Bound Feet & Western Dress
28/10/06
By Pang-Mei Natasha Chang
This one was also a Chinese inspired one; this time a true story written about aunt Yu-i and her life in China and Europe. OK read, but.. Never really and truly captured me…
Review from amazon.co.uk:
After long afternoons spent with her great-aunt Yu-i drawing forth her story, Pang-Mei Natasha Chang, a first-generation Chinese-American, paints an unforgettable saga of a woman, born in Shanghai at the turn of the century to a highly respected, well-to-do family, who continually defied the expectations of her class and culture.
‘In China, a woman is nothing,’ began Yu-i over tea and dumplings. ‘This is the first lesson I want to give so that you will understand.’ Growing up in the perilous years between the fall of the last Emperor and the Communist Revolution, Yu-i led a life marked by a series of rebellions that changed the course of her life, including the first and most lasting: her refusal to have her feet bound. And as Yu-i confides her innermost dreams and demons, Pang-Mei comes to understand something of her own ambivalence regarding her Chinese heritage – and the ever-present tug between familial duty and desire.
Bound Fee & Western Dress is an exquisitely written dual memoir that tells the story of independent women struggling to emerge from centuries of custom and tradition, a deeply textured portrait which braids a woman’s life in China with the very Western story of a young woman’s search for identity and belonging.
My rating: ***Links:
Read more on amazon.co.uk
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My BookCrossing entry on Bound Feet & Western Dress