Discover The Strength of Water memoir, a powerful story of Chinese reverse immigration. Learn how one woman survived moving from 1920s Detroit to a rural Chinese village.
Episode Resources:
In this incredible interview, author Karin K. Jensen shares the astonishing true story behind The Strength of Water memoir, a book that details her mother’s unbelievable journey of perseverance. Born in America, her mother Helen was taken to a remote Chinese peasant village in the 1930s at just 11 years old. After surviving war, disease, and near-starvation, she fought her way back to the United States alone as a teenager. How does a person endure such immense hardship and not only survive, but build a life of strength and independence? This episode uncovers a story of resilience you won’t soon forget.
Join us as we explore the profound narrative of this unique memoir about a Chinese mother, as told by her daughter and author, Karin K. Jensen. We delve into the complex history that shaped this family’s destiny, starting with the paper sons and daughters history that allowed her grandfather to immigrate to the U.S. despite the Chinese Exclusion Act. Karin paints a vivid picture of her mother’s early life in a 1920s Detroit Chinese laundry, a world that was abruptly torn away. The conversation details the extreme culture shock Helen experienced in the reverse immigration story, moving from a modern American city to a Cantonese village with no electricity or modern medicine. We discuss the family dynamics with her new stepmother, the harrowing experience of contracting malaria and malnutrition, and being left for dead on a “death board.” Throughout the discussion of The Strength of Water memoir, Karin highlights the unwavering spirit that drove her mother to survive. The story follows Helen’s return to America, her work as a teen domestic in California, the pain of a difficult first marriage to a man with a gambling addiction, and her ultimate triumph in achieving financial independence and finding true partnership. This is more than just a Chinese reverse immigration story; it’s a testament to the power of a mother’s dream for a better life and the strength that can be found in the face of impossible odds.
About Our Guest:
Karin K. Jensen is the author of “The Strength of Water,” a powerful memoir written in the voice of her mother, Helen. By meticulously interviewing her mother, aunts, uncle, and other family members, Karin reconstructed a lost piece of Chinese-American history, capturing her mother’s incredible journey from an American-born child to a survivor of 1930s rural China and back again.
Transcript
Blaine DeSantis: Hi everybody, this is Blaine DeSantis, and I welcome you to Books and Looks, where we do a deep dive with authors to help you discover your next great read. Today we’re talking about the memoir, The Strength of Water. It’s about a Chinese lady’s, what I call, reverse immigration. She was born in America, lived here for 11 years. Her father took her back to live in this peasant village in China back in the 1930s. Four years later, she comes back to America, and she has to make her way. It is an amazing story of perseverance, overcoming obstacles, which we’re going to hear all about. And I’m going to tell you what, it is an uplifting story, an uplifting memoir I think you’re not going to want to miss. This is Books and Looks. Today we’re talking with Karin K. Jensen about her memoir, about her mother, I should say, The Strength of Water. Karin K. Jensen, welcome to Books and Looks.
Karin K. Jensen: Thank you so much, Blaine. Thank you for having me.
Blaine DeSantis: Well, I’m very happy to have you friends. This woman has written a spectacular memoir about her mother. I’m going to show you the book. It’s called The Strength of Water. And this is her mom’s picture on the front. It’s a lovely book. It’s a great book. It’s a spectacular memoir. Karin, the most striking thing about this book is that you write it in your mother’s voice. It’s as if I’m reading Helen talking to me, not you. How did you come about doing it like that?
Writing in a Mother’s Voice: Capturing Authenticity
Karin K. Jensen: I had been listening to my mother’s stories throughout my childhood, stories of growing up in her father’s Chinese laundry business in Detroit and later in a Cantonese village on the eve of the Sino-Japanese War and then surviving as a teen domestic worker and waitress in mid-century California. And I think the voices that we hear as a child or when we’re very young stick with us, how we might vividly remember something that happened long ago, even when we can’t remember what we ate for breakfast.
I interviewed my mother, her siblings, my siblings, and my dad, and considered writing from multiple points of view or in the third person. But when I started, I could hear my mother’s voice so clearly that I wrote from her viewpoint. The story blends her voice and mine, because although she was smart, she was not educated. So her English was often grammatically incorrect. But I believe I captured her sentiments and her views correctly, and she approved what I wrote. She read the draft.
Blaine DeSantis: All right. And I thought it was well done, very well done. And it brought this, I think it brought, as I said, a layer of authenticity to the book. You really felt this was your mom writing her autobiography. This is what I experienced. And so I thought that was extremely well done. I loved it. As a matter of fact, I kept looking at the beginning, reading this book, saying, wait a minute, who’s writing this book? I wasn’t sure at the beginning. It really was you. I thought it was your mother. She’s stuck in here somewhere. But it was very good.
Now, your mom has what I like to call a reverse immigrant story where she went from being born in America to being taken over this little peasant village in China, left there, and then eventually having to make her way back to America again. I’m sure it may have happened, but I never had anybody write a book about this. And so I was fascinated by this. And it all began with your great-grandfather and grandfather coming to America. How did that happen? Could you tell us, please?
The Journey to America: Understanding the “Paper Son” System
Karin K. Jensen: According to my mom, my great-grandfather had purchased a citizenship document from a man in his village who was returning to China to settle permanently. So this man had been a citizen. Then he came back to China, decided he wasn’t going to return anymore, and sold the document. A grandfather and him had the same last name because they came from the same village. They were from the same location. And so, essentially, my great-grandfather was assuming his identity. And then my grandfather came as a “citizen’s son.”
Both my great-grandfather and my grandfather were technically illegal immigrants. My mother was a native-born citizen, however. This was not an uncommon practice at that time. Sometimes Chinese men who were citizens would go back to China. They would claim that they had a child, and they would use that citizenship document for the child, either for their real child or they might sell it to someone else. And these were called paper sons or paper daughters.
Blaine DeSantis: Yes. Okay. Now, what year were we talking about when your great-grandfather came over? Do you know?
Karin K. Jensen: I don’t recall the exact year, but it was in the 19th century. In the late 19th century.
Blaine DeSantis: Okay. And this happened because I think they couldn’t come due to our immigration laws. I think they had to have this sort of, as you said, the paper son or paper daughter, and that’s how you could get over here.
Karin K. Jensen: Yes, there was a Chinese Exclusion Act that was in place, I believe, from the 1870s to 1943. Initially, when the Chinese came in the mid-19th century, they were welcomed. But as the economy declined in the 1870s, they became the scapegoat for why the economy was declining. This is a common theme, I suppose. And they passed a law saying that Chinese laborers could not come.
Blaine DeSantis: Not in Canada, though. The Canadians still were welcoming them, if I’m not mistaken, back then. Well, that’s interesting how they came over here, and then they bring your mother. Now, your mother is from this little town in Cantonese village. Is that correct? Was her family from there also?
Life in a 1920s Detroit Chinese Laundry
Karin K. Jensen: It was her father that was from the village. She was born in San Francisco. He had just gotten married. My grandfather had just gotten married and then brought his new bride to San Francisco. And a year later or less, she gave birth to my mother in San Francisco. And then shortly after that, this was the early 1920s. So the automobile industry was just starting to boom. And my grandfather decided to go to Detroit and open a Chinese laundry there to serve all of the factory workers.
Laundry back then was really quite a job. There were no dryers and washing machines were very rudimentary. They just sloshed the clothing around, but there was no spin cycle. So you had to wring the clothes out and then hang them up on a line. So people could actually make a decent living just doing laundry for other people.
Blaine DeSantis: Yeah, yeah. So she’s living in Detroit. How long did she live in Detroit before your dad took her back to China?
Karin K. Jensen: She was 11. So for about 10, 11 years when she left Detroit.
Blaine DeSantis: Okay. Wow. And she had four or five sisters and a brother at that time also who went with her back there to China?
Karin K. Jensen: Four sisters and her little brother. Yes. Six kids all together. Two still in diapers when they went back to China.
Blaine DeSantis: Wow. Well, for this book, you interviewed a lot of people. You talked to your mother, you talked to your sister, you talked to your aunts, you talked to your uncle. Was there a lot of discrepancy in their recollections of things?
Reconstructing the Past: Interviewing the Family
Karin K. Jensen: Nothing major, sometimes little discrepancies. And if there was, they would usually thresh it out between them. One might say, “Oh, yeah, I forgot about that,” or “Oh, is that what happened?” And if there was any discrepancy at the end, then I would go with the version of the story that the person the story was about would tell. If the story was about my mom, I would go with her version. Or if the story was about my aunt, I would go with her version.
Blaine DeSantis: Okay. Wow. When you came to them and said, hey, I want to do a book about mom, what did they say? Were they all in favor of that? Was that a unanimous thing?
Karin K. Jensen: Yeah. No, they were excited. Chinese aunties are the best. Your mom is the one who’s going to ask, “Why haven’t you done your homework? When are you getting married?” and all that sort of thing. But the aunties are always like, “Ah, Kimmy’s writing a book, so proud of you.” You can be 50 or 60 years old and they still have that kind of reaction. So they’re not responsible for you. So they just love you. And they’re lovely. They’re just wonderful.
Blaine DeSantis: Great. Now, are they all alive yet?
Karin K. Jensen: No, my mother is not with us anymore and my uncle is not. And one of my aunties. So there’s three remaining of the six.
Blaine DeSantis: Well, that’s great though. They’re still around and they can still bug you or love you or hug you, whatever they want to do. Yeah. That’s super, super.
Blaine DeSantis: Now, one of the best stories I loved about this is that your grandfather, who he was called Ba, B-A, did not believe in handouts. He didn’t believe about school, things like that. And all of a sudden, your sister ends up in school. How did she end up going to public school in America? That’s an interesting story.
Culture Clash: Education and Early Life in America
Karin K. Jensen: You mean my mother was in school?
Blaine DeSantis: Yeah, your mother. Yeah.
Karin K. Jensen: When he went to Detroit, at first he did not send his daughters to school. In China, you had to pay to go to school. There wasn’t public school at that time. And so poor families often did not send their daughters. And he just didn’t realize that he even could send them to school. And fortunately, thank goodness for my mom and her sisters, some local policemen saw my mom and auntie just playing in front of the laundry during a school day, and they confronted my grandfather and said, “Why aren’t these girls in school? They need to be in school.”
And my grandfather said, “Well, I don’t have money to pay for it.” And they explained, “It’s paid for by our taxes. And moreover, it’s the law. You have to send your daughters to school.” And so my mother at seven years old, for the first time, went to the local public school. She had to start in first grade, but that’s just how it was.
That was really her first time being exposed to American culture, despite the fact that they had been living in the U.S. At home, they only spoke Chinese, their friends were Chinese, so they were only speaking Chinese to their friends. And then suddenly she’s having to speak English and learn a lot about vocabulary really fast and getting exposed to American culture and customs like Valentine’s Day and Christmas and the school assembly and all of these things. Which really opened her world for her but also put her in conflict in a way with her father because he might admire American wealth but he didn’t necessarily admire American culture.
Blaine DeSantis: Yeah well she became quite immersed in American culture and that’s very good. She got so many different things she had American friends, as you said, she went to the American school. She learned English. But one of the things that haunts her throughout her early childhood is her mom’s bad health. Her mother had very bad health, if I’m not mistaken. And that had to affect your mom. It had to affect the whole family. Can you tell us a little bit about your grandmother’s health situation?
A Mother’s Dying Wish and the “Birth of Son Happiness”
Karin K. Jensen: Well, I have so much compassion for my grandmother because her hope and dream, in a way, was to be able to go back to China and bring a son. There was actually a term for it called the “birth of son happiness.” She felt like she did not have value until she had produced the heir. So she put all of that pressure on herself that was imposed on her culturally as well. And she kept having girls. So five girls plus two stillborn children before she finally had her son.
And then she died shortly after she had her son so she never got to go home and and share her birth of son happiness and put her son in her mother’s arms as she was dreaming of doing. And her dying wish to my mom was that mom look after her siblings. She said, “If your father doesn’t do right by you, don’t let yourselves get separated. Try to keep yourselves together and look out for each other and look after your brothers and sisters.” And that really made a huge impression on my mom. The other thing about my grandmother was she was actually higher born than my grandfather was. And so she had a kind of refinement about her that my mother always admired.
And so that was also part of my mom’s dream. She said, “Someday I want to be a lady like my mother. Someday I want to have a real home.” They lived in rooms behind the laundry and she saw other children getting to go home to real houses and she wanted that. And yet, instead of getting to progress with that, her mother died. And to keep the family together, her father decided to bring them all. He borrowed some money and then brought all of the children back to the village and left them there with a new stepmother. Well, he went back to the U.S. to work and pay down the debt and then to start earning money to try to bring the family back one or two at a time.
Blaine DeSantis: That’s awfully difficult. Awfully difficult. Now, here’s your mother immersed in the Chinese culture until age seven. Now she gets indoctrinated in American culture. And now she’s brought back to this little village in the middle of I don’t know where a Cantonese village in China. And it has to be a culture shock to your mother back and forth. And then all the other kids. And then we have a stepmother. How did that go about? Why did he get a stepmother back there? What happened?
Culture Shock in Reverse: Returning to a 1930s Cantonese Village
Karin K. Jensen: Well, he needed a partner to look after his children. And traditionally, you went through a matchmaker. So he just wrote ahead to his mother and said, “I’ve lost my wife and I’m going to come home. And can you arrange for me to have a new wife?” So she got the village matchmaker, who set up a couple of young ladies for him to consider. He chose the oldest one, who was only 21, thinking that he needed as much maturity as possible to look after six children.
And I have so much compassion also for my step-grandmother because she was tricked into that marriage. The matchmaker told her that he only had three children and then the children were kept away from the wedding. And then when she came home to meet the family, my auntie recalls that she literally held up a finger and pointed and started counting and going one, two, three, four, five, six and then started counting again because she couldn’t believe it. And yet, this could not be undone, she was married and that was it. And so she just had to start making the best of it that she could.
Blaine DeSantis: Did she expect to go back to America with him or did she realize that her place was going to be back in China raising these children?
Karin K. Jensen: The stepmother, she was hoping that at some point that she would get to join her husband. Yes, that was the goal. But it took many, many years before that happened for her.
Blaine DeSantis: How many years? So what year did your mom go to China?
Karin K. Jensen: 1935.
Blaine DeSantis: All right. Okay. And she was there for how many years?
Karin K. Jensen: Four years.
Blaine DeSantis: Four years. Wow. What a culture shock, wasn’t it? The village?
Karin K. Jensen: Absolutely. It’s interesting. I actually went to this village this last year with my auntie, who’s doing wonderfully. I had always wanted to see it. And when we met some very distant relatives, and introduced my auntie and said that she had lived there as a girl and young woman, they had heard of this story. It was still talked about like, “Oh, one of the girls who went to America.” And so it was kind of a culture shock on both sides.
If you can imagine that here’s a time before television and internet and everything happened, the people in this village had never seen women dressed in the American style. And when they arrived in their little fit and flair dresses with their 1930s bobbed hair, the whole village gathered around just to gawk at them and followed them all the way to their house and looked through the door and just wanted to watch them like they were a spectacle.
Blaine DeSantis: Wow. That’s interesting. I like some of the things that she had, some of the customs that she came to, one of which was, which you describe, I love it, is called `[Could not verify with context]`. At least I’m assuming that’s how you pronounce it. What is `[Could not verify with context]`?
Surviving Village Life: From Split-Crotch Clothes to Communal Outhouses
Karin K. Jensen: Well, you have to imagine that they stepped back a hundred years in progress. They had been living very poorly in Detroit in the rooms behind a laundry, but they had electricity and a telephone and plumbing, a toilet and access to health care if they needed it. There was none of this in the village. There was an outhouse, candles, communication by letter and old wives’ tales in place of health care. And so I really was curious, how does life work like that? We are so far removed from that kind of life. I’ve been camping, but this is well beyond camping. And I said, how do you take care of babies without diapers and without running water?
And they explained, well, they wore these little split crotch clothes and the moms would be just carrying them, strapped to them. And then somehow the moms would know when they needed to go. And then they would take them out and just hold up their legs. And the child would pee or poop. And then, this was also something I did not know, that dogs will eat poop. I didn’t know this. And so they would just call the pet dog to come and clean up this mess. And they would say, `[Could not verify with context]`. That was like, I don’t know the literal translation, but it was essentially come and clean up the doodoo. The dogs would come. And sometimes they would let the dog lick the baby’s bottom to wipe it clean. I know from a modern perspective this just sounds horrifying and but when you think about practically speaking how did you handle this sort of thing when there just were not modern supplies. And so there were so many fascinating details about this life from the past, from the distant past.
Blaine DeSantis: Yeah. It is fascinating. And as I said, your mom and her siblings were treated one way, they only had so much money to buy food and so they were always rationing it seemed like and everybody was always hungry. And that was another problem they had getting the food or getting water was difficult over there at that time. Then your step-grandmother had a baby, and things started to change in how she related to your mother and the other kids. Can you explain that to us, please?
Karin K. Jensen: She was subtly or not so subtly favoring her own daughter. For instance, if they slaughtered a duck, there was sort of a hierarchy of distributing the food. She would take a piece for herself. And for her daughter, she would give one to the grandmother, and then she would cut up six smaller portions and then sort of put that out. And then my mother, as the eldest daughter, would get first pick and so on. Theoretically, her daughter was really the youngest, but yet she was getting the first pick of the food.
Blaine DeSantis: Right.
Karin K. Jensen: Yes.
Blaine DeSantis: So was it basically a diet of rice that your mother had when she was over there? Was that her main staple of foods, rice?
Karin K. Jensen: Rice and vegetables. They had a thriving vegetable garden. And in fact, when I went back to the village last year, you could still see every little patch of soil that could be grown on, they were growing green vegetables. And it was really thriving. This was a tropical atmosphere, so green plants grow fast. And occasionally a little bit of meat, but meat was expensive.
Blaine DeSantis: Mm-hmm. Okay. Well, now, and again, we go back to a time there were no, I guess, probably dirt roads back there at the time. They were not modern housing. Did they have a communal latrine, if I’m not mistaken, or did people have their own, outdoor outhouses?
Karin K. Jensen: There was a communal large outhouse. And I thought it was interesting how she described the way it was used. You would come up to the door and rather than knocking, as we might, you would clear your throat. You go, “ah-hem,” and then if the person inside also said, “ah-hem,” then you knew that you weren’t supposed to go in. And if you didn’t hear that response, then you would go in.
Blaine DeSantis: Free to go in. Okay. Wow. Well, now, your mother gets extremely ill, extremely ill. What illness had your mom contracted over in China?
Illness and Survival: A Brush with Death in Rural China
Karin K. Jensen: So it started first with malaria. And malaria is a horrible disease with reoccurring bouts of fever. And there was no medicine and no really medical knowledge. So she was getting very ill and her stepmother tried all sorts of superstitious, quote unquote, cures, which at best did no harm and at worst actually made her worse.
And so she started developing malnutrition. In a sort of misguided idea of purifying her or something like that, she was denying her adequate water and adequate nutrition. And her sister was literally keeping her alive by sneaking her water, or else she would have just died of dehydration, I think. You mentioned the death board. In families there, the family has a board that is a ceremonial board. So when someone passes away, the body is put on the board, ritual cleaning is done there, and then the body is also displayed on that board for viewing before the burial.
And at some point, her stepmother actually gave up on her, just thought she’s about to die, and actually laid her out on the death board. And my mom was doing everything to try to keep up her spirits. She kept saying to herself, “Someday I’m going to get back to the U.S. and I’m going to eat bread and butter.” And she just was trying to believe in herself, even though her own stepmother had sort of given up on her.
Blaine DeSantis: Right, right. And there’s so much more in China. But, I got to move. We got to move your mom back to America now. All of a sudden, money comes for your mother, just your mother to come back to America. And that had to affect your aunts and uncle. Did they feel in any way upset by this when you spoke to them about that?
Karin K. Jensen: I actually never asked them specifically, “Were you jealous that my mom got to go first?” I know that after my mom arrived and once she got on her feet and she started sending photos back of herself, my aunt said that she just treasured those photos because she said, “This is the hope and the dream of what I can do if I can get back there.” And so they were kind of clinging to the idea like, well, one of us has made it. Hopefully the rest of us will also get to go.
Blaine DeSantis: All right. And so your mom gets her ticket to come over to America. It’s what, in 1939 or 40? What year would that be?
Karin K. Jensen: 1939, yes.
Blaine DeSantis: 1939. And she’s having all sorts of problems with this money. She has the money, but she can’t get a ticket or something. And she meets a gentleman, very nice gentleman, by the name of `[Could not verify with context]`, an English gentleman. Explain that story to us, please.
The Kindness of Strangers: Securing a Passage Back to America
Karin K. Jensen: Can any of us imagine sending our 16-year-old to a foreign country? And this is in the middle of the Sino-Japanese War. So she’s going down the Pearl River. There’s the Japanese zero planes flying overhead, but she manages to make it to Hong Kong and connect with her uncle there. And her uncle brings her to the ship’s ticket office and the clerk says, “Oh, sorry, no tickets today. Come back another day.” And of course, they’re really surprised and her uncle is just a young man and he says, “Okay, well, `[Could not verify with context]`, that was her Chinese name, I guess we’ll have to come back.” So everyone goes off to work and to occupy herself, she just sat on the front stairs to look at the street. This was a busy street.
And it so happened there was this Englishman, `[Could not verify with context]`, who was surveying the street, and he was there with his translator. And I guess she was a cute kid, and he said to his translator, “Go say hello and ask her what her name is.” And she heard him, and she said, “My name is Helen.” And he was so surprised that she could speak English. And so I struck up conversation and learned that she was actually American and that she was looking forward to going home. And he was very, very moved by her story and he wished her well. And then a few days later came back and there she is still sitting on the front porch. And he said, “Why haven’t you gone? There was a ship that left yesterday.” And she said, “Oh, they say there’s no more tickets left.” And he went, hmm.
And he said, “I want to go with your uncle and you to the ticket office.” So the next day, he and uncle and my mom went to the ticket’s office. He took their money and he said, “I want to buy a ticket for this young lady to travel in steerage class to go to San Francisco.” And they sold him a ticket right away. And so they realized that the clerk was perhaps waiting for a tip or a bribe or something, but he wasn’t going to play around with an Englishman because England ruled Hong Kong as a colony at that time. And it’s one of these kind of wonderful stories where someone just showing a little care and kindness and going out of their way made this huge difference in her life because who knows if she would have been able to get out of there otherwise. So I find it inspiring, actually.
Blaine DeSantis: And she never saw them again. Never saw them again.
Karin K. Jensen: She never saw them again, but they actually maintain a short-term correspondence. After she got to the United States, he wrote to her and actually sent her some photos of himself. There’s one photo in the book of him from 1940, and he just was concerned about how she was doing and wrote to her and talked a little bit about his life.
Blaine DeSantis: That’s super. That’s super. The kindness of strangers, friends. The kindness of strangers. Well, she gets over to America, and now she eventually sees her father. We won’t get into that whole thing, but he says, you have to pay me your ticket fare back. You have to give me your boat fare back. She was sort of shocked by that, wasn’t she?
An Industrious Spirit: Rebuilding a Life in California
Karin K. Jensen: A little bit. But you have to understand that traditionally, children in Chinese culture support their aging parents. There wasn’t social security. There was just your kids. And so usually it fell upon the sons to chip in to support their parents. But sometimes daughters, if they were earning money, would also contribute. And her father was complaining to her aunt, “She’s started working and she hasn’t sent me one penny.” And her aunt, knowing how little she was earning and that she was barely supporting herself, was trying to head him off from going down that path of considering her to be permanently indebted to him.
And she said, “She’s earning so little. She’s barely getting along. What if she just repaid her ship fare to you? Would that be good enough?” And he said, “Well, yes, that would be good. And then I can start bringing the next child over.” And so she brokered that deal in a way between her father and herself. And so she did it a little at a time, $10 a month, whatever she could afford. She repaid her ship fare.
Blaine DeSantis: Okay. And that began the process of here comes one, here comes the back and forth, back and forth. And they all eventually got here, including the step wife and her daughter, her son. Did your step grandmother have a daughter or a son? I forgot.
Karin K. Jensen: A daughter and then a son.
Blaine DeSantis: Okay. All right. They all make it back eventually, but they’re not all in the same area. Did your grandfather stay in Detroit?
Karin K. Jensen: No, my grandfather was in San Francisco, but at that time he was living with other laborers, other men sharing a little apartment together. And so he didn’t feel that he had the proper space to receive my mother. So he had her staying with her aunts when she first arrived.
Blaine DeSantis: Your mother is industrious to a fault. She worked so many jobs, two jobs, three jobs, everything. Split shifts. She would amaze me. Friends, when you read this book, what this woman went through was utterly amazing. Eventually, we’re not going to get into all of this, but eventually she ends up being asked by one of the people at the restaurant to marry her. One of the patrons of the restaurant eventually asked her to marry her. Well, that didn’t turn out so well, did it?
Trapped in a Difficult Marriage and the Hidden Cost of “Settling Down”
Karin K. Jensen: No, it did not. The sad irony is that at 20 years old, she was actually starting to do okay. She had found a share rental situation where she liked the people and she had got a better waitress job where she was able to save just a little bit of money. And yet her aunt was saying, “Well, but it’s time for you to find a nest now. Time for you to get married and settle down so I’ll feel like you’re settled in life.” And because she loved her auntie, she said, “I absorbed this into my heart.”
And when her boyfriend at the time asked her to marry, she said yes. But she didn’t realize that her beau was hiding from her an addiction that he had to gambling. She didn’t learn that until they were married. And so pretty soon her life becomes really unhappy. And yet she didn’t feel free to divorce because particularly in Asian culture, but even in American culture at that time, divorce was a disgrace leading to social isolation and censure for women. And she thought she would just be further isolated if she divorced. And so she really, for so long, felt trapped in this marriage.
Blaine DeSantis: And yet she started saving, if I’m not mistaken. She started, this is where she became, I’m going to save some money for myself, for my daughter at the time, your sister. And eventually, because his family really liked your mom. His family seemed to really like your mother at that time, but they all made excuses for him. But finally, enough was enough. How long were they together before she divorced?
Karin K. Jensen: She was in that marriage for 16 years, actually. And as you mentioned, she was slowly building this nest egg and then was able to get a house. And later on, I think this was actually after she divorced, she got an income property. I like the way you put it, industrious to a fault, because I feel like her dream of home and dream of a stable life really kept her going and gave her a purpose to keep working. And at the same time, it was exhausting her and causing her, in a way, to not spend enough time with Stephanie.
Blaine DeSantis: Who was a smart child, a good child, and yet you and she were of different fathers, and she had a completely different childhood experience than you do. Was there any jealousy that little sister `[Could not verify with context]` had an easier life than maybe she did?
Karin K. Jensen: I don’t think it was jealousy. I think there was a sadness. She was happy for our mom’s eventual success. And she always loved and honored mom. She would send cards and call and visit. But she has expressed sadness that by the time that I came along, mom was in a stable relationship, financially more comfortable and could more relax and enjoy being a mom. Whereas during her childhood, mom was just working, working, working, trying to lift them out of poverty. And she just didn’t have that close relationship with her that I had been able to enjoy.
Blaine DeSantis: When your sister might come home from school, mom was working. And that’s one of these things on the weekends she might be working. And it’s difficult. And so your mother eventually divorces her Chinese husband and marries an American gentleman. I think it was a teacher, if I’m not mistaken. And life changes. Life changes. She loves it. She loves him. Friends, when you see what this lady has done with her life, it is utterly amazing. Investing in properties, financial things. What was that development that she and your grandfather, they bought some land on the coast of California. It was like an experimental community or something?
Building Financial Independence and Finding True Partnership
Karin K. Jensen: Yeah, it’s called The Sea Ranch. And it’s a kind of non-traditional resort area. It’s mostly vacation homes. But if you want the sort of classic Northern California experience with the empty windswept beaches and the rocky shorelines and things like that, that’s your place.
Blaine DeSantis: Yeah. And she didn’t buy one. She bought two places there if I’m not mistaken or two lots. And then she starts traveling and she’s traveling too, friends. This woman did such an amazing job. When you see Detroit to China back to America, doing this, working like a dog, now she’s traveling. This is just and having two wonderful girls, this wonderful woman, this wonderful author here, her daughter, tremendous stuff. Absolutely tremendous. And I tell you I really admire your mother. What do you think your mom would say about this? What do you think your mom would say about the book? Or did she tell you when she read the draft? Did she tell you what she really felt? Did you capture her?
Karin K. Jensen: It was interesting because she never saw the final book, but she read the rough draft. And she just said, “Oh, gee, thank you for writing down these stories. Who else would care about this?” And I said, “Oh, Mom, these stories are fascinating. I do think that people will care. This is a slice of history that is now gone, and I just want to capture it.”
Blaine DeSantis: That’s right.
Karin K. Jensen: So, she was glad to have me write it down, but she didn’t realize what it could become.
Blaine DeSantis: Well, I hope it becomes a bestseller. I hope it becomes number one, because it’s a great memoir. One of the things, the title, The Strength of Water, now that comes from a, I think it’s perhaps Lao Tzu proverb. Was that always what you intended this to be the title?
The Strength of Water: Uncovering the Memoir’s Title
Karin K. Jensen: No, I did not come up with that title until I was done with the manuscript. The whole time I was writing, I kept thinking, a title will come to me, and it never did. And so when I finished, I started going page by page, looking for something to jump out at me. And then there was this sentence, and it was in a not a very huge story, but she says, “I had this strength of water which flows through cracks and low places and yet carves through mountains.” And I said, “That’s it. That’s the title, The Strength of Water.” And there’s so many water elements also. There’s crossing oceans and the water that’s in the rice paddies of China and her sister feeding her water so that she could live in the village.
Blaine DeSantis: Yeah. Spectacular. Now, what’s next for Karin K. Jensen? Are you writing a new book? Are you writing another book? You’re going to write about yourself, maybe, your life growing up? What do you have coming up that we can look forward to?
What’s Next? Adapting “The Strength of Water” for the Screen
Karin K. Jensen: Well, I have an older daughter who is a student at the Academy of Art in San Francisco, and she was interested in turning this into a graphic novel. And I said, “What would I need to do to support you to do that?” And she said, “If you could write this as a screenplay, which is very dialogue and visual oriented, that would be a nice script for me to create a graphic novel.” So I have signed up for a UCLA extension class in screenwriting, and I’m starting to learn how that works. I’ve never done a screenplay. So that’s the project that I’m working on right now.
Blaine DeSantis: Do you think this will ever get turned into a movie? Do you think it’ll get turned into a movie?
Karin K. Jensen: I can dream. I met in my screenwriting class a Chinese-American woman who does animation, and she has done the most beautiful short animation that is a Chinese-American story. And I saw that and I thought, wow, I don’t know if I could make it happen for it to be like an epic Spielberg kind of film, but it’d be interesting to explore it possibly as an animation, because that’s very versatile.
Blaine DeSantis: I think it’d be wonderful as one of those one-year miniseries I see. I watch all those limited series, eight episodes, and that’s it. I think that’d be wonderful. Your mom’s life segments into so easy chapters. I could easily see a certain series episode one on this. It’s very simple to do it. You just got to do it now. So I’m behind you 100%. So we hope to see it one of our days. All right. Very good.
Karin K. Jensen: Thank you.
Blaine DeSantis: Thank you. Karin K. Jensen, I’ve kept you way too long, but I want to just say thank you so very much for both sharing your mother’s story and for being with us here on Books and Looks.
Karin K. Jensen: Thank you so much. I really appreciate this opportunity.
Blaine DeSantis: Karin, thank you so much for spending time with us to talk about your mother and her life and the fact that you were able to write this memoir in her voice. It is a very powerful book. I think friends are going to really enjoy this. If you get a chance, you want to get it. It’s called The Strength of Water. Thank you for joining us and letting us explore books with you each and every week. On behalf of all of us here at Books and Looks, as well as our friends at BookTrib.com, this is Blaine DeSantis saying may all your leaves be pages in a book.
