Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com
Summary:
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.
Customer Reviews:
Average Customer Rating:
A compelling personal modern history of China
Customer Rating:
The story helps the reader to understand the recent history of China within the context of the last 60 years of modern China by retracing the lives of 3 women, her grandmother, her mother and herself. These personal stories start from the waning days under the Imperial regime prior to 1911 through the modern China of present days. It is told with objectivity and clarity. It also has a universal appeal as it illustrates the theme of the strength of the human spirit over cruelty and adversity.
NOT a "real life" Amy Tan novel!
Customer Rating:
Many of the negative reviews of this book seem to center on the idea that it should be a "real life" version of an Amy Tan novel. It isn't! So if you prefer your historical nonfiction and memoir to read as fiction, you should probably choose a different book. This ain't Amy Tan. It's not as readable, from a purely aesthetic viewpoint, but I did finish it and parts of it even made me cry.
What Chang does very well is to condense almost a hundred years of very complex, turbulent history into a relatively slim, easy-to-read volume. I admit that I found her tone, at first, a bit dry. But the story she has to tell is so interesting, that you keep reading it. It's not like potato chips, but something more substantial--a rich meal, maybe. It can be hard to take in large amounts or if you are in the wrong mood for it. I find with reading just about anything, you must be in the right mood. If you pick this up and don't like it after a few pages, put it down and come back to it another day. If you still don't like it, the book isn't for you and you just shouldn't bother.
Frankly, I found I couldn't put it down. I agree with some criticisms of the book, namely: she downplays her parents' roles as Communist officials a bit, though as I stated in response to someone else's review, she gives you enough clues as to her parents' personalities and early zealousness to let the reader "read between the lines" and understand that her parents may not have been saints--certainly not in their personal lives and probably not in their professional lives, either. But I do believe her parents were idealists and hard workers, though imperfect. She also clearly shows that--though the Cultural Revolution was devastating to the country and her family--in some weird way, it brought her family closer together and bonded them in a way that might not have been possible had the Revolution not happened. For me, there was emotional payoff later on the book: a certain telegram sent by her father to her mother made me cry and that's very rare for me to cry while reading a book (I am often moved, while reading, just not to tears). I also agree that it might have benefited from some tighter editing in the second half, but I do object that the author is--as another reviewer put it-- self-obsessed. I think she does a decent job balancing insights about herself with what was going on all over China. I think it's a little silly for people to pick up a memoir and then complain that the author was writing about herself. I mean, hello, that's what a memoir is, isn't it? Seriously.
One thing she does beautifully is write about the people she knows and loves in a very restrained way. There is no needless melodrama. The facts of the story speak for themselves and the accumulative power of those facts is sometimes overwhelming. There are many images from this book that will stay with me a very long time, I daresay. Someone else mentioned that the book was overwhelmingly negative and that the author is too steeped in her own negativity. I found this criticism both incorrect and incredibly irritating. I think she does quite a good job in restraining any self-pity. I think as you follow the story, it becomes very obvious how the daily onslaught of general nastiness throughout the Cultural Revolution impacted her mind and the minds of her fellow Chinese. Reading her account, I got a taste of the crippling anxiety and upset she had to live with everyday for years. It's very understandable that her father became mentally ill. It takes a person with quite a bit of emotional and mental flexibility to live through a nightmare like that, and clearly, her father was quite rigid; incapable of bending, he simply broke down.
I do highly recommend this book, with the following caveats: it does read a bit dry, at first (until you become accustomed to her tone), it does dodge a bit her parents' roles as Communist officials, and it does meander a little in the second half. If you make it through, it's a very rewarding read. It made me cry, it made me understand life in Communist China under Mao much better, and it made me want to read even more books about China. In this case, it's a success. I wish I could give it 4 1/2 stars, but no such luck on Amazon's rating system.
Fantastic book for new China hands
Customer Rating:
This is one of the best books I've ever read. I'm just starting to undertake a serious study of China and WILD SWANS introduces Chinese history, from the mid 1910s to the early 1980s, in a clear, welcoming format that keeps the reader engrossed in the main characters' life of pain, suffering, and torment. The presentation of the history of the Kuomingdang/Communist battles, Great Leap Forward (steel production period), all the purges, Cultural Revolution (remember the Red Guards?), etc., was written from the viewpoint of the author, Ms. Chang, who witnessed the above events first hand. Her mother, father, grandmother, and other family members all suffered tremendously. At the age of 26, after almost three decades of extreme hardship, Ms. Chang was able to leave the country on a scholarship to Britian, the first Mainland Chinese to leave Sichuan province (90 million people) since 1949.
I loved this book and would definitely read it again. I was particularly impressed with the father's moral and unyielding character. He was a committed Communist to the core who refused corruption and the chance to save his own life if such action meant harming others--and he paid tremendously for taking the moral high ground.
Kindle version has lots of errors. Grrr.
A must read for anyone going to China....
Customer Rating:
Read this book about 15 years ago and loved it. I reread it again before a recent trip to China and it's must for anyone who is planning a visit there....or wants to understand the complexities of Chinese culture. Whle it reads like a movie of the week, totally engaging and dramatic, it is a true life story that gives the reader a first had look at the many faces of Chinese society....and the dramtic changes in only a few generations. It is all the more striking against the backdrop of today's super modern Chinese life.
Highly recommend as a great read.
Don't Be Fooled
Customer Rating:
I specifically ordered a hardback from this "business" and received a paperback. It even had a magazine article tucked inside it. Well, the main points are that I didn't receive what I ordered, and there is no prepaid return plan, soooo I paid $30 plus for a used paperback. Now, how would you rate business practices such as these? Would you want to do business like this? It's an ongoing headache as I had to dispute a month ago. Be my guest if you like $30 plus used paperbacks when you order hardbacks and have to pay for returns!!!Wild Swans : Three Daughters of China
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