The novel kicks off with the memorable line “Zhongli village lay flattened under the sun like a defeated dog that has given up on finding shade.” The girl has managed to survive so far by figuring out how to find food on her own, knowing that “If a family had a son and a daughter and two bites of food, who would waste one on a daughter?” The Zhu of this novel begins life in deep poverty and starvation as the sole surviving daughter not just in her family, but her entire village, after four years of a punishing drought. This inventive, powerful debut novel-equal parts action-packed and thought-provoking-belongs completely to its talented author from the first page. It’s a fascinating conceit, reportedly pitched as “ Mulan meets The Song of Achilles,” though it doesn’t seem to draw inspiration directly from either of those works-the skeleton of the story belongs to the real-life Hongwu Emperor, including his humble birth, brief stint as a Buddhist novice, and years as a warrior that lead to an even greater destiny.īut what Parker-Chan makes from the story of Zhu Yuanzhang is both inseparable from its real-life inspiration and wholly original. But as the title suggests, She Who Became the Sun isn’t about a boy named Zhu Yuanzhang who rises from his peasant origins to rule a united China it’s about a girl who does the same. Shelley Parker-Chan’s new novel She Who Became the Sun lays claim to the story of the founding emperor of the Ming Dynasty, Zhu Yuanzhang. In the case of a story based on a person from history or myth, the discussion broadens: is ownership even a useful concept in that case? If a real-life person’s story fundamentally belongs only to that person, can that story be re-written, re-envisioned, transformed-and in the process, does it evolve into a new story, with a new answer to whose story it has become?
Who do stories belong to? Some would say a story belongs to the author who wrote it, and copyright law would back up that interpretation, at least for the first 75 years after publication.