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Summary
Summary
"Riveting. A marvel of memory. Poignant proof of the human will to endure." -Amy Tan.
"Brilliant, compelling, and unforgettable. A heart-rending modern day Cinderella story set against the turbulence of 20th century China. Autobiography at its best." -Nien Chang, author of Life and Death in Shanghai.
"Charged with emotion...A vivid portrait of the human capacity for meanness, malice-and love." -Jung Chang, author of Wild Swans.
"Fascinating and heart-rending stuff...a harrowing story of emotional cruelty." - The Times of London
International bestseller.
The emotionally wrenching yet ultimately uplifting memoir of a Chinese woman struggling to win the love and acceptance of her family.
In this compelling memoir that scaled bestseller lists in England, Australia, and Hong Kong, Adeline Yen Mah chronicles her painful childhood growing up in a wealthy yet abusive Chinese family. The unwanted daughter scorned by her family, young Adeline dreamed of freedom and independence, ultimately escaping to the West to launch a successful career in medicine.
When Adeline's mother died giving birth to her, she was deemed bad luck and ostracized by her family. Then her father took a beautiful Eurasian bride and Adeline soon fell victim to the wrath of her stepmother. Treated as a pariah, she was shuttled off to boarding schools, bullied by her siblings, and deprived of the beautiful clothes and things given to the rest of the family.
Moving from Shanghai and Hong Kong to London and the United States, Falling Leaves is an enthralling saga of a prosperous Chinese family set against a background of changing political times and the collision of East and West. Written in haunting prose, it evokes all the suspense and emotional force of a satisfying novel.
Author Notes
Although Adeline Yen Mah was born into a wealthy family in Tianjin, China in 1937, her childhood was an unhappy one. Born female in a culture that often devalues women, her situation was made worse by the fact that her family blamed Yen Mah for her mother's death, which occurred just after she was born.
Her autobiography, Falling Leaves: The True Story of an Unwanted Chinese Daughter, details the emotional abuse she suffered from her father, siblings and, in particular, her stepmother. Most notable was the fact that her family, fleeing to Hong Kong in 1948 as the Communist army gained control of China, initially left the 10-year-old Yen Mah behind, in a boarding school in northern China.
An international play-writing competition made it possible for Yen Mah to escape her unhappy family life when she was 14. She won the competition, and this convinced her father to send her to a boarding school in England. Yen Mah remained in England for 11 years, attending college and earning a medical degree. When she returned to Hong Kong in 1963 to do an internship, however, Yen Mah found that her family's attitude toward her had not improved. She left again, this time to accept a residency in the United States.
In the U.S., Yen Mah found professional success, eventually becoming the chief of anesthesiology at Anaheim Community Hospital in California. She also found personal happiness with her second husband, Bob Mah, and their two children. However, she was always troubled by her estrangement from her father and stepmother, and after their deaths she went through a period of severe depression. She began writing Falling Leaves as a way to work through her feelings of rejection, never imagining that her story would become an international bestseller.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Although the focus of this memoir is the author's struggle to be loved by a family that treated her cruelly, it is more notable for its portrait of the domestic affairs of an immensely wealthy, Westernized Chinese family in Shanghai as the city evolved under the harsh strictures of Mao and Deng. Yen Mah's father knew how to make money and survive, regardless of the regime in power. In addition to an assortment of profitable enterprises, he stashed away two tons of gold in a Swiss bank, and eventually the family fled to Hong Kong. But he was indifferent to his seven children and in the thrall of a second wife who makes Cinderella's stepmother seem angelic. His first wife, Yen Mah's mother, died at her birth, and the child, considered an ill omen, was treated with crushing severity. But she was encouraged by the love of an aunt and eventually made her way to the U.S., where she became a doctor, married happily and, ironically, was the one her father and stepmother turned to in their old age. In recounting this painful tale, Yen Mah's unadorned prose is powerful, her insights keen and her portrait of her family devastating. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
The contrast between Mah's calm narrative voice and the harshness of her story is both haunting and instructive. Mah's family history has been shaped by the convulsions that rocked twentieth-century China, but it is the presence of strong women that emerges as the driving force in her piercing memoir. Mah's mother died just after she was born, so her female role models were her rebellious grandaunt, who founded a bank run by and for women in an era during which Chinese women were still having their feet bound, and her father's sister, who tried desperately to shield Mah from Niang, her vicious stepmother. Niang also defied the Chinese preference for submissive women, but she used her powers to malignant effect, poisoning her stepchildren's relationships with each other and with their father. But Mah, too, has proven to be indomitable, surviving a childhood of extreme, even surreal lovelessness and abuse to become a woman of profound compassion, and her compelling story is a testament to the transcendence of moral fortitude and forgiveness. --Donna Seaman
Kirkus Review
A well-told ""wicked stepmother"" story, with the vicious backdrop of racial inequality. Growing up in a wealthy Chinese family (first in Tianjin, then in Shanghai), Mah, born in 1937, is considered unlucky because her mother died giving birth to her. Her father marries a beautiful Eurasian woman, Jeanne, whom the children call Niang. Niang begrudges her stepchildren train fare to school while her own children are served tea in their rooms and are treated to beautiful new clothes. Mah's father, Joseph, too, mistreats his first wife's children. The family has a racial hierarchy; in marrying a partly French woman, Joseph hoped to improve his social status--his full-blooded Chinese children probably reminded him that he, too, was Chinese. But Matt, more willing than the others to defy Niang, is singled out for cruelty. The other six children, following Niang's lead, pick on her, too. She is physically beaten and constantly insulted; she isn't allowed to have friends; her beloved pet duckling is fed to her parents' dog, deliberately and for sport. Her childhood is only bearable because her aunt Baba loves her and believes she's destined for success. An exceptional student, Mah is allowed to study medicine in England, where, free of her stepmother, she is happier than she's ever been. Eventually settling in the US, she marries, divorces, and finds happiness in motherhood, her work as a doctor, and an eventual second marriage. But the Yen family drama goes on: When Joseph dies, Niang cheats all of the children out of his fortune. Then when Niang dies, Mah, who thought she was on good terms with her stepmother toward the end, finds herself completely and inexplicably disowned. The betrayals and conspiracies surrounding that incident are nearly as chilling as those she suffered in her childhood. A compelling story of family cruelty. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
This dramatic autobiography by a writer and doctor begins with the reading of a will that mystifies, then flashes back to recount events in a truly unpleasant family of seven brothers and sisters, a cruel French-Chinese stepmother, and a rich, uncaring father. In 1937, Adeline's mother died giving birth to her in Tienjin, marking her forever as bad luck. The family moved to Shanghai, then Hong Kong, with trips to Monte Carlo, London, and, finally, California for Adeline. In the meantime, with World War II, the Communist takeover in 1949, Maoism, the Cultural Revolution, and the return of Hong Kong to mainland China. Mostly, however, rivalries, jealousies, injustice, neglect, conniving, backbiting, and betrayal dominate this family. An intriguing tale, though it says less about China than about one particular Chinese family; for contemporary China collections.Kitty Chen Dean, Nassau Coll., Garden City, N.Y. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Table of Contents
Prologue | p. 1 |
Chapter 1 The Appropriate Door Fits the Frame of the Correct House | p. 5 |
Chapter 2 Converting Iron into Gold | p. 13 |
Chapter 3 Inseparable as Each Other's Shadows | p. 18 |
Chapter 4 Surpassing Loveliness Good Enough to Feast Upon | p. 25 |
Chapter 5 An Episode of a Spring Dream | p. 34 |
Chapter 6 Family Ugliness Should Never be Aired in Public | p. 42 |
Chapter 7 Climbing a Tree to Seek for Fish | p. 75 |
Chapter 8 Extend the Same Treatment to All | p. 91 |
Chapter 9 Inspired Scholar in an Enchanting Land | p. 99 |
Chapter 10 Each Day Passes Like a Year | p. 107 |
Chapter 11 Original Ideas in Literary Composition | p. 112 |
Chapter 12 Same Bed, Different Dreams | p. 118 |
Chapter 13 Is Anything Impossible? | p. 122 |
Chapter 14 One Lute, One Crane | p. 135 |
Chapter 15 Fish Swimming in a Cauldron | p. 141 |
Chapter 16 One Horse, Single Spear | p. 151 |
Chapter 17 Marry a Chicken, Follow a Chicken | p. 157 |
Chapter 18 You Plant Melons, You Reap Melons | p. 167 |
Chapter 19 Hearts Reduced to Ashes | p. 178 |
Chapter 20 Scales and Shells in the Belly | p. 193 |
Chapter 21 Heavenmade Union | p. 206 |
Chapter 22 Besieged by Hostile Forces on All Sides | p. 212 |
Chapter 23 Coarse Tea and Plain Rice | p. 218 |
Chapter 24 While Drinking Water, Remember the Source | p. 227 |
Chapter 25 Sever This Kinship with One Whack of the Knife | p. 235 |
Chapter 26 Creating Waves Without Wind | p. 240 |
Chapter 27 Near Vermilion, One Gets Stained Red; Near Ink, One Gets Stained Black | p. 244 |
Chapter 28 Wine and Meat Friends | p. 252 |
Chapter 29 Headless and Clueless Case | p. 261 |
Chapter 30 Opened the Door to Salute the Thief | p. 264 |
Chapter 31 Steal the Bell While Covering Your Ears | p. 268 |
Chapter 32 Falling Leaves Return to Their Roots | p. 271 |
Index | p. 275 |