Falling Leaves : The Memoir of an Unwanted Chinese Daughter

by Adeline Yen Mah | Biographies & Memoirs |
ISBN: 0767903579 Global Overview for this book
Registered by wingSqueakyChuwing of Rockville, Maryland USA on 2/7/2004
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2 journalers for this copy...
Journal Entry 1 by wingSqueakyChuwing from Rockville, Maryland USA on Saturday, February 7, 2004
I'm not sure about this book. It's the story of the unhappy childhood (and probably unhappy adulthood if you factor in family relationships) of a Chinese girl.

My feeling is that it is a rather uneven account of Adeline's life. The telling dwells only on the negative. It would be easier to understand the problems if only there were something good to counterbalance it. Even those good things she writes about her siblings are included so that they can be contrasted with bad things to say a later point in the book. Strange!

The whole telling sounds as if it is more of a vendetta of the wrongs perpetrated upon the author during her whole life rather than a mere autobiography. The tone of the book left me feeling mad and glad that I finished it.

P.S. My husband also read the book and did not agree with me! :-)

Journal Entry 2 by wingSqueakyChuwing at Landmark's Bethesda Row Cinema in Bethesda, Maryland USA on Saturday, March 13, 2004
Released on Saturday, March 13, 2004 at Landmark's Bethesda Row at 7235 Woodmont Avenue in Bethesda, Maryland USA.

It's on top of the pay phone at the bottom of the long staircase in the movie lobby.

Journal Entry 3 by wingAnonymousFinderwing on Friday, March 18, 2005
Noticed a book propping up a trash can at the Landmark Movie Theatres in Bethesda Md. I was curious what it was so I eased back the metal trash can and slipped it out into the light. It was "Falling Leaves" by Adeline Yen Mah. I recently stopped seeing a Chinese girlfriend -- I'm a gringo -- but I have become interested in the Asian experience. I noticed in my ex-girlfriend -- she was from the People's Republic of China -- a vrey different manner than girls from Taiwan or Japan. She was utterly sure of her equality with men, so much that she didn't give it a thought. And when she laughed, she just put her head back and laughed. When Japanese or Korean women laugh, they cover their mouths.

China changed things more than any other country in the region. They transformed their whole people, and smashed the confucian and traditional models to pieces.

I am curious how Yen Mah's recollections of her childhood in pre-revolutionary China might reflect what was there, inescapably present, in China before 1949, and so of course what is not there now.

The book looks pretty well thumbed, to say the least.




CAUGHT IN BETHESDA MARYLAND USA

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