Reviews:
“Tragic, funny, lyrical,
and respectful, this intimate and unforgettable family chronicle is also a
history of modern China.”--Library Journal.
“A multilayered memoir that
successfully weaves historical detail with familial emotions of different generations.”--Kirkus
Reviews.
“Together May-lee and
Winberg Chai have created a testament that reads like a compelling and rich novel,
full of incident, soul, and fire.”--Luis
Alberto Urrea, author of The Devil’s Highway and the national bestselling
novel, The Hummingbird’s Daughter.
“An amazing story of survival
and endurance, fierce love and bitter resentments, and the failures and triumphs
of the human heart.”--Lisa
See, bestselling
author of Snow Flower and the Secret Fan and On Gold Mountain.
“A breathtaking epic encompassing
not only family dramas but also the Chinese civil war, the Japanese attack
on Nanking, and the difficulties of immigration and return. This is a gripping
and historically grounded read.”--Publishers
Weekly.
“More than a good story packaged between glossy covers. It reveals the
conflict between a daughter’s desire to know her heritage and her father’s
desire not to be reminded how much distance the passage of time and the vicissitudes
of history have placed between him and his origins.”--Washington Post
Book World.
“This is an intricately orchestrated
cross-generational memoir, and one that is particularly successful in linking
the world of China in the first half of the twentieth century to the opportunities
and ambiguities of those Chinese who grew up as Americans. It is a subtle book
that resonates in the mind as well as being a true family history that spans
moods and generations.”--Jonathan
Spence, author of The Search for Modern China and the George Burton Adams Professor
of History at Yale University.
To order a video or DVD of May-lee and Winberg Chai reading
and discussing The Girl from Purple Mountain on C-Span’s Book TV, go
to the BookTV website:
www.booktv.org or shop www.c-span.org or call 1-877-ONCSPAN.
Program ID:165531
The Girl
from Purple Mountain