Brightening My Corner: A Memoir of Dreams Fulfilled Paperback – 22 May 2023
by Ruth Lor Malloy (Author)
5.0 5.0 out of 5 stars 8 ratings
Paperback
$41.79
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Ruth Lor started life Chinese in a small Canadian town. Driven by curiosity, a yen for adventure, and a wish to be useful, she managed to spend her life fighting racial discrimination.
In Washington, D.C., she fought segregation by sitting in at "whites only" restaurants and swimming in "whites only" pools. She planted trees in Mexico, painted houses for Inuit victims of tuberculosis in the Canadian Arctic, and helped distribute food to refugees in Taiwan. When China reopened to foreigners after its Cultural Revolution, Ruth wrote the first English-language guidebook about that enormous country.
Ruth covered the war in Vietnam, crossed Himalayan passes on foot and horseback, and faced down an angry elephant in Africa. She worked in India to reduce prejudice against that country's caste of transgender hijras. She and her husband housed refugees in their Maryland home after the Vietnam War ended.
Now in her nineties, Ruth still works with refugees, and she still brightens her corner of the world, wherever she is.
Product description
Review
Ruth's vivid memoir challenges us to think about justice, responsibility, family, culture, and belonging in more expansive ways. -Alison Li
This account of a life devoted to the battle against racism couldn't be more timely. -Louise Lore
Wisdom, honesty, discovery-I have found these gifts and more in this beautifully written memoir that gently, deftly, takes us through the many rooms and corners of life. -Aaron Haddad
A fascinating tale of adventures spanning continents and decades, covering history as it was made, seen through the eyes of a curious, thoughtful Canadian. -Sonali Verma
I have known Ruth since our days in Almaty, Kazakhstan . . . and I feel blessed to know her even better through this engaging memoir. -Nancy Swing
====
About the Author
Ruth Lor Malloy was a key figure in fighting against discrimination in Ontario in the 1950s. She participated in the high profile Dresden restaurant sit-in of 1954. In 1973, she published the first English-language guidebook to China in North America. Throughout her decades-long career, Malloy worked tirelessly to foster intercultural dialogue and justice for marginalized groups.
Product details
Publisher : Barclay Press (22 May 2023)
Language : English
Paperback : 316 pages
About the Author
Ruth Lor Malloy was a key figure in fighting against discrimination in Ontario in the 1950s. She participated in the high profile Dresden restaurant sit-in of 1954. In 1973, she published the first English-language guidebook to China in North America. Throughout her decades-long career, Malloy worked tirelessly to foster intercultural dialogue and justice for marginalized groups.
Product details
Publisher : Barclay Press (22 May 2023)
Language : English
Paperback : 316 pages
Customer Reviews:
5.0 5.0 out of 5 stars 8 ratings
Top reviews from other countries
Beverly Keever
5.0 out of 5 stars AN INTIMATE GLIMPSSE OF CHINA'S REBIRTHReviewed in the United States on 14 August 2023
Verified Purchase
"Brighten My Corner" offers personalized views of a bygone Asia, but none more unique than the rebirth of China from the Cultural Revolution toward its becoming today's superpower.
Ruth Lor Malloiy, a second-generation Canadian Chinese, pulls off this feat by applying for and receiving a visa to visit China in 1965, seven years before the U.S. established diplomatic relations that allowed its citizens to visit.
Malloy arrived when China was at a tipping point. It was a year before the Cultural Revolution and just when the country was recovering from Mao Zedong's disastrous Great Leap Forward (1956-62) that herded millions into the countryside to transform an agrarian economy into an industrial one. Instead it stoked the Great Chinese Famine, in which an estimated 50 million starved to death in one of the deadliest man-made disasters in history.
For its recovery, Malloy found China eager to spark tourism by luring more overseas Chinese visitors. She was aided by the Overseas Chinese Commission, which supplied an interpreter but didn't pay all expenses.
She was getting what she describes as "the VIP treatment" as she was invited to dinner with then Premier Zhou En-Lai--along with 45 hundred other foreign guests but sitting so far away she could not see him.
Besides this dinner in the Great Hall of the People, Malloy also visited her relative in Guangzhou, a historic Cantonese maritime center. Her relative, Yuet Yuen, a doctor about the same age as Malloy, lived in a small room plus a kitchen with her husband and daughter in an old building. They shared one bathroom with about 10 other families. Malloy explains: "On my first look at her apartment, I almost wept with gratitude for having been born in Canada."
Before leaving the city, Malloy witnessed a sneak preview of Mao's Cultural Revolution: "a mass demonstration with thousands of workers and schoolchildren marching eight abreast in a street and shouting, 'Down with American imperialism,.'" She was "horror-stricken" when children in a nursery school repeated the same slogan and pointed their fingers as though shooting down American planes.
The next year Mao's Cultural Revolution began and lasted a decade. Like the schoolchildren Malloy had witnessed, Mao transformed them and millions of university students into Red Guards, exhorting them to attack old customs, traditions, ideas and habits. They roamed the country, destroying religious structures, ancestral tablets, terrifying elders, women with Western-styled hair or clothes and sometimes even their own parents. They staged court-like trials and executions. Thousands died. Cannibalism occurred in one province, the New York Times reported.
With the Revolution tapering off by 1973, Malloy returned eight years after her first visit and then wrote the first English-language guidebook to China, which was updated in a dozen editions. She visited China over the next 30 years or so to write or update dozens of guidebooks for five-star English-language publishers as China boosted tourism--until the 1989 Massacre of students at Tiananmen Square. Her last guidebook was published in 2000.
When she again visited her relatives' village, much had improved. One relative had a motorcycle and indoor toilet that replaced using the commune's outhouse. A superhighway was nearby. Another relative had built a four-story building with space to rent for a shop.
In Guangzhou anti-American sloganeering was gone. Her cousin, Yuen Yeut still lived in just one room but a second daughter had arrived and the two girls slept in a partitioned part of a hallway. Her cousin no longer wore curled hair, which Malloy knew the Red Guards had condemned. When she asked about the Cultural Revolution, Malloy was politely told it was none of her business. Two families were no longer talking to each other, leading Malloy to suspect they had snitched on each other to save themselves.
Over the years, many Chinese hotels had adopted Western standards and hired English-speaking interpreters. Chinese travel agencies were distributing glossy promotional handouts. Department stores sold better quality goods. Busses and taxis were beginning to clog the streets.
Besides China, Malloy visited other places of an Asia that no longer exists: Tibet before the Chinese government invaded, squelching local customs and religion or Kazakhstan, two years after it opted out of the Soviet Union and became a sovereign nation, the world's 9th largest. The Soviets, which had used the country to test the most explosive nuclear weapons in history, had left may Kazakhs penniless. An ex-KGB officer was peddling his own insignia in a market.
Driven to fight discrimination and injustices against the oppressed, Malloy helped write another book that was the highlight of her life: a guidebook in Mumbai to give respect to and to earn money for "Hijiras," transgender people much hated in India. Malloy's selflessness shines through to make her memoir as inspirational as it is engrossing.
.
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Solange De Santis
5.0 out of 5 stars Rich with color, insight and humanityReviewed in the United States on 6 September 2023
Verified Purchase
I've known Ruth Lor Malloy for - gad - more than 30 years and I remember once saying about her, "You know, Ruth goes to China like most of us change our socks." I've been blessed to be a small corner of Ruth's corner in that time, but her book opens up a whole new world. It contains such insight and adventure that I had to put it down after reading a chapter or two in order to digest and think about what she was describing, before diving in again.
I remember asking Ruth once why she was so diligent about keeping her then-blog about the many cultural festivals in Toronto and she spoke of her early years facing racial prejudice against Asians. Her unshakeable faith and hope that people can communicate and reach understanding across cultural difference is truly a shining light for humanity - or maybe also just for one person in one corner.
Ruth would be the first to say she's not perfect, and her self-reflection in the book made me admire her strength of character even more. She questions her own assumptions and behavior, very honestly describing the painful chapters of her life as well as the joys.
I knew about some of her travels, but I had no idea of the breadth of her world exploration -- journeys that were physical, metaphysical and spiritual. Ruth has brightened many corners in addition to her own. This book inspires the reader to ask, "what am I doing to make the world a better place?" You should make the acquaintance of Ruth Lor Malloy through her book.
Read more
Report
Terrence L Malloy
5.0 out of 5 stars A worldly perspective, ahead of her time!Reviewed in the United States on 26 August 2023
Verified Purchase
The story of Ruth Lor Malloy's life is more then a wonderful read, it is an inspiring work of art. Following her journey as a courageous, adventurous youth in the 1950's through her life as a mother, there is a constant thread that keeps the reader engaged--her kindness. Ruth is a great example that kindness and compassion will lead to deep, fulfilling experiences. It will leave you asking yourself if you've done all that you can to brighten your own corner?
Report
Barry Dickie
5.0 out of 5 stars A Captivating MemoirReviewed in Canada on 4 July 2023
Verified Purchase
It’s not often that someone is able to reflect back so clearly over such a long and eventful life. For most of a century, Ruth Lor Malloy has been an active and effective advocate for social change. From her childhood in a small Chinese- Canadian community onwards, she has sought to right the wrongs of racial injustice and improve the lot if the poor, the oppressed and the marginalized - a mission and adventure taking her to far flung corners of the world.
Yet, for all the good works she’s been involved with, improving social conditions and raising awareness of different cultures, this book has its own enduring value as a record of a unique life, generous in its telling, personal and candid and unafraid. It was a pleasure to read.
One person found this helpfulReport
Mary Philbrook
5.0 out of 5 stars An inspiring life who searched for ways to connect people of different cultures.Reviewed in Canada on 18 July 2023
Verified Purchase
I loved reading a true story of a life led by a great desire to experience life to the fullest with the motivation to connect experiences and people! Loved the book from the beginning to the end.
From other countries
Beverly Keever
5.0 out of 5 stars AN INTIMATE GLIMPSSE OF CHINA'S REBIRTHReviewed in the United States on 14 August 2023
Verified Purchase
"Brighten My Corner" offers personalized views of a bygone Asia, but none more unique than the rebirth of China from the Cultural Revolution toward its becoming today's superpower.
Ruth Lor Malloiy, a second-generation Canadian Chinese, pulls off this feat by applying for and receiving a visa to visit China in 1965, seven years before the U.S. established diplomatic relations that allowed its citizens to visit.
Malloy arrived when China was at a tipping point. It was a year before the Cultural Revolution and just when the country was recovering from Mao Zedong's disastrous Great Leap Forward (1956-62) that herded millions into the countryside to transform an agrarian economy into an industrial one. Instead it stoked the Great Chinese Famine, in which an estimated 50 million starved to death in one of the deadliest man-made disasters in history.
For its recovery, Malloy found China eager to spark tourism by luring more overseas Chinese visitors. She was aided by the Overseas Chinese Commission, which supplied an interpreter but didn't pay all expenses.
She was getting what she describes as "the VIP treatment" as she was invited to dinner with then Premier Zhou En-Lai--along with 45 hundred other foreign guests but sitting so far away she could not see him.
Besides this dinner in the Great Hall of the People, Malloy also visited her relative in Guangzhou, a historic Cantonese maritime center. Her relative, Yuet Yuen, a doctor about the same age as Malloy, lived in a small room plus a kitchen with her husband and daughter in an old building. They shared one bathroom with about 10 other families. Malloy explains: "On my first look at her apartment, I almost wept with gratitude for having been born in Canada."
Before leaving the city, Malloy witnessed a sneak preview of Mao's Cultural Revolution: "a mass demonstration with thousands of workers and schoolchildren marching eight abreast in a street and shouting, 'Down with American imperialism,.'" She was "horror-stricken" when children in a nursery school repeated the same slogan and pointed their fingers as though shooting down American planes.
The next year Mao's Cultural Revolution began and lasted a decade. Like the schoolchildren Malloy had witnessed, Mao transformed them and millions of university students into Red Guards, exhorting them to attack old customs, traditions, ideas and habits. They roamed the country, destroying religious structures, ancestral tablets, terrifying elders, women with Western-styled hair or clothes and sometimes even their own parents. They staged court-like trials and executions. Thousands died. Cannibalism occurred in one province, the New York Times reported.
With the Revolution tapering off by 1973, Malloy returned eight years after her first visit and then wrote the first English-language guidebook to China, which was updated in a dozen editions. She visited China over the next 30 years or so to write or update dozens of guidebooks for five-star English-language publishers as China boosted tourism--until the 1989 Massacre of students at Tiananmen Square. Her last guidebook was published in 2000.
When she again visited her relatives' village, much had improved. One relative had a motorcycle and indoor toilet that replaced using the commune's outhouse. A superhighway was nearby. Another relative had built a four-story building with space to rent for a shop.
In Guangzhou anti-American sloganeering was gone. Her cousin, Yuen Yeut still lived in just one room but a second daughter had arrived and the two girls slept in a partitioned part of a hallway. Her cousin no longer wore curled hair, which Malloy knew the Red Guards had condemned. When she asked about the Cultural Revolution, Malloy was politely told it was none of her business. Two families were no longer talking to each other, leading Malloy to suspect they had snitched on each other to save themselves.
Over the years, many Chinese hotels had adopted Western standards and hired English-speaking interpreters. Chinese travel agencies were distributing glossy promotional handouts. Department stores sold better quality goods. Busses and taxis were beginning to clog the streets.
Besides China, Malloy visited other places of an Asia that no longer exists: Tibet before the Chinese government invaded, squelching local customs and religion or Kazakhstan, two years after it opted out of the Soviet Union and became a sovereign nation, the world's 9th largest. The Soviets, which had used the country to test the most explosive nuclear weapons in history, had left may Kazakhs penniless. An ex-KGB officer was peddling his own insignia in a market.
Driven to fight discrimination and injustices against the oppressed, Malloy helped write another book that was the highlight of her life: a guidebook in Mumbai to give respect to and to earn money for "Hijiras," transgender people much hated in India. Malloy's selflessness shines through to make her memoir as inspirational as it is engrossing.
.
Report
Solange De Santis
5.0 out of 5 stars Rich with color, insight and humanityReviewed in the United States on 6 September 2023
Verified Purchase
I've known Ruth Lor Malloy for - gad - more than 30 years and I remember once saying about her, "You know, Ruth goes to China like most of us change our socks." I've been blessed to be a small corner of Ruth's corner in that time, but her book opens up a whole new world. It contains such insight and adventure that I had to put it down after reading a chapter or two in order to digest and think about what she was describing, before diving in again.
I remember asking Ruth once why she was so diligent about keeping her then-blog about the many cultural festivals in Toronto and she spoke of her early years facing racial prejudice against Asians. Her unshakeable faith and hope that people can communicate and reach understanding across cultural difference is truly a shining light for humanity - or maybe also just for one person in one corner.
Ruth would be the first to say she's not perfect, and her self-reflection in the book made me admire her strength of character even more. She questions her own assumptions and behavior, very honestly describing the painful chapters of her life as well as the joys.
I knew about some of her travels, but I had no idea of the breadth of her world exploration -- journeys that were physical, metaphysical and spiritual. Ruth has brightened many corners in addition to her own. This book inspires the reader to ask, "what am I doing to make the world a better place?" You should make the acquaintance of Ruth Lor Malloy through her book.
Report
Terrence L Malloy
5.0 out of 5 stars A worldly perspective, ahead of her time!Reviewed in the United States on 26 August 2023
Verified Purchase
The story of Ruth Lor Malloy's life is more then a wonderful read, it is an inspiring work of art. Following her journey as a courageous, adventurous youth in the 1950's through her life as a mother, there is a constant thread that keeps the reader engaged--her kindness. Ruth is a great example that kindness and compassion will lead to deep, fulfilling experiences. It will leave you asking yourself if you've done all that you can to brighten your own corner?
Report
Barry Dickie
5.0 out of 5 stars A Captivating MemoirReviewed in Canada on 4 July 2023
Verified Purchase
It’s not often that someone is able to reflect back so clearly over such a long and eventful life. For most of a century, Ruth Lor Malloy has been an active and effective advocate for social change. From her childhood in a small Chinese- Canadian community onwards, she has sought to right the wrongs of racial injustice and improve the lot if the poor, the oppressed and the marginalized - a mission and adventure taking her to far flung corners of the world.
Yet, for all the good works she’s been involved with, improving social conditions and raising awareness of different cultures, this book has its own enduring value as a record of a unique life, generous in its telling, personal and candid and unafraid. It was a pleasure to read.
One person found this helpfulReport
Mary Philbrook
5.0 out of 5 stars An inspiring life who searched for ways to connect people of different cultures.Reviewed in Canada on 18 July 2023
Verified Purchase
I loved reading a true story of a life led by a great desire to experience life to the fullest with the motivation to connect experiences and people! Loved the book from the beginning to the end.
Report
Pamela Algar
5.0 out of 5 stars This is a book filled with adventure and spiritualityReviewed in Canada on 18 July 2023
Verified Purchase
Love, love, love this book by a remarkable, fearless traveller who brightened her corner more than most. Travel with Ruth Lor Malloy vicariously through this book. You won't want to put it down. - Pam H.
Report
Catherine A. George
5.0 out of 5 stars Making a differenceReviewed in Canada on 7 July 2023
Verified Purchase
A sense of fairness, equality, justice and empathy for the human race comes through in Ruth Lor Malloy’s 316-page memoir, which reflect a long life well spent. Through her writings, her crusades, accomplishments and struggles her story reminds us of our own responsibilities to all citizens of this world
Report
Michael
5.0 out of 5 stars FabulousReviewed in Canada on 31 July 2023
Verified Purchase
What a beautiful and insightful book.
Report
5.0 5.0 out of 5 stars 8 ratings
Top reviews from other countries
Beverly Keever
5.0 out of 5 stars AN INTIMATE GLIMPSSE OF CHINA'S REBIRTHReviewed in the United States on 14 August 2023
Verified Purchase
"Brighten My Corner" offers personalized views of a bygone Asia, but none more unique than the rebirth of China from the Cultural Revolution toward its becoming today's superpower.
Ruth Lor Malloiy, a second-generation Canadian Chinese, pulls off this feat by applying for and receiving a visa to visit China in 1965, seven years before the U.S. established diplomatic relations that allowed its citizens to visit.
Malloy arrived when China was at a tipping point. It was a year before the Cultural Revolution and just when the country was recovering from Mao Zedong's disastrous Great Leap Forward (1956-62) that herded millions into the countryside to transform an agrarian economy into an industrial one. Instead it stoked the Great Chinese Famine, in which an estimated 50 million starved to death in one of the deadliest man-made disasters in history.
For its recovery, Malloy found China eager to spark tourism by luring more overseas Chinese visitors. She was aided by the Overseas Chinese Commission, which supplied an interpreter but didn't pay all expenses.
She was getting what she describes as "the VIP treatment" as she was invited to dinner with then Premier Zhou En-Lai--along with 45 hundred other foreign guests but sitting so far away she could not see him.
Besides this dinner in the Great Hall of the People, Malloy also visited her relative in Guangzhou, a historic Cantonese maritime center. Her relative, Yuet Yuen, a doctor about the same age as Malloy, lived in a small room plus a kitchen with her husband and daughter in an old building. They shared one bathroom with about 10 other families. Malloy explains: "On my first look at her apartment, I almost wept with gratitude for having been born in Canada."
Before leaving the city, Malloy witnessed a sneak preview of Mao's Cultural Revolution: "a mass demonstration with thousands of workers and schoolchildren marching eight abreast in a street and shouting, 'Down with American imperialism,.'" She was "horror-stricken" when children in a nursery school repeated the same slogan and pointed their fingers as though shooting down American planes.
The next year Mao's Cultural Revolution began and lasted a decade. Like the schoolchildren Malloy had witnessed, Mao transformed them and millions of university students into Red Guards, exhorting them to attack old customs, traditions, ideas and habits. They roamed the country, destroying religious structures, ancestral tablets, terrifying elders, women with Western-styled hair or clothes and sometimes even their own parents. They staged court-like trials and executions. Thousands died. Cannibalism occurred in one province, the New York Times reported.
With the Revolution tapering off by 1973, Malloy returned eight years after her first visit and then wrote the first English-language guidebook to China, which was updated in a dozen editions. She visited China over the next 30 years or so to write or update dozens of guidebooks for five-star English-language publishers as China boosted tourism--until the 1989 Massacre of students at Tiananmen Square. Her last guidebook was published in 2000.
When she again visited her relatives' village, much had improved. One relative had a motorcycle and indoor toilet that replaced using the commune's outhouse. A superhighway was nearby. Another relative had built a four-story building with space to rent for a shop.
In Guangzhou anti-American sloganeering was gone. Her cousin, Yuen Yeut still lived in just one room but a second daughter had arrived and the two girls slept in a partitioned part of a hallway. Her cousin no longer wore curled hair, which Malloy knew the Red Guards had condemned. When she asked about the Cultural Revolution, Malloy was politely told it was none of her business. Two families were no longer talking to each other, leading Malloy to suspect they had snitched on each other to save themselves.
Over the years, many Chinese hotels had adopted Western standards and hired English-speaking interpreters. Chinese travel agencies were distributing glossy promotional handouts. Department stores sold better quality goods. Busses and taxis were beginning to clog the streets.
Besides China, Malloy visited other places of an Asia that no longer exists: Tibet before the Chinese government invaded, squelching local customs and religion or Kazakhstan, two years after it opted out of the Soviet Union and became a sovereign nation, the world's 9th largest. The Soviets, which had used the country to test the most explosive nuclear weapons in history, had left may Kazakhs penniless. An ex-KGB officer was peddling his own insignia in a market.
Driven to fight discrimination and injustices against the oppressed, Malloy helped write another book that was the highlight of her life: a guidebook in Mumbai to give respect to and to earn money for "Hijiras," transgender people much hated in India. Malloy's selflessness shines through to make her memoir as inspirational as it is engrossing.
.
Read more
Report
Solange De Santis
5.0 out of 5 stars Rich with color, insight and humanityReviewed in the United States on 6 September 2023
Verified Purchase
I've known Ruth Lor Malloy for - gad - more than 30 years and I remember once saying about her, "You know, Ruth goes to China like most of us change our socks." I've been blessed to be a small corner of Ruth's corner in that time, but her book opens up a whole new world. It contains such insight and adventure that I had to put it down after reading a chapter or two in order to digest and think about what she was describing, before diving in again.
I remember asking Ruth once why she was so diligent about keeping her then-blog about the many cultural festivals in Toronto and she spoke of her early years facing racial prejudice against Asians. Her unshakeable faith and hope that people can communicate and reach understanding across cultural difference is truly a shining light for humanity - or maybe also just for one person in one corner.
Ruth would be the first to say she's not perfect, and her self-reflection in the book made me admire her strength of character even more. She questions her own assumptions and behavior, very honestly describing the painful chapters of her life as well as the joys.
I knew about some of her travels, but I had no idea of the breadth of her world exploration -- journeys that were physical, metaphysical and spiritual. Ruth has brightened many corners in addition to her own. This book inspires the reader to ask, "what am I doing to make the world a better place?" You should make the acquaintance of Ruth Lor Malloy through her book.
Read more
Report
Terrence L Malloy
5.0 out of 5 stars A worldly perspective, ahead of her time!Reviewed in the United States on 26 August 2023
Verified Purchase
The story of Ruth Lor Malloy's life is more then a wonderful read, it is an inspiring work of art. Following her journey as a courageous, adventurous youth in the 1950's through her life as a mother, there is a constant thread that keeps the reader engaged--her kindness. Ruth is a great example that kindness and compassion will lead to deep, fulfilling experiences. It will leave you asking yourself if you've done all that you can to brighten your own corner?
Report
Barry Dickie
5.0 out of 5 stars A Captivating MemoirReviewed in Canada on 4 July 2023
Verified Purchase
It’s not often that someone is able to reflect back so clearly over such a long and eventful life. For most of a century, Ruth Lor Malloy has been an active and effective advocate for social change. From her childhood in a small Chinese- Canadian community onwards, she has sought to right the wrongs of racial injustice and improve the lot if the poor, the oppressed and the marginalized - a mission and adventure taking her to far flung corners of the world.
Yet, for all the good works she’s been involved with, improving social conditions and raising awareness of different cultures, this book has its own enduring value as a record of a unique life, generous in its telling, personal and candid and unafraid. It was a pleasure to read.
One person found this helpfulReport
Mary Philbrook
5.0 out of 5 stars An inspiring life who searched for ways to connect people of different cultures.Reviewed in Canada on 18 July 2023
Verified Purchase
I loved reading a true story of a life led by a great desire to experience life to the fullest with the motivation to connect experiences and people! Loved the book from the beginning to the end.
From other countries
Beverly Keever
5.0 out of 5 stars AN INTIMATE GLIMPSSE OF CHINA'S REBIRTHReviewed in the United States on 14 August 2023
Verified Purchase
"Brighten My Corner" offers personalized views of a bygone Asia, but none more unique than the rebirth of China from the Cultural Revolution toward its becoming today's superpower.
Ruth Lor Malloiy, a second-generation Canadian Chinese, pulls off this feat by applying for and receiving a visa to visit China in 1965, seven years before the U.S. established diplomatic relations that allowed its citizens to visit.
Malloy arrived when China was at a tipping point. It was a year before the Cultural Revolution and just when the country was recovering from Mao Zedong's disastrous Great Leap Forward (1956-62) that herded millions into the countryside to transform an agrarian economy into an industrial one. Instead it stoked the Great Chinese Famine, in which an estimated 50 million starved to death in one of the deadliest man-made disasters in history.
For its recovery, Malloy found China eager to spark tourism by luring more overseas Chinese visitors. She was aided by the Overseas Chinese Commission, which supplied an interpreter but didn't pay all expenses.
She was getting what she describes as "the VIP treatment" as she was invited to dinner with then Premier Zhou En-Lai--along with 45 hundred other foreign guests but sitting so far away she could not see him.
Besides this dinner in the Great Hall of the People, Malloy also visited her relative in Guangzhou, a historic Cantonese maritime center. Her relative, Yuet Yuen, a doctor about the same age as Malloy, lived in a small room plus a kitchen with her husband and daughter in an old building. They shared one bathroom with about 10 other families. Malloy explains: "On my first look at her apartment, I almost wept with gratitude for having been born in Canada."
Before leaving the city, Malloy witnessed a sneak preview of Mao's Cultural Revolution: "a mass demonstration with thousands of workers and schoolchildren marching eight abreast in a street and shouting, 'Down with American imperialism,.'" She was "horror-stricken" when children in a nursery school repeated the same slogan and pointed their fingers as though shooting down American planes.
The next year Mao's Cultural Revolution began and lasted a decade. Like the schoolchildren Malloy had witnessed, Mao transformed them and millions of university students into Red Guards, exhorting them to attack old customs, traditions, ideas and habits. They roamed the country, destroying religious structures, ancestral tablets, terrifying elders, women with Western-styled hair or clothes and sometimes even their own parents. They staged court-like trials and executions. Thousands died. Cannibalism occurred in one province, the New York Times reported.
With the Revolution tapering off by 1973, Malloy returned eight years after her first visit and then wrote the first English-language guidebook to China, which was updated in a dozen editions. She visited China over the next 30 years or so to write or update dozens of guidebooks for five-star English-language publishers as China boosted tourism--until the 1989 Massacre of students at Tiananmen Square. Her last guidebook was published in 2000.
When she again visited her relatives' village, much had improved. One relative had a motorcycle and indoor toilet that replaced using the commune's outhouse. A superhighway was nearby. Another relative had built a four-story building with space to rent for a shop.
In Guangzhou anti-American sloganeering was gone. Her cousin, Yuen Yeut still lived in just one room but a second daughter had arrived and the two girls slept in a partitioned part of a hallway. Her cousin no longer wore curled hair, which Malloy knew the Red Guards had condemned. When she asked about the Cultural Revolution, Malloy was politely told it was none of her business. Two families were no longer talking to each other, leading Malloy to suspect they had snitched on each other to save themselves.
Over the years, many Chinese hotels had adopted Western standards and hired English-speaking interpreters. Chinese travel agencies were distributing glossy promotional handouts. Department stores sold better quality goods. Busses and taxis were beginning to clog the streets.
Besides China, Malloy visited other places of an Asia that no longer exists: Tibet before the Chinese government invaded, squelching local customs and religion or Kazakhstan, two years after it opted out of the Soviet Union and became a sovereign nation, the world's 9th largest. The Soviets, which had used the country to test the most explosive nuclear weapons in history, had left may Kazakhs penniless. An ex-KGB officer was peddling his own insignia in a market.
Driven to fight discrimination and injustices against the oppressed, Malloy helped write another book that was the highlight of her life: a guidebook in Mumbai to give respect to and to earn money for "Hijiras," transgender people much hated in India. Malloy's selflessness shines through to make her memoir as inspirational as it is engrossing.
.
Report
Solange De Santis
5.0 out of 5 stars Rich with color, insight and humanityReviewed in the United States on 6 September 2023
Verified Purchase
I've known Ruth Lor Malloy for - gad - more than 30 years and I remember once saying about her, "You know, Ruth goes to China like most of us change our socks." I've been blessed to be a small corner of Ruth's corner in that time, but her book opens up a whole new world. It contains such insight and adventure that I had to put it down after reading a chapter or two in order to digest and think about what she was describing, before diving in again.
I remember asking Ruth once why she was so diligent about keeping her then-blog about the many cultural festivals in Toronto and she spoke of her early years facing racial prejudice against Asians. Her unshakeable faith and hope that people can communicate and reach understanding across cultural difference is truly a shining light for humanity - or maybe also just for one person in one corner.
Ruth would be the first to say she's not perfect, and her self-reflection in the book made me admire her strength of character even more. She questions her own assumptions and behavior, very honestly describing the painful chapters of her life as well as the joys.
I knew about some of her travels, but I had no idea of the breadth of her world exploration -- journeys that were physical, metaphysical and spiritual. Ruth has brightened many corners in addition to her own. This book inspires the reader to ask, "what am I doing to make the world a better place?" You should make the acquaintance of Ruth Lor Malloy through her book.
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Terrence L Malloy
5.0 out of 5 stars A worldly perspective, ahead of her time!Reviewed in the United States on 26 August 2023
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The story of Ruth Lor Malloy's life is more then a wonderful read, it is an inspiring work of art. Following her journey as a courageous, adventurous youth in the 1950's through her life as a mother, there is a constant thread that keeps the reader engaged--her kindness. Ruth is a great example that kindness and compassion will lead to deep, fulfilling experiences. It will leave you asking yourself if you've done all that you can to brighten your own corner?
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Barry Dickie
5.0 out of 5 stars A Captivating MemoirReviewed in Canada on 4 July 2023
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It’s not often that someone is able to reflect back so clearly over such a long and eventful life. For most of a century, Ruth Lor Malloy has been an active and effective advocate for social change. From her childhood in a small Chinese- Canadian community onwards, she has sought to right the wrongs of racial injustice and improve the lot if the poor, the oppressed and the marginalized - a mission and adventure taking her to far flung corners of the world.
Yet, for all the good works she’s been involved with, improving social conditions and raising awareness of different cultures, this book has its own enduring value as a record of a unique life, generous in its telling, personal and candid and unafraid. It was a pleasure to read.
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Mary Philbrook
5.0 out of 5 stars An inspiring life who searched for ways to connect people of different cultures.Reviewed in Canada on 18 July 2023
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I loved reading a true story of a life led by a great desire to experience life to the fullest with the motivation to connect experiences and people! Loved the book from the beginning to the end.
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Pamela Algar
5.0 out of 5 stars This is a book filled with adventure and spiritualityReviewed in Canada on 18 July 2023
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Love, love, love this book by a remarkable, fearless traveller who brightened her corner more than most. Travel with Ruth Lor Malloy vicariously through this book. You won't want to put it down. - Pam H.
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Catherine A. George
5.0 out of 5 stars Making a differenceReviewed in Canada on 7 July 2023
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A sense of fairness, equality, justice and empathy for the human race comes through in Ruth Lor Malloy’s 316-page memoir, which reflect a long life well spent. Through her writings, her crusades, accomplishments and struggles her story reminds us of our own responsibilities to all citizens of this world
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Michael
5.0 out of 5 stars FabulousReviewed in Canada on 31 July 2023
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What a beautiful and insightful book.
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