Other Books by Lisa See

On Gold Mountain: The One-Hundred-Year Odyssey of My Chinese-American Family
Always aware of her part-Chinese roots, See set out to learn about her far-flung and, as it turns out, famous paternal family. Her great-grandfather Fong See was an extraordinary figure. He established a business in Sacramento, Calif., and later in Los Angeles, when it was an unheard-of thing for a Chinese to do; married a Caucasian and fathered a large brood; returned to China on and off, spreading his wealth around in his tiny native village and creating another extensive family there too. Drawing on family legends and dredging up intimate history through countless interviews with uncles, aunts and cousins both in California and in China, See has created a matchless portrait not only of a remarkable family but of a century's changing attitudes. The early anti-Chinese racism was horrific, and even 40 years ago it was hard for a Chinese to emigrate here, let alone become a citizen. The ambitions, fears, loves and sorrows of See's huge cast are set forth with the storytelling skills of a novelist and a great, sprawling novel is what her book often resembles. There are times when it flags and the constant new names become tiresome, and a heartfelt but superfluous chapter on actress Anna May Wong disrupts the flow; but the book is a striking piece of social history made immediate and gripping.

Flower Net
The Interior
Dragon Bones
(See’s mystery series features Inspector Liu Hulan of the the Chinese Ministry of Public Security and her American husband, attorney David Stark.)

Nonfiction

Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China by Jung Chang
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.

Bound Feet and Western Dress by Pang-Mei Chang
“In China, a woman is nothing." Thus begins this harrowing dual memoir that braids the story of Chinese-American Pang-Mei's own search for identity with the dramatic tale of her great-aunt, Chang Yuyi, born at the turn of the century in tradition-bound China. In alternating voices, Pang-Mei captivates the reader as she tells the story of Yuyi's battle with her mother to stop the painful foot-binding process, the first in a series of rebellions that marked her extraordinary life. This deeply textured portrait of Chinese life in the perilous years between the fall of the last emperor and the Communist Revolution captures, above all, the struggle of fiercely independent women emerging from centuries of customs and ideals, both subtle and pronounced.

The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts by Maxine Hong Kingston
Maxine Hong Kingston grew up in two worlds. There was "solid America," the place her parents emigrated to, and the China of her mother's "talk-stories." In talk-stories women were warriors and her mother was still a doctor in China who could cure the sick and scare away ghosts, not a harried and frustrated woman running a stifling laundromat in California. But what is story and what is truth? In China, a ghost is a supernatural being; in America it is anyone who is not Chinese. In addition, underlying even the most exciting talk-stories of Chinese women warriors is the real oppression of Chinese women: "There is a Chinese word for the female 'I' - which is 'slave.' " In an attempt to figure out her world, Maxine Hong Kingston finds herself creating stories of her own, filling in the blanks her mother has not told her because her daughter is, after all, not true Chinese and thus cannot be completely trusted. Can these new stories explain why she had trouble speaking in the American schools? Can they help her understand the aunt who committed adultery and whose existence is denied? The new stories refuse to fall into traditional forms, and the realizations that come from them often bring out a beautiful, passionate anger that practically burns through the pages. This is powerful, experimental writing, a combination of love, hate, frustration, and sheer beauty.

Fiction

The Three-Inch Golden Lotus by Jicai Feng
In his intriguing 1985 novel, Feng explores complex topics (such as the troubled relationship between truth and falsehood and the dangers of overzealous attempts at social reform) primarily through Chinese foot binding, the traditional practice of breaking a young girl's feet and tightly wrapping them so that they remain only three inches long. Set in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the story follows Fragrant Lotus, a poor girl whose superbly bound feet bring her to the attention of Tong Ren-an. A dealer in antiques and a bound-foot fetishist, he selects his daughters-in-law by the excellence of their feet. In the household, competition for power is fierce; dominance goes to the woman judged by Tong's friends to have the best feet. Fragrant Lotus masters the "rules, skills, tricks" of caring for her most valuable asset, but when Tong dies and reform is in the air, she must learn new skills to battle the Natural Foot Society—which calls for women to unbind their feet, a painful process—and to confront her own secret relationship with this group's leader. An afterword by Wakefield, who teaches Chinese history at the University of Missouri, provides some context for the nonspecialist.

The Binding Chair, or, a Visit from the Foot Emancipation Society by Kathryn Harrison
Harrison renders historical settings with textured fidelity. Here she spins an exotic and irresistible tale set mainly in Shanghai at the turn of the last century, with evocative side trips through Russia, England and the French Riviera. The changing culture of China is reflected in the life of a compelling character. Born in 1884, May must submit to foot binding as a child, and thereafter endures constant pain and the constriction of her freedom. Despite her deformed feet, at 14 she escapes a sadistic husband and pursues a new life in a brothel in Shanghai, where she eventually marries a kindhearted Jewish immigrant from Australia who's a member of the Foot Emancipation Society. May's stubborn, indomitable spirit isn't hampered by her husband's inability to find a job, since they live in the opulent household of his sister and her husband, and their two daughters—the younger of whom comes under May's thrall. Manipulative and autocratic, May spends her life despising her useless feet, fighting convention and adoring her high-spirited niece. But she cannot escape the ancient legends and superstitions that shadow her life, or the opium habit she develops after several emotional blows. Lost children are one theme here, and the varied ways people deal with such loss. Another is the lot of women striving to be independent in a hostile world. Harrison describes in harrowing detail the barbaric foot-binding ritual, various forms of sexual brutality, parental abuse and official torture. She is equally deft at social comedy, erotic titillation and tender sentiment. This is her best work to date, an intricately and elegantly constructed narrative about intersections of character and fate, history and chance, and the ironic, tragic fulfillment of hearts' desires.

The Death of Woman Wang by Jonathan Spence
The setting is provincial China in the 17th century. Life is an endless cycle of floods, plagues, crop failures and banditry. Against this background a tax collector, a farmer and an unhappy wife act out a drama at whose climax the wife, having run away from her husband, returns to him, only to die at his hands.

Compiled by Suzanne Fisher (fishers@uhls.lib.ny.us)