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SHORTLISTED FOR THE COSTA FIRST NOVEL AWARD I was just a boy when I come to Jamaica. Kingston, 1938. Fourteen-year-old Yang Pao steps off the ship from China with his mother and brother, after his father has died fighting for the revolution. They are to live with Zhang, the 'godfather' of Chinatown, who mesmerises Pao with stories of glorious Chinese socialism on one hand, and the reality of his protection business on the other. When Pao takes over the family's affairs he becomes a powerful man. He sets his sights on marrying well, but when Gloria Campbell, a black prostitute, comes to him for help he is drawn to her beauty and strength. They begin a relationship that continues even after Pao marries Fay Wong, the 'acceptable' but headstrong daughter of a wealthy Chinese merchant. As the political violence escalates in the 1960s the lines between Pao's socialist ideals and private ambitions become blurred. Jamaica is transforming, the tides of change are rising, and the one-time boss of Chinatown finds himself cast adrift. Richly imagined and utterly captivating, Pao is a dazzling tale of race, class and colour, love and ambition, and a country at a historical crossroads.… (altro)
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I picked this up in my local Waterstones based on the fact that it had been shortlisted for the Costa first novel award. It's not a book I would have considered reading otherwise but the nomination caught my eye and the subject matter sounded interesting.

I came to it full of hope and interest in it but found after a while that it just didn't grab me in the way I hoped. My first major bug-bear is the way Young writes using the accents quite often. After a while I found this quite irritating and in certain parts of the book it was hard to follow. Apart from that I just found it to be a bit flat. The story as a whole was ok but apart from Pao I didn't really feel involved with any of the characters.

The big redeeming feature of the book for me was the tie in with Jamaican history. The changing face of the country was well portrayed albeit from just one point of view. The Sun Tzu quotes fit in with the story well but can get a little tiresome after a while. There was little descriptive detail to the characters and setting to really grab me although that may well be down to the style in which is was written from Pao's point of view.

I really thought that this would be a quick read for me but somehow it just wasn't. I didn't hate it, there were some parts that I liked but all in all I found this a disappointing book. ( )
  Brian. | Jun 19, 2021 |
Questa recensione è stata scritta per Recensori in anteprima di LibraryThing.
I snagged this book last year as a LTER. I attempted to read it when I first got it, but wasn't engaged and had to put it down. This attempt was successful, however. I found the dynamic between cultures interesting: Jamaican vs Chinese, arranged marriage vs brothel mistress, tradition vs politics, hard work vs power. At times the novel seemed to drag with mob-like activities and historical information. Overall, I thought it was an okay book, but at times I did enjoy the reading experience. ( )
  lyzrdpye | Oct 18, 2012 |
This was another serendipitous find - having finished the book I was reading and not having my Kindle to hand i needed something to read on the journey home, and picked this up by chance as it was on special offer in Waterston'es at Trafalgar Square.
It proved to be an intriguing debut novel from Kerry Young following the life of Philip "Pao" Yang who at the age of 14 flees from China in 1938 following his father's death. He and his mother come to live with his "uncle" Zhang who has already established a robust protection network within the burgeoning Chinese community in Kingston, Jamaica. Zhang is a committed adherent of Mao Zedong, and brings the young Pao up to believe in the necessity to display social responsibility, though this guidance is bolstered with immersion in the teachings of Sun Tzu.
Pao grows up learning the ropes of protection, benefiting from the steady source of income but never forgetting the responsibility to help his "clients" when necessary. He falls in love with Gloria, a beautiful prostitute, though he marries Fay Wong, daughter of another senior figure within the Chinese community.
The novel gives an interesting insight into Jamaican history (a subject about which I knew precisely nothing). Pao, despite his criminal activities, is essentially a very sympathetic character, and he takes great care of all of the people with whom he has any extended dealings.
Very different to my normal reading material, but very enjoyable, too. ( )
  Eyejaybee | Jun 9, 2012 |
Questa recensione è stata scritta per Recensori in anteprima di LibraryThing.
I tried to read this one, I really did, but I just couldn't get into it. I've been holding onto it for months in hopes that the next time I pick it up I will find it more interesting. After several failed attempts I am calling it quits.
  akreese | Mar 27, 2012 |
Questa recensione è stata scritta per Recensori in anteprima di LibraryThing.
I was so thrilled to learn I had snagged this in the Early Reviewers program!!!..in fact, I had never been so thrilled to snag one before!!! I wish I could say that Pao was as awesome a read as I thought it would be!!

I was immediately dismayed to discover that this was written in the vernacular, Pao's words on the page "sounding" like they would if he were speaking to me in person, Jamaican accent and all. Normally this drives me craaaaaaaazy, but I didn't find it too distracting in Pao, thankfully...though I don't know if it really added as much to the experience as the author obviously intended, either.

As for Pao himself, in order for me to really get emotionally invested in a book (and thus, get full enjoyment out of my reading experience) I usually have to engage with the main character, and I just didn't get that connection with Pao. The experience left me feeling like I was simply reading about someone's life.

As other reviewers mentioned, the depiction of Jamaica from a Chinese immigrant point of view was interesting and unique, and I feel like I learned a lot about that experience from this novel, especially given that Jamaica = beach vacay to me! :-) I just feel that, if the novel had only covered a few years of Pao's life perhaps, it could've been a much richer...deeper?..more engaging story. As it were, it tried to cover too much, too long a time period, in too short a novel. ( )
  tsaj | Jan 27, 2012 |
Young settles mostly for observation and head-scratching quizzicality rather than outright dogma and rhetoric, so her themes slip under your skin rather than slap you in the face. All this, and with an island charm to its colour and language, Pao is compelling, and unlike anything I've read in a long while.
 
The complexity of Jamaican society in Pao is fascinating and bewildering, not only racially but on the religious level too.
aggiunto da lkernagh | modificaThe Guardian, Stevie Davies (Sep 23, 2011)
 
Young, the daughter of a Chinese father and a mother of mixed Chinese-African heritage, came to Britain in 1965 at the age of 10. Pao, her zingy first novel, lovingly recreates the Jamaican-Chinese world of her childhood, with its betting parlours, laundries, fortune-telling shops, supermarkets and (business being a hard game in Jamaica) gang warfare.

Along the way, Young provides a micro-history of Jamaica from its independence in 1962 to the present day. In 1965, dreadfully, Chinese properties were set ablaze in Kingston and the owners even "chopped" with machetes.

Poignantly, Pao celebrates a vanished world. Jamaica's Chinatown disappeared when Kingston railway station closed in the early 1990s. Few Chinese businesses operate there now; the old shops are boarded up or else serve as crack dens. Pao, meanwhile, confirms Young as a gifted new writer. Her novel is a blindingly good read in parts, both for its mesmeric story-telling and the quality of its prose.
aggiunto da kidzdoc | modificaThe Observer, Ian Thompson (Jul 3, 2011)
 
Kerry Young's energetic debut novel is a pacy but absorbing saga of domestic struggle and gangland manoeuvring set against the violent backdrop of postwar Jamaican politics.

The plot revolves around the fortunes of the family that controls Kingston's Chinatown, and seems to have absorbed plenty of colour and texture from Young's own mixed-heritage upbringing in Kingston.
 
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People 'make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past'.

Karl Marx
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For my father, Alfred Anthony Young (1924-69).

My mother, Joyce Young.

And Jamaica, land we love.
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Me and the boys was sitting in the shop talking 'bout how good business was and how we need to go hire up some help and that is when she show up.
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The other thing that strike me 'bout the way Jamaica changing is how everybody start talking 'bout Africa. Is like we 'Out of Many', but the 'One People' seem to be just the Africans. Is Africa this and Africa that. Marcus Garvey and Haile Selassie. And ever since the world discover Bob Marley, everything turn to Rasta and reggae. It like they think the only true Jamaican is a African. Like they forget that the original Jamaican was the Arawak Indian and after the Spanish and the British get through murdering all of them we was all imports. Every last one of us. But it no matter, all I see and hear everyday now is how we got to get back to Africa.
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SHORTLISTED FOR THE COSTA FIRST NOVEL AWARD I was just a boy when I come to Jamaica. Kingston, 1938. Fourteen-year-old Yang Pao steps off the ship from China with his mother and brother, after his father has died fighting for the revolution. They are to live with Zhang, the 'godfather' of Chinatown, who mesmerises Pao with stories of glorious Chinese socialism on one hand, and the reality of his protection business on the other. When Pao takes over the family's affairs he becomes a powerful man. He sets his sights on marrying well, but when Gloria Campbell, a black prostitute, comes to him for help he is drawn to her beauty and strength. They begin a relationship that continues even after Pao marries Fay Wong, the 'acceptable' but headstrong daughter of a wealthy Chinese merchant. As the political violence escalates in the 1960s the lines between Pao's socialist ideals and private ambitions become blurred. Jamaica is transforming, the tides of change are rising, and the one-time boss of Chinatown finds himself cast adrift. Richly imagined and utterly captivating, Pao is a dazzling tale of race, class and colour, love and ambition, and a country at a historical crossroads.

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