Wednesday, August 21, 2019

Top ten caregivers in fiction

Lila Savage is originally from Minneapolis. Prior to writing fiction, she spent nearly a decade working as a caregiver. Her work has appeared in The Threepenny Review. She is the recipient of a Wallace Stegner fellowship and graduated from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop in 2018.

Savage's debut novel is Say Say Say.

At the Guardian she tagged the top ten caregivers in fiction, including:
Inheritance by Lan Samantha Chang

A gripping story about sisters growing up amid political turmoil in China, this novel also gives meaningful attention to Hu Mudan, a family servant, offering a rare glimpse of the complex intimacy between caregivers and employers. “She had been hungry. She had been alone. In that time of trouble, Chanyi had made room for her. Hu Mudan believed in the old loyalties, and she immediately began to serve as Chanyi’s maid. Only she knew how to comb Chanyi’s knee-length hair, beginning at the ends and moving gently to her scalp. Only she understood how to keep her mistress safe from the despondency that haunted her.”
Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue