Do Not Say We Have Nothing

Marie is the “high achieving” narrator of this multi-generational tale (9). She is endlessly curious, saying, “I yearned to understand everything” (50). Furious over her father’s disappearance and suicide, and her mother’s death, she constantly searches for the meaning behind her father’s actions. She and grows into “a solitary young woman” (147), determined to bury herself in numbers and wanting to be, in G.H. Hardy’s words, “the most austere and the most remote” (192). Eventually, she reached out to people her father knew and started making new connections instead of isolating herself. 

Ma is Marie’s mother. Strong and known for “her loyalty, pragmatism, and quickness to laughter” (149), she loves Marie but has a hard time expressing her emotions. She eventually died of cancer but allowed herself to be a bit more intimate with Marie before her death.

Ai-Ming is the impressionable, intelligent daughter of Ling and Sparrow. As a child, she was curious and somewhat lonely since Ling had to live and work elsewhere by government decree. When she became attracted to the beautiful Yiwen, Ai-Ming decided to join the student protests, if for no other reason than for her crush to accept her. This plan backfired—Ai-Ming had to flee the country, forcing her to move to Canada with two strangers, Marie and her mother.

When Marie met Ai-Ming, Ai-Ming was a teen full of fear, dignity, and intelligence. She was beautiful and still a little rebellious. Because she is more “more impulsive, less patient” than her father, Ai-Ming disappears without a trace at the end of the novel, instead of making her mark like she had wanted to (331).

Big Mother Knife, the family matriarch, has “delicate hands and wrestler’s shoulders” (36), and sings with a “sonorous” voice that got her through what her maternal drive didn’t (36). A lifelong survivor and storyteller known for being aggressive and stubborn (59), she did everything she could to help her family, rescuing Swirl, Ba Lute, and Sparrow at various times. They were all dependent on her, having “no clue how to live without me” (151). In her later years, she becomes more decrepit and less physically capable, but emotionally she always seems to know what to say and do. 

Sparrow is Big Mother Knife’s oldest son. From an early age, he has an all-consuming passion and talent for music. He thinks of himself as “soft, flimsy, and inessential,” a shadow of his imposing father (119). He never felt good enough, “starv[ing] himself of joy” (124). A hard worker who “worked on his compositions eighteen hours a day” (127), he was lauded for his work ethic and for his talent; Jiang Kai believes Sparrow is “the only one I know whose attachment to music is completely pure” (223).

Later in life, he is known as the “Bird of Quiet” (313). As a father and husband, he is distant, forever crippled by his love for Jiang Kai and for composing. 

Ba Lute is Big Mother Knife’s husband who is “heft(y),” aggressive and obsessed with war (119). He is so concerned with his political objectives that he sometimes neglects his family. Later in life, the Party turns on him and Ba Lute loses his spark. As the book ends, however, Ba Lute seems to be in a resigned state of delirium, happy just to be with Big Mother Knife again.

The “beautiful” sister of Big Mother Knife, Swirl marries Wen the Dreamer after a long courtship that centers on The Book of Records, a mysterious unfinished manuscript (150). During the Cultural Revolution, Swirl’s daughter Zhuli accidentally reveals some of Wen’s ancestors’ prized belongings, so Wen and Swirl are sent to a series of re-education camps. Swirl is starved, beaten, and cut off from her family.

When she finally returns home, she is mostly dead inside and “sickly pale” (190). She feels so little connection to her daughter that she quickly abandons Zhuli to seek the fugitive Wen the Dreamer.

A “wispy,” wily, and peaceful poet, Wen is delicate but grows stronger with Swirl’s love (44). Like Swirl, he is wrongfully accused of counter-revolutionary activity and sent into a re-education camp. Inside the camp, he goes to great lengths to survive and eventually escapes. Afterwards, he lives a dangerous life as a fugitive from the law, but eventually reunites with his family. 

Zhuli is Swirl and Wen’s only daughter, “a joyful and free creature” (115). She accidentally causes her parents to be brutalized, arrested, and sent away during the upheaval of the Cultural Revolution. Retreating into her music and her violin playing, Zhuli is unable to fully recover. Eventually, the pressure of life as an intellectual in a society always looking for its next victim crushes her spirit, and she commits suicide. 

Ling is a philosophy student with “an almond scent” who is part of Jiang Kai’s study group (394). She and Sparrow get married after being assigned to the same province. Once they have a child, however, Ling is sent away for many years. When she finally returns home, Ai-Ming finds her to be “unfailingly elegant,” but “a stranger in her own house” (349). Everyone who meets her finds that she exudes “confidence and goodness” as well as a “courageous” spirit (378; 416)