Chinese History and Literature |
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| *Non-fiction* Wild Swans : Three Daughters of China by Jung Chang Editorial Review Amazon.com In Wild Swans Jung Chang recounts the evocative, unsettling, and insistently gripping story of how three generations of women in her family fared in the political maelstrom of China during the 20th century. Chang's grandmother was a warlord's concubine. Her gently raised mother struggled with hardships in the early days of Mao's revolution and rose, like her husband, to a prominent position in the Communist Party before being denounced during the Cultural Revolution. Chang herself marched, worked, and breathed for Mao until doubt crept in over the excesses of his policies and purges. Born just a few decades apart, their lives overlap with the end of the warlords' regime and overthrow of the Japanese occupation, violent struggles between the Kuomintang and the Communists to carve up China, and, most poignant for the author, the vicious cycle of purges orchestrated by Chairman Mao that discredited and crushed millions of people, including her parents.--This text refers to the Paperback edition. The Good Women of China: Hidden Voices by XINRAN XUE The Accidental Asian by Eric Liu Bound Feet, Western Dress by Pang-Mei Natasha Chang The Cambridge Illustrated History of China (Cambridge Illustrated Histories) by Kwang-ching Liu China: A New History by John King Fairbank, Merle Goldman China for Women: Travel and Culture Chinese in 10 Minutes a Day by Kristine K. Kershul China Wakes: The Struggle for the Soul of a Rising Power by Kristoff and WuDunn Chopstick Childhood (In a Town of Silver Spoons) by Nona Wyman Colors of the Mountain by Da Chen Coming Home Crazy: An Alphabet of China Essays by Bill Holm Daughter of the River: An Autobiography by Hong Ying Falling Leaves: The Memoir of an Unwanted Chinese Daughter by Adeline Yen Man Frommer's China: The 50 Most Memorable Trips Iron and Silk by Mark Salzman Leaving Deep Water: Asian American Women at the Crossroads of Two Cultures by Claire S. Chow Life and Death in Shanghai by Nien Cheng A Mother's Ordeal: One Woman's Fight Against China's One-Child Policy by S. W. Mosher On Gold Mountain: The One-Hundred-Year Odyssey of My Chinese-American Family by Lisa See The Private Life of Chairman Mao by LI ZHI-SUI Red Azalea by Anchee Min Red China Blues: My Long March From Mao to Now by Jan Wong River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze by Peter Hessler The Search for Modern China by Jonathan D. Spence Watching the Tree: A Chinese Daughter Reflects on Happiness, Traditions, and Spiritual Wisdom by Adeline Yen Mah The Woman Warrior: Memoirsof a Girlhood Among Ghosts by M. Hong Kingston *Fiction* Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress: A Novel by DAI SIJIE Editorial Review From Publishers Weekly The Cultural Revolution of Chairman Mao Zedong altered Chinese history in the 1960s and '70s, forcibly sending hundreds of thousands of Chinese intellectuals to peasant villages for "re-education." This moving, often wrenching short novel by a writer who was himself re-educated in the '70s tells how two young men weather years of banishment, emphasizing the power of literature to free the mind. Sijie's unnamed 17-year-old protagonist and his best friend, Luo, are bourgeois doctors' sons, and so condemned to serve four years in a remote mountain village, carrying pails of excrement daily up a hill. Only their ingenuity helps them to survive. The two friends are good at storytelling, and the village headman commands them to put on "oral cinema shows" for the villagers, reciting the plots and dialogue of movies. When another city boy leaves the mountains, the friends steal a suitcase full of forbidden books he has been hiding, knowing he will be afraid to call the authorities. Enchanted by the prose of a host of European writers, they dare to tell the story of The Count of Monte Cristo to the village tailor and to read Balzac to his shy and beautiful young daughter. Luo, who adores the Little Seamstress, dreams of transforming her from a simple country girl into a sophisticated lover with his foreign tales. He succeeds beyond his expectations, but the result is not what he might have hoped for, and leads to an unexpected, droll and poignant conclusion. The warmth and humor of Sijie's prose and the clarity of Rilke's translation distinguish this slim first novel, a wonderfully human tale. (Sept. 17)Forecast: Sijie's debut was a best-seller and prize winner in France in 2000, and rights have been sold in 19 countries; it is also scheduled to be made into a film. Its charm translates admirably strong sales can be expected on this side of the Atlantic. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition. Becoming Madame Mao by Anchee Min The Bonesetter's Daughter by Amy Tan Buying a Fishing Rod for My Grandfather: Stories by Gao Xingjian China Dog & Other Tales From a Chinese Laundry by J. Fong Bates Dream of the Walled City by Lisa Huang Fleischman The Hundred Secret Senses by Amy Tan The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan Kitchen God's Wife by Amy Tan Soul Mountain by Gao Xingjian Waiting: A Novel by Ha Jin Wild Ginger: A Novel by Anchee Min Women of the Silk by Gail Tsukiyama |
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