Wild Swans : Three Daughters of China
by Jung Chang
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Book Reviews of Wild Swans : Three Daughters of China
Book Review: Absorbing tale derailed by bloodless writing
Summary: 3 Stars
The author states that the Chinese are not given to public displays of emotion. Unfortunately, that seems to translate to the written word as well and nearly brings to a halt what could have been an exciting, informative, heartfelt book.The section of the book that concerns Jung Chang's grandmother is probably the most interesting and accessible of the tales of the three women. Here, the author does a good job highlighting the social and cultural mores of the time and breathes a bit of individual life into the people whose history she's telling us about. However, it doesn't last.
I found much of the writing about her mother and about Chang herself felt like it had been written at a remove from the subject matter. Chang simply uses short, declarative statements such as "My mother was angry at my father again", "I was sad", "I was afraid", "My brother was worried", et cetera, instead of attempting to help illustrate an emotional state or mindset of someone for the reader. Yes, the short sentences get the point across, but they remove all the indivuality from Chang and her family. These people have no individual voice and are interchangeable. For example, when Chang writes that her mother yells at her father, I don't hear her mother at all. I just read the words because that's all they are: words. It's as if Chang was focusing on the language instead of the people. Plus, her insistence on recounting the minutiae of everyone's life/day (especially her own) covers up those moments in a deluge of detail.
There were a few spots where I thought the author came across with some passion (such as when she gave examples of how people pushed aside their own ideas of right and wrong or good and bad to conform to the Communist ideology) but, overall, she was too intent on reporting every last thing that happened and the passionless nature of her narrative took away any connection or emotion I might have felt at reading her story.
Book Review: book of secrets
Summary: 5 Stars
My interest in Modern History within mainland China was sparked after recently reading a book my wife recommended called Sweet Mandarin by Helen Tse. The day after finishing this I found Wild Swans hidden on an old bookshelf, it was falling apart at the seams and in tatters.
Upon reading this book all my senses were opened for me and I felt completely connected to this real human Story of survival, which kept me intrigued throughout, leaving me wanting to know more by the end. I enjoyed how the story flowed like a river through time, following generation to generation, through the complexities of an ever changing family unit, culture, customs and political climate. It opened my imagination to how things would have been through the eyes of the living, in a environment alien to my own. The book touches on the beauty of China built over hundreds of generations, to the contrast of the destruction of an entire nation living under intense paranoia and fear forced onto the people through the use of propaganda delivered by an Authority reminding me of George Orwell's book 1984. The family unit holds on, through a changing and brutal China, and with-in this dark environment they are being slowly torn apart. To this the family's Wild Swans deserve credit for their strength in the face of adversity, holding together, and finding love to light them in these dark times. Wild Swans has opened my eyes to the history and plight of my local Chinese community, to whom I have a new understanding and respect. This book should make people question the widely supported Mao Myth that lives on today, through the rationalization that The Ends Justifies The Means.
Jung Chang would have relived a lot of heart ache when retelling her story here and I am truly grateful that she has shared this wonderful book with me.
Book Review: Gut wrenching, hard to put down ... but sometimes had to.
Summary: 5 Stars
Wild Swans was a tough read, but that is not a negative. The author presents the story of her family living in Communist / Mao China during the worst transitional period of the country's history.
I say it was a tough read because the atrocities perpetrated against human beings by other human beings are hard to accept. Mao did not use his armies to commit the most egregious of his sins, he simply incited people to turn against one another.
To see the depth of evil that lurks in seemingly every day, ordinary people was frightening. Friends turned on friends, neighbors turned on neighbors, teachers on students and vice versa.
At the same time, I was amazed at the level of commitment to their principles her family held to. They never stooped to the level of their condemners. Their indomitable strength of spirit stood in sharp contrast to the abject cruelty of those who engaged in evil behavior. I don't know how her family, particularly her parents, endured.
Wild Swans is graphic in its descriptions and should not be read by very sensitive individuals, and only adults should attempt to read this book. There were times I had to put it down and walk away, nights where I had a difficult time sleeping.
I gave it five stars as the author did her research, had an unbelievable story to tell and wrote it very well. However, I donated mine to the public library as it is a book I could never read again. The memories of her family's experience are still vivid and upsetting when they come to mind.
Mao was a man evil to the core. And, given the fact that the current leader of our country and his advisors turn to Mao for advice, it is to our benefit to understand how he operated.
Book Review: An Incredible Book
Summary: 5 Stars
'Wild Swans' is perhaps the greatest book of all those I have read. It is simultaneously a chronicle of the epic events that shook China and the world during the 20th Century and a person tale of survival in a world gone mad.
As the personal stories of three generations unfold against a backdrop of war and revolution it is hard to remember at times that one is actually reading a true story - not a novel and not embellished in any way. This book drew me in more than any other I have read and despite its considerable length I completed it in just one day - almost in a single sitting.
Starting in the last years of the two millennia old Chinese Empire the book moves into the uncertainty of the warlord era that followed Sun Yat-sen's 1911 revolution and then passes into the age of Kuomintang and Japanese oppression before passing on to the civil war when the author's mother witnesses spectacular brutality on the part of the Kuomintang and decides to throw her lot in with the communists. The narrative continues on through the civil war and onwards - revealing a world increasingly worse as Mao's megalomania grows and madness grips the world's most populous nation.
The climax of the book comes with the onset of the Cultural Revolution and the stories here are both spectacular and terifying simultaneously - seeming like a real life 1984 as one by one friends and relations meet terrible fates in purge after purge - torture, execution, exile...
This book is not a light-hearted read - it is the tale of the events that collectively constitute China's 20th century history - perhaps the greatest tragedy of last century. Everyone should read this book - it is insightful and powerful.
Book Review: Contemporary Chinese History brought alive
Summary: 5 Stars
Chinese history has always been uncharted territory for me. I learned about the Civil War, the Kuomintang, all through oblique references from books that covered other, larger events that concerned Western authors.
Yet, it is a persistent question - how did this country of emerge from a myopic Communist rule into two decades of unprecendented growth and subsequent transformation into one of the largest economies of the world? Its economic achievements is nothing short of a miracle, yet it was born of a most painful gestation.
It was in this tumultous period of China's 20th century history that Jung Chang chronicled her family's fortune as they were buffetted by the raging forces of chaos that engulfed the country. They lived through the Sino-Japanese war in Machuria, under Japanese occupation, the civil war between the KMT and the Communists, and finally had to endure two and a half decades of Chairman Mao's tyranny.
Here, the author describes first hand experiences about how Mao's "Great Leap Forward" brought the entire nation to the brink of starvation in his attempt to raise steel production to the levels of Western nations. And this was not all - the tragic tale continues about how the personality cult of Mao allowed the Cultural Revolution to terrorize the entire population and to send millions into reformation camps. Her family suffered denunciations and forced labour as they were tyrannized by Mao's Red Guard.
These memoirs are fascinating because it helps me understand a little more of China's recent past, especially the violence and terror from which the society has emerged.
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