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Daughter of the River: An Autobiography
Daughter of the River is a memoir of China unlike any other. Born during the Great Famine of the early 1960s and raised in the slums of Chongqing, Hong Ying was constantly aware of hunger and the sacrifices required to survive. As she neared her eighteenth birthday, she became determined to unravel the secrets that left her an outsider in her own family. At the same time,
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Paperback
,
288 pages
Published
December 6th 1999
by Grove Press
(first published 1997)
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56th out of 86 books
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25 voters
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This is a difficult book to rate as it provides fascinating (and uncomfortable) detail of poverty and slums along the Yangtze River in China, but it is difficult to "like" or "admire" the author. The details are brutal about day to day life, so one learns a lot. The family mystery centers around the 6th daughter who feels she doesn't belong and feels the family doesn't like her. The main time frame of the story takes place when Hong Ying is late teens, early adulthood with flash back fill in det
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My mom suggested me to read this book and, since she was sooooo enthusiastic about it, I decided to read it. At the beginning I found it interesting because there were lot of information about how China was during the last century, but then it turned out to be really repetitive. I mean, the girl always talks about the difficult situation of her family and the way she was treated by her sisters and brothers. Anyway I think there were two involving parts: the one aboout the history teacher and the
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After reading K-the art of love, I became very curious about its author and decided to read her autobiography next. It didn’t exactly tell me how she came to write K, nor how she came to write at all, but it turned out interesting nonetheless.
Hong Ying was born at Chongquing in 1962, at the end of a major famine that hit China as a result of population growth and mismanagement of the agricultural production. Thus, her novelized recollection of her childhood, culminating in discoveries about her ...more
Hong Ying was born at Chongquing in 1962, at the end of a major famine that hit China as a result of population growth and mismanagement of the agricultural production. Thus, her novelized recollection of her childhood, culminating in discoveries about her ...more
I felt as though this author was dangling a carrot in front of me through the entire book and taking me through a maze to reach said carrot. I realize that this book was translated from Chinese, but I felt that the story jumped around too much from event to event. While reading it was difficult to see how the events connected. That being said, I learned more about China and how difficult life was there in the 1970 adn 1980s. A review compared this book to Angela's Ashes and I can see how the rev
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if you have less knowledge about chinese culture you can hardly understand this book,the pain,the poverty,the quiet,the raging the hatred and even love .
I had a hard time connecting with the author and the choices she made,or the things she were feeling.She writes in a way that somewhat distanced me as a reader from the story. And not only me but I feel she was apart from the other persons in the book,almost numb.I know her living conditions were pretty harsh so she might have been densesitized,judging by the way she describes the squalor of where she lived and sicknesses and violence.
The whole book is like under a cloud of painful memories and ...more
The whole book is like under a cloud of painful memories and ...more
I started this as a companion text to 'Chinese Cinderella' and it shows a very different perspective of China. The writer comes from a desperately poor family who struggle to send her to school. The details of life in the slums is stomach-turningly graphic. She was a child of the great famine and there were rumours that dumplings were made from human flesh... Her world is a far cry from Adeline's loveless yet very priveleged life, and for that it is interesting. But Hong Ying simply does not com
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interesting parts of dialogue about the effects of politics of the people in the slums of a large Chinese City. I did not enjoy the parts of self criticisms and pessimistic thought
What is the impact on a poor child of the vicissitudes of life under the madness of Mao's China? This book gives a real insight.
I didn't like this book as much as I found it interesting and worth reading and thought provoking. The first half was slow but the last quarter was so strong and loaded it made up for it.
This is an amazing memoir of a woman who grew up in extreme poverty in Chongqing during the difficult famine of the 1960s. I was impacted by the extreme efforts required to make a living and the horrible living conditions. This is a story of urban poverty in China. I was completely mesmerized by this story.
Hong Ying takes me on a journey to discover both herself and her past. I'm amazed at how much I learned about Chinese culture, beliefs, traditions, values, and morals. I just wonder what is the fate of her family now? Did they ever find release from such grinding poverty? And, lastly I hope her "natural " father rest in peace. He lived for her!! She was just way to harsh...
I loved this book, was right there with her as her writing just put me in her world. No one sums up the years of Mao, the Cultural Revolution, the famine, and all the political upheaval more succinctly than Hong.
I enjoyed the look into the daily remembrance from some one growing up in China during 1970-80's. It was a bit disjointed in the telling but overall a good book.
Life is not easy for this large family growing up in Mao's China. No love, no money, dire conditions. Well written, but incredibly depressing
Mar 04, 2009
Lorraine
added it
A memoir that reads like a novel. Another dimension of what life is like for ordinary people of China is the 20th century.
This book is a lot like Wild Swans only a lot shorter. Such a tragic true story that is very well written.
good read. Makes me glad I wasn't born in China 30 years ago. Gets you thinking about human rights.
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Hong Ying was born in Chongqing in 1962, towards the end of the Great Leap Forward. She began to write at eighteen, leaving home shortly afterwards to spend the next ten years moving around China, exploring her voice as a writer via poems and short stories. After brief periods of study at the Lu Xun Academy in Beijing and Shanghai’s Fudan University, Hong Ying moved to London in 1991 where she as
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