore the city while becoming aware of their own sexuality.

The novel, narrated by a much solder Kate, unfolds through impressionistic episodes marked by wonder at exotic sights and sounds, from the "laundry strung on bamboo poles" and "rattan birdcages" to the smells of "dried oysters, clove hair oil, joss, [and] tiger balm" in the streets of Hong Kong. But politics are inescapable and an expatriate's distance increasingly difficult to retain. Their father, a photographer at TIME magazine assigned to cover the Vietnam War, has moved to Hong Kong from New York with the idea that, "Hong Kong would be safer than Saigon; an old-fashioned British enclave." He and his family soon find that nowhere is safe. The girls hear from their amah about the turmoil in their looming neighbor to the north: news of Chinese communists closing down schools and destroying homes during the Cultural Revolution. Their mother tries to escape the tension by surrounding herself with "the charm and comforts of the colonial era," taking lunches on the Peak, and attending services at St John's Cathedral.

Kate and her sister will have little of this, as they become aware that they are not complete foreigners in Asia. Being in a category now popularly deemed "third-culture kids," the girls recognize that they come from "that other world, the West" and "know its stories, its heroes and heroines." But they also realize that they are somehow different: no longer completely from either the West or the East. Having grown used to "the heat, the jungle, the loneliness," of life in Hong Kong, they are still kept at a distance and referred to as "gwaimui, white ghost girl." Greenway, herself an American who spent parts of her childhood in Hong Kong, deftly captures this dynamic, as the girls gain access to aspects of local culture, often through their amah, that those in their parents' generation would be unable to enter.

Against a backdrop of cultural upheaval, the sisters' own personal and sexual lives come into focus. Kate becomes repelled by her sister's flirtatious way with older men though she learns herself just how easy it is to seduce a male companion. Little else is easy in these interesting times. Revolution seems to float in the humid air, and a minister warns the girls that "Hong Kong is facing sinister times." Bombs kill innocent civilians. The girls enter into sexual liaisons. Secret pacts are made. Borders are crossed. In Hong Kong, the heat is on.