Love Made of Heart

By Teresa Leyung Ryan

Book Overview

Ruby's life has become unmanageable ever since the day her mother's emotional breakdown forced Ruby to hospitalise her, shaming the family. Now Ruby is caught between two different cultures - one in which she is the American girl, and one in which she is known only as 'daughter'.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0758202172
• ISBN13: 9780758202178
• Release Date: January 2003
• Publisher: Kensington Pub Corp
• Length: 352 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.8" x 1.0" x 5.8"

Customer Reviews

A book with compassion toward mentally ill people

I am a Chinese who has been treated for mental illness. I also have a mother who suffered from severe mental illness throughtout her life. Being brought up in a very emotionally chaotic family without any outsiders knowing any of our family secrets was the only safe way we knew how to live. Therefore, I truly apprecite how Teresa was able to show her kind and brave spirit toward a mentally ill family member through her heart-warming writings. I admire anyone who can deal with mental illness and come out with such positive and compassionate attitude. Thanks to this soul reaching book, the healings started once I began to read Teresa's heart pouring words from "Love Made of Heart".

A lovely story

Ryan's book is a heartfelt, compelling story of one woman's quest to find love and forgiveness, both for herself and her relationships. The main character, Ruby, weaves in and out of her Chinese American background as she tries to find pieces of each culture that will help her become the strong woman she aspires to be. Ruby begins her narration with the night her mother is taken from their apartment by policemen. Ruby's mother is mentally ill, and cannot function without medication. The struggle with shame, fear, and guilt over not being able to protect her mother, or forgive herself, propels Ruby into therapy. Her journey into eventual resolution takes Ruby through memories into the past, where the reader catches glimpses of an unstable childhood fraught with confusion, and experiences with violent domestic abuse. Along the way, the adult Ruby stumbles through intimate relationships, learns to deal with the realities of having a mentally ill parent, and makes a dear friend who becomes a surrogate grandmother. This nurturing character, Mrs. Nussbaum, provides a voice of wisdom to the story that envelops it in reassurance. By the end, as Ruby fits all of the pieces together, her self love extends outward into a mature forgiveness of her parents, and opens into a wider circle of giving. The reader is let into the gentle secret that love is an endless, self-generating energy that rewards the giver as much as the receiver. This book is a real page-turner, and I recommend it to anyone!

Heartwarming and Inspirational

We've read plenty of stories about the Cultural Revolution; it's about time an Asian American author writes about the all too common, silently accepted universal crime of domestic violence. Apparently, the Publisher's Weekly critic was too short-sighted to see this socially responsible message that LeYung Ryan is conveying. It's not about bashing men and glorifying women. Everyone is depicted sensitively and fairly. No shaming. No blaming. Just healing and loving.As an elementary school teacher, I know that Asian children are often too quiet and obedient, while others will act out alerting us to trouble at home. Sadly, the Asian kids might go completely unnnoticed. Like with the character in this book, Ruby Lin, problems might not manifest themselves until adolescence or young adulthood. LeYung Ryan's story has universal appeal, but I especially recommend educators of ethnic studies or family/social issues at the senior high school and university levels to add this to their bibliographies.Being a San Franciscan, I have had the opportunity to see LeYung Ryan read from her book. Her skills as a writer and talent as a speaker were so powerful she evoked emotions from the audience easily. I found myself and the entire crowd laughing from carefree childhood memories of watching the Flintstones to being moved to tears remembering the not-so-pleasant memories of getting hurt or witnessing a loved one being hurt.We need more brave Asian American writers like LeYung Ryan to bring about social awareness of child abuse and domestic violence. It takes a lot of courage to break the cycle of violence and I applaud her for sharing that courage with us.

Love Made of Heart

I think that the critic for Publishers Weekly needs to get a heart! This book is excellent and a must read for anyone who is undergoing or has undergone intense family conflict and tragedy. Ruby is the voice of courage and compassion as she deals with an emotionally troubled mother and abusive father, all the while forging ahead in order to make her way in the world. The characters come alive through LeYung Ryan's writing; humorous one minute, heartbreaking the next. I came to care very deeply about the people in this novel, sharing their triumphs and disappointments with every turn of the page. I found this to be a wonderful first book and am looking forward to the next.

Love Made of Heart

How does a young girl learn what it means to be woman? What if that girl is fresh from Hong Kong to San Francisco, and desperate to become a true American girl? Ruby Lin, the protagonist in Teresa LeYung Ryan's touching and redemptive debut novel Love Made of Heart (Kensington Publishing Corp. ISBN 0-7582-0216-4), rejects Vivian, her mother, as a role model, unwilling to believe that the measure of a woman and wife is to accept her husband's verbal and physical abuse. Instead, Ruby turns to American television and black and white movies, wanting only to become the Chinese-American equivalent of Sandra Dee. We soon learn that Ruby's relationship with Vivian is nothing like the one Samantha Stephens from Bewitched has with her mother. Ruby's father is a far cry from the gentle and understanding men Ruby watches on Family Affair and Bachelor Father. But it is Joan Crawford, Ruby's heroine from the movies, who teaches her how to handle men. When a boyfriend becomes disrespectful, Ruby does not fall into the role her mother assumed. In a scene that is perfectly paced and in vivid detail, we watch, as Ruby becomes Joan Crawford herself. We cheer for Ruby when she majestically rids herself of the brut. Later, because Ruby has grown up believing that the Cartwright brothers from Bonanza were truly great men for the way they treat women and children, how can she resist when another of her suitors flashes a Michael Landon smile and proposes. Throughout this sensitive tale, LeYung Ryan captures the lasting effects an abusive childhood has on Ruby, and chronicles Vivian's descent into madness. Women readers of all ages would be well served to learn from the lessons Ruby learned on the silver screen. In her quest to become a true American, Ruby also learns how to become a woman.