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Falling Leaves: The Memoir of an Unwanted…
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Falling Leaves: The Memoir of an Unwanted Chinese Daughter (original 1997; edition 1999)

by Adeline Yen Mah

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2,786515,122 (3.67)87
The true story of a young Chinese girl who grew up feeling unloved by her father who remarried shortly after her mother's death and treated his new family and subsequent children as upper class compared to his first children.
Member:mathgirl40
Title:Falling Leaves: The Memoir of an Unwanted Chinese Daughter
Authors:Adeline Yen Mah
Info:Broadway Books (1999), Paperback, 278 pages
Collections:Your library
Rating:****
Tags:non-fiction, China

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Falling Leaves: The Memoir of an Unwanted Chinese Daughter by Adeline Yen Mah (1997)

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» See also 87 mentions

Showing 1-5 of 50 (next | show all)
Interesting and heartbreaking ( )
  vdt_melbourne | Dec 19, 2023 |
Excellent.
  kevindern | Apr 27, 2023 |
Canceled midstream. Threw my arms up and surrendered. Such a horridly, tediously terse style packed with details that are so trivial as to make one's head pop. And yet such an intriguing plot.

I hate it when they hook you right in with some type of foreshadowing. It's the worst type of offense when a writer decides to say, "This bizarre and terrifically terrible thing happened" and spend the entire book explaining everything that happened before it (and I mean everything, from the late 18-effing-00s) until reaching that point (which I have not yet reached, and do not intend to, thank god) and realize that the whole book was a waste of time.

Please spare yourselves. Surely, you can Wiki this Mah Yen and read her CONDENSED life story in five minutes rather than read this book. Long, painful, and without anything to merit reading it, a quite futile attempt at interesting memoir-writing. ( )
  Gadi_Cohen | Sep 22, 2021 |
The first quarter of is a bit hard to get into, but after that I was hooked. ( )
  taimoirai | Jun 25, 2021 |
V. interesting book. A look into the history of 20th century China. The writing style is not exactly captivating, but the story is and I really enjoyed the addition of Chinese proverbs/idioms. ( )
  Bisonosib | Jun 3, 2020 |
Showing 1-5 of 50 (next | show all)
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Dedication
Dedicated to my Aunt Baba, whose unwavering belief in my worth sustained me throughout my tormented childhood. And to my husband, Bob, without whose love this book could not have been written.
First words
It would not be quite truthful say that we were all together for the first time in nearly forty years.
Quotations
On the eve of her wedding, Grandmother (@15) was summoned into her father's presence. 'Tomorrow you will belong to the Yen family,' she was told. 'From now on, this is no longer your home and you are not to contact us without permission from your husband. Your duty will be to please him and your in-laws. Bear them many sons. Sublimate your own desires. Become the willing piss-pot and spittoon of the Yens and we will be proud of you.
My mother died two weeks after my birth, with five doctors at her bedside. She was only thirty years old and I have no idea what she looked like. I have never seen her photograph.
Ye Ye's letters to Aunt Baba became more and more despondent. 'All of us clings tenaciously to life,' Ye Ye wrote, 'but there are fates worse than death: loneliness, boredom, insomnia, physical pain. I have worked hard all my life and saved every cent. Now I wonder what it was all about. The agony and fear of dying, surely that is worse than death. In this house where I count for nothing, du ri ru nian (each day passes like a year). Could death really be worse. Tell me, daughter, what is there left for me to look forward to?
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The true story of a young Chinese girl who grew up feeling unloved by her father who remarried shortly after her mother's death and treated his new family and subsequent children as upper class compared to his first children.

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Penguin Australia

An edition of this book was published by Penguin Australia.

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