Reading 1001 discussion

Loved this one. I picked it up after reading Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club, it’s a historical non-fiction about the complicated and difficult lives of Chinese women through various times in history, following 3 generations through warlords, to Chairman Mao, to the Cultural Revolution...its harrowing and honest with the hardships, but that makes it even more memorable and interesting to read.

Wow, this was good.
Three generations of women in China, beginning with a woman whose feet were bound, became a concubine, and had a daughter. Then she was fortunate enough to be set free, upon the death of the general who had her. She went on to marry a doctor who fell in love with her, to the disgust of his family.

The daughter became a member of Mao's Communist party, and married an official. This wasn't exactly safe, and Maoism wasn't all it was promised to be. She had several children, and had to compete with the Party for her husband's attention and loyalty.

The author, the second daughter of this union, was a preteen during the start of the Cultural Revolution, and she started to question. When she got the chance to leave China, she did. This book is the result of one of her mother's visits to Britain, and they recorded the family history by cassette tape.

The story of each of these women is fascinating. It is an insider's look at what was going on in China, when the country had isolated itself from the world. I can't explain it well, but it was so well written. I listened to this, and was captivated- plus, the names and words were pronounced properly, instead of me just guessing.
This book was an experience. And it makes me grateful that I live where I do, though the parallels are eerie in places.

5 stars

f there is only one book that could make me happy to be a woman in America in the 21st century, this is it. The trials, hardship, torture of these three women are difficult to comprehend. The book is both fascinating and challenging; brutal and uplifting. Somehow the author tells her story with so much heart and such a sense of tribute and love for her family that it allowed me to breathe it in with joy even as I read of the horrific circumstances of their lives. I found myself learning history, better understanding politics, and confirming certain personal convictions. It is a difficult book for me to review. How does one criticize a personal and open story? I will say that I would have liked the story to include lengthier studies of her grandmother and great-grandmother, and perhaps slightly less of the exploration of communism. But that is my only (very minor) complaint.

What an incredible book. I haven't read much at all about life in communist China in the 20th century, and this really opened my mind and led to additional research for me. The story of three generations of women (the author, her mother, and her grandmother) and everything their families endured through war and then under Mao Zedong, it's depressing and horrifying, but the heart and resilience of these women are uplifting. I do think everyone who lives in a free country should be required to read this. I gave it 5 stars.

Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China
5 stars and a favorite

I was hooked on this book the moment I started the introduction from the author. I loved that the author's mother wanted most to tell her story. It is so powerful to be heard, recognized, acknowledged for a life lived. This biography about three generations of Chinese women read like a novel, I was captivated. I considered all these women feminists. They all made difficult decisions to save their lives or the lives of their families; so inspiring, I am humbled. I learned about the famine of 1958-1962 and the atrocities that went with it. I was a bit shocked at the introduction where the author compares Chairman Mao to Hitler but after reading the book I see why. I have read about Mao's Red Guards before but this book added to my knowledge. I especially enjoyed the family photos at the end of the book, put a very human face to this family story. My first 5 star read this year and I am so glad that I read it.

“She was being kept out of a progressive organization by backward people, and yet the revolution seemed to be telling her that it was she who was in the wrong.”

“For the first time she vaguely reflected on the fact that, as the revolution was made by humans beings, it was burdened with their failings.”

“The whole nation slid into doublespeak. Words became divorced from reality, responsibility, and people's real thoughts. Lies were told with ease because words had lost their meanings-and had ceased to be taken seriously by others.”

“The Cultural Revolution not only did nothing to modernize the medieval elements in China's culture, it actually gave them political respectability. “Modern” dictatorship and ancient intolerance fed on each other.”

This is Chang's memoir/biography of her life and those of her mother and grandmother. Her grandmother had been a Manchurian concubine (and had bound feet) before the Kuomintang came to power. She then lived to see the Communists and Mao take over. Her mother, daughter of a warlord and accepted daughter of a doctor, lived most of her adult life under Mao, and was moved to Chengdu. Originally a minor official married to another minor official, they were then declared "capitalist roaders" and dealt with denunciations, beatings, etc, as part of Mao's constant upheavals to keep the populace infighting for power and food.

This book is quite terrifying and very frustrating and infuriating. What kind of leader starves his own populace in the name of building up industry? Or who deems education a bourgeois desire, wanting their populace to be illiterate and uneducated (yet expects to grow their industrial output?). Some of the language, though, is very MAGA-ish. Frightening.

I read this in 1996 or 1997. I read this a long time ago, I cannot write a fair review. This is the story of three generations of women in China and presents the history of China through their lives. What I remembered most is that the Chinese people feared to think because they might say something out loud that would be heard. This was a crazy world they lived in. I recommend this book every chance I get.

This is an absolutely incredible narrative. I’ve read other memoirs and histories of China and so I wasn’t unaware of the horrors of the Cultural Revolution, but this book really drives home the horrors of the time. Perhaps it’s because we’re following relatively privileged people and seeing that even they can’t protect themselves from having their lives crushed by the historical forces around them.

It’s a really hard read. Footbinding, arrest, war, famine, re-education, separation from family, and death. And then it’s hard to read about the father’s dedication to the Party over the safety of his wife and later his children. I felt like I was supposed to admire his principled stance, but a lot of the time I just felt that he was heartless. Experiencing the author’s worship of Mao and then her slow questioning of the indoctrination she had been subjected to was eye-opening.

This was my 600th book off the List.

I chose it on purpose as I needed something "enjoyable" to read and I had read Mao: The Unknown Story from the same author, which filled me with awe. I was not disappointed.

Through the stories of three generations of women (the author, her mother and her grandmother), sprawling across the end of the Qing dynasty, the Warlord Era, the Japanese occupation of Manchuria (Manchukuo), the attempted dominance of the Kuomintang, the advent of Communist China and Mao Zedong, the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution and the death of Mao, this book probably provides the best understanding of what the Chinese people has gone through during the 20th century. It also provides further evidence of the intellectual dangers of adhering to Hegelian dialectics, which formed the rational basis of Marx's writings, Lenin's thoughts and, pushed to its extreme limits in the crucible of power, Stalin's and Mao's brutal excesses. As I would also rate Soljenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago 5 stars, I can only do the same with this book, which stands as its equivalent in exposing what these regimes were really like.

While the current Chinese regime might not rival in brutality comparing to Mao's Cultural Revolution, one shudders to think how political opponents to Xi (remember Bo Xilai?) and "cumbersome" ethnic groups (e.g. Xinjiang) are being dealt with in order to silence them and make them toe the party's line. This book can provide some idea.

Patrick wrote: "This was my 600th book off the List.

I chose it on purpose as I needed something "enjoyable" to read and I had read Mao: The Unknown Story from the same author, which filled me with awe. I was not..."

Congratulations on #600

The idea behind this book is brilliant - by following three generations of women from the same family, the brutal history of 20th century China becomes familiar and devastating to the reader.
Every time the political climate changed, I thought that surely this time it must be a change for the better - but it just got worse and worse, until Mao's death.
The three women aren't without their flaws, although of course, the author's mother is shown in a slightly worse light than the grandmother. This seems natural, as one is often more forgiving of older people than one's parents.
The author also never tries to hide her own privilege and acknowledges using it for her benefit when she felt the need to do so. This is also understandable and makes her seem quite relatable.
The only reason this wasn't a 5 star for me, is that it drags on a bit in the middle and I just didn't feel compelled to read it *all of the time*.
But I would recommend this to anyone interested in Chinese history, those who like multi-generational stories and those who like epic memoirs.

I'm so happy that the 1001 list inspired me to read this, as I'm not sure I would have otherwise found it.