Memoir: On Gold Mountain Final Review

In the book, On Gold Mountain, Lisa See writes about the history of her one hundred-year-old Chinese-American family. This book first focuses on the life of her great-great-grandfather, Fong See, but later revolves around the lives of Fong See’s children and their children’s children, Lisa See involved.

While living in America, the See family finds success in their family businesses and prosper. Some may even say that the See family lived the ‘American’ dream.

The book totals up two different cultures intertwining into one, love, marriages, business and love affairs, racism, and the meaning of family. Each theme is brought up in the memoir and focuses on many characters’ lives to conceive these themes.

See does a wonderful job in providing to readers the authentic history of a hundred-year-old story but the historical facts that she adds in her memoir are a little distracting. I personally felt as if the historical facts kind of lowered my opinion of the memoir because it was taking over the stories of the characters’ lives. I sometimes found myself dreading to read the book because of the history it covered and not the actual story of the people’s lives. But overall, I enjoyed reading the book. I don’t think that I would necessarily recommend this book but it was interesting to discover facts about the Chinese history in America that I’ve never learned.