Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China

by Jung Chang

Wow! Where to start? This is the story of three generations of Chinese women in the 20th century.

The author’s grandmother probably has the most interesting story of the three women: bound feet and a warlord’s concubine. Ah, the makings of a great novel. Alas, her story is given the short shrift. Why, I don’t know. To me, it’s the most fascinating part of the narrative.

Mostly, our story focuses on the author and her mother. With them, we learn all about Mao and the Cultural Revolution. A lot about Mao. And Communist politics. In fact, once we move from the grandmother’s story to the mother’s story, it’s more of a political history than a personal history, which disappointed me.

I am not surprised that this book has been banned in China. More than anything else, it is an anti-Mao book. Now that you know that, you can probably understand why I was not thrilled with this book. It took the entire month of August to get through this one. Yuck!

8/30/10