A rich and insightful coming-of-age story of not only a woman, but an artist and the country in which she was born.
A gripping memoir about growing up in—and leaving—China, from one of Britain's most acclaimed young novelists.
Guo (I Am China, 2014, etc.) spent most of her childhood unwanted: first, by parents who gave her away to a peasant couple, and later, by those adopted parents, who returned her as a sickly 2-year-old child to ailing, illiterate grandparents in a struggling fishing village. Poor, emaciated, and uneducated, Guo experienced a harsh childhood scraping by on rice porridge and the promise a Taoist monk made to her and her grandmother: "The girl is a peasant warrior….She will cross the sea and travel the Nine Continents." When the author’s parents came to reclaim her following her grandfather's suicide, her long and often heartbreaking journey to making that prediction come true began. In the communist compound of Wenling, she lived as the "unwanted one," beaten by her mother, ignored by her older brother, and abused by her community. Her love of art kept her going until she landed a coveted spot at the prestigious Beijing Film Academy. However, even in a city overflowing with culture and rebellion, oppression and censorship reigned supreme, and it wasn't until a scholarship from England granted Guo the opportunity to leave China that she was able to find artistic and personal freedom. After a decade abroad, the birth of her daughter forced her to return home to confront her family and the tragedies of her past. In evocative, captivating prose that reads like fiction, Guo brings to life her lifelong struggles against the chains of poverty, gender, and censorship. A talented wordsmith, she unabashedly lays bare her personal history with raw emotion and unflinching honesty, and she is unafraid to express her anger, disappointment, or joy at every turn.
A rich and insightful coming-of-age story of not only a woman, but an artist and the country in which she was born.Pub Date: Oct. 10, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-8021-2713-6
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: Aug. 6, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2017
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
A standout immigrant coming-of-age story.
In her first nonfiction book, novelist Grande (Dancing with Butterflies, 2009, etc.) delves into her family’s cycle of separation and reunification.
Raised in poverty so severe that spaghetti reminded her of the tapeworms endemic to children in her Mexican hometown, the author is her family’s only college graduate and writer, whose honors include an American Book Award and International Latino Book Award. Though she was too young to remember her father when he entered the United States illegally seeking money to improve life for his family, she idolized him from afar. However, she also blamed him for taking away her mother after he sent for her when the author was not yet 5 years old. Though she emulated her sister, she ultimately answered to herself, and both siblings constantly sought affirmation of their parents’ love, whether they were present or not. When one caused disappointment, the siblings focused their hopes on the other. These contradictions prove to be the narrator’s hallmarks, as she consistently displays a fierce willingness to ask tough questions, accept startling answers, and candidly render emotional and physical violence. Even as a girl, Grande understood the redemptive power of language to define—in the U.S., her name’s literal translation, “big queen,” led to ridicule from other children—and to complicate. In spelling class, when a teacher used the sentence “my mamá loves me” (mi mamá me ama), Grande decided to “rearrange the words so that they formed a question: ¿Me ama mi mamá? Does my mama love me?”
A standout immigrant coming-of-age story.Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4516-6177-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: June 11, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2012
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