Shanghai MessengerLee and Low, 2005
May Johanson tells her story of a week-long journey from Ohio to Shanghai to visit relatives through a series of finely honed prose-poems that read like spontaneous journal entries. Only eleven years old, May travels alone, and as her Nai Nai bids her, she is to be a messenger between branches of the family that immigrated and that remained in China.
May is scared and homesick, but her aunties and uncles shower her with affection. Moreover, her keen observation of the distinctive world around her capture and hold her attention. The way Auntie takes care to use every morsel of filling in her wontons, the way the city smells of mist and gasoline and fish, the way children of all ages can meet and instantly play together without anxiety—these aspects of everyday life draw May into the present, and we follow her lead into a lovingly described place.
Cheng's story is gentle, but we feel it is authentic (even to the point where her use of Nai Nai for mother's mother can be overlooked). We grow with May's experiences, and like her, we now see that our world is bigger and we hope for opportunities for increased connections. Ed Young's sketches convey a feeling of absorption and memory appropriate for the story, and his two-page spread of folks practicing tai chi offers a moment of suspended animation, a perfect metaphor for May's turning point.
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