The Strength of Water

This book has everything I want from a memoir: honesty, self-reflection, learning more about the author’s cultural and social upbringing, stories about resiliency, and more.

I do wish that Karin Jensen had made clear in the prologue or in an author’s note at the beginning that she was publishing her mother’s memoir in her mother’s own words. It was a bit confusing to start reading a book attributed to Karin K. Jensen that’s actually a memoir by King Ying “Helen” Yee. It’s still unclear whether Karin wrote the book as if she was her mother, using notes or diaries from her mother, or King Ying/Helen orally conveyed her story to her daughter to transcribe, or what. That being said, after the initial confusion, it didn’t detract from the story at all.

In The Strength of Water, you learn the story of King Ying Yee (or Helen, as she’s called in America), who was a first-generation Chinese American spending her early childhood in 1920s Detroit. Helen’s parents were born in rural China and had an arranged marriage. Her father, Ho Sin Yee (or “Ba,” which is the colloquial term for Dad in China), had been working in the US since his teens in order to support his parents and younger brother back home.

Soon after Helen’s birth in San Francisco, family members encouraged the Yee family to move to Detroit, where jobs at Ford and GM were booming. Ho Sin then opened his first laundry shop in Highland Park, where Ford’s manufacturing plant was. As Helen grew up and her parents had more children, Mr. and Mrs. Yee and the older children all did their collective parts to help operate the laundry business.

Unfortunately, Mrs. Yee (or “Ma,” the colloquial term for Mom in China), was in poor health and frequently bedridden. The family lived at the back of one of their laundries and money was tight. Ba and Ma were strict and frequently used corporal punishment on the children. They were also conflicted with raising their children according to their Chinese traditions and beliefs while living in America.

Because Ba thought the children (especially the girls) didn’t need an education, Helen and her younger siblings weren’t sent to school until Helen was seven. When they did begin school, they were often subjected to racist taunts on the playground.

Sadly, Ma passed away at thirty-two years old, leaving behind Helen, at twelve years old, as well as Helen’s five younger siblings. Following the Great Depression, the Yees had accumulated debt. Ba soon made the decision to bring the children back to Guangdong, China, where he could marry a new wife and leave the kids with her while he came back to America to work.

For the next four years, Helen and her siblings lived in the village of Tai Ting Pong in rural China, where there was no electricity, indoor plumbing, or refrigeration. They lived with their stepmother, Yuk Moy (referred to as “Seam,” for stepmother), whom they’d only known for the first three months of her marriage to Ba before he left to return to the United States. Seam, at twenty-one years old, became the sole caretaker of her six stepchildren.

While they lived in Tai Ting Pong, the children dealt with bedbugs and worms, malaria, and hunger. Eighteen months into living in Tai Ting Pong, the Second Sino-Japanese War began. The family’s mail (often containing money sent by Ba from America) was often stolen, and soldiers stole their food. They went from poor to impoverished with severe malnourishment. Helen was bedridden from ages fourteen to sixteen, and Seam even began preparing for Helen’s death. Thankfully, someone suggested a simple remedy, and Helen got better.

In 1939, Ba sent money for Helen to return to America, hoping that she’d continue to recover in the United States. Helen made the arduous journey back to America by ship. Having last attended sixth grade in America, she had to work hard to catch up to her ninth-grade classmates. She did well in school while staying with an aunt and uncle, but by seventeen, felt she had to earn her own way. She quit school in the tenth grade and started waiting tables.

She met a man named Lai Chan (or “Oliver,” his Western name) and they dated. It wasn’t until after they married that Helen found out Oliver had a severe gambling addiction. The couple had a daughter, but Helen describes raising her daughter mostly on her own, working hard to provide for herself and her child. She thought she’d made peace with Oliver’s neglect, but when she found evidence that he’d been cheating, she’d had enough. Even though it went against Chinese customs, she filed for divorce and kept the house she’d bought with her own savings.

Eventually, she met a math teacher, Tom, from Oklahoma who had integrity and respected her. They married a month into dating, and a year later, Helen learned she was pregnant with her second daughter, Karin Kim. Helen and her new husband endured a lot of sideways glances as an interracial couple in 1960s America, but they were happy together. 

Before retiring, Helen had worked as a waitress for fifty-five years. She never had a great education or a high-powered career, but she worked incredibly hard to support her family and give her children a chance to follow their dreams. After retiring, she and Tom traveled, eventually visiting every continent.

The Strength of Water is a beautiful description of Chinese customs, traditions, legends, superstitions, and ways of life in the twentieth century. It’s also a wonderful story of a first-generation American working hard and giving her children the best life she possibly could, despite facing discrimination and racist barriers to advancement and acceptance in America.

I’d highly recommend this book to anyone who’s interested in learning about another’s culture and lived experiences or is wondering what life was like for an immigrant family in the early to mid 1900s. Helen’s story is unique, yet relatable to so many people. This was a woman who clearly had a lot of inner strength and determination.