Daughter of the River: An Autobiography [Paperback]

Hong Ying (Author), Howard Goldblatt (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 2000

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, a history teacher at her school began to awaken her sense of justice and her emerging womanhood. Hong Ying's wrenching coming-of-age would teach her the price of taking a stand and show her the toll of totalitarianism, poverty, and estrangement on her family. With raw intensity and fearless honesty, Daughter of the River follows China's trajectory through one woman's life, from the Great Famine through the Cultural Revolution to Tiananmen Square.

Editorial Reviews

From the Inside Flap

Hong Ying's Daughter of the River is a remarkable book--a memoir of China unlike any we have seen before. Acclaimed around the world, it is both a compelling self-portrait by a remarkable writer and an unforgettable expose of life at the bottom of Chinese society.

Hong Ying was born during the Great Famine of the early 1960s, which claimed the lives of tens of millions, including several of her relatives. Growing up in a slum on the bank of the Yangtze River, in a neighborhood veiled in fog and superstition, she was constantly aware of the sacrifices her family made so that she would survive. And as she neared her eighteenth birthday, she became determined to unravel some of the enigmas that had troubled her all her life: a stalker who had shadowed her since childhood, an anomalous record in her father's government file, and an unshakable feeling that she was an outsider in her own family.

At the same time, she began a relationship with a history teacher at her school, who awakened her to the possibility of dissent and to her own emerging womanhood. But, as she learned, the truth cuts both ways. While the professor taught her how to think outside of the borders the government had set, he himself was under political pressure that would prove unbearable.

Hong Ying's search for truth led to the discovery of family secret's that changed her life--and her perceptions of her parents, her sister, and herself--tragically and irrevocably. But these same events also set her free to leave home for good and become a writer. With raw intensity and fearless honesty, Daughter of the River follows China's trajectory through one woman's life, from the Great Famine through the Cultural Revolution to Tiananmen Square.

"This remarkable account of a childhood spent on the banks of the Yangtze River...explores the depths of personal and civil repression with an almost brutal grace."--The New Yorker

"Raw and powerful.... As you read [her] lacerating story, you feel that you have entered into the deepest truths of a tormented psyche, and into the truths as well of a bruised generation otherwise almost impossible for us to know."--Richard Bernstein, The New York Times

"Comparisons with Jung Chang's Wild Swans will be inevitable but Hong Ying's book more closely resemble Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club, in which histories are brought to light and reminiscences are contrasted fascinatingly with the present.... Heartbreaking."--The Times (London)

"Arresting."--Editor's Choice, Chicago Tribune

"[An] immersion in the suffering of China's urban underclass during the years following the Great Famine of the early 1960s...[a book] of stark power.--The Boston Globe

"The China that Hong Ying depicts in her memoir Daughter of the River bears little resemblance to those cheery posters that were churned out by the millions during Mao's reign.... [Hong Ying's] resilience, imagination, and a fantastically protean energy...can only inspire awe."--Los Angeles Times

"Enthralling...a story of poverty told as frankly as Angela's Ashes; a story of oppression characterized by the paranoia of The Handmaid's Tale.... A haunting autobiography that could stir the most ungrateful critic of the U.S. government into thanksgiving for the freedoms that others only dream of and that we often take for granted.... More than the story of one woman; it is the story of so many suppressed souls who are looking for a champion. Hong Ying may be that voice in the dark."--Columbus Post-Dispatch

"At once lyrical and brutal...reminiscent of Angela's Ashes.... A major writer emerges here, combining flawlessly the often broken dreams of youth and the usually broken dreams of politics."--Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"An astonishing picture of inner fortitude, marshaled against insult and injury amid the turmoil and repression--both political and emotional--of mid-century China."--Publishers Weekly

"A beautifully written and deeply felt work."--Teen People

"We are permanently reminded of the horrors of modern Chinese history.... A moving book which will bring tears to the eyes."--The Spectator (London)

Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Grove Press (January 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0802136605
• ISBN-13: 978-0802136602
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (24 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #394,803 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars refreshing change, January 18, 2000

By 

michael (Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Daughter of the River: An Autobiography (Paperback)

Hong Ying presents a raw, unpolished notation of her life in the slums of China. It is a look at the other side of Chinese society, as compared with Falling Leaves, Adeline Yen Mah. Hong's style is strong and captivating in it's own, almost amateurish way. Daughter of the river, is highly recommended for anyone interested in Chinese society and life, without a strongly political slant, which seems to pervade so many other Chinese autobiographies, Three Swans, for instance. All in all, a good read.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars How do you fit so much pain into beautiful words?, January 23, 2000

By 

Ryan Brenner (Texas, United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Daughter of the River (Hardcover)

It is true that this autobiography is bleak. It is dark, but it is a reflection of the poverty and oppression experienced by the peasant class in China, now and all during the rule of the Communist regime. How Hong Ying is able to evoke absolute beauty from this seemingly unending ugliness is beyond me. But she expertly does just that. Without thought or pretense, Hong Ying's writing sings immaculately from the page. Amazing prose. This book's importance lies in that it is the story of someone from the peasant class, and since it is always good to hear all different perspectives of the same or similar events in order to get a good all around picture of the times, Hong Ying's book is a must read. In commenting on the book to a friend, I said that perhaps Hong Ying and her family's saving grace was that they were already at the bottom of the totem pole. Because of this they didn't have to experience the worst of what the Cultural Revolution had to offer eventhough it touched their lives daily. The peasant class of China is what Mao Zedong strived to make all the people of China in the name of proletarianism. The fact that Hong Ying and her family were already of this class meant that many of the dynamics of the time that were sweeping through all classes above them settled into their class as normalcy somewhat. It's like a line from Joan Chen's movie "Xiu Xiu: The Sent Down Girl;" at one point when Xiu Xiu is questioning where she is being sent, she is told that it doesn't matter because it's the same everywhere; a simple statement but poignant in just how dead on right it is. Therefore, you must appreciate even moreso when we are allowed to read of these events by all those who were a part of them be it peasant or merchant. If it's done well, it is the most captivating of things to read because it means they made it out and are able to share it with us now. Before, any scraps of paper containing this type of writing would have been confiscated and burned, a black mark put in your file, or perhaps you'd be arrested. Hong Ying has done a brilliant job telling of her coming into womanhood in those times and of the exuberant curiosity she had about her family and herself, always having been treated as the outsider.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Letter to the Author: .. Touches my heart deeply.., June 11, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Daughter of the River (Hardcover)

Dear Hong Ying

Thank you so much for sending me your book. I was totally gripped by your narrative and when I finished it I found myself weeping uncontrollably. There is so much in your story which strikes my raw emotion and which touches my heart deeply.This is not just because I feel instinctively tuned into the underworld you depicted so vividly due to similar experiences in my life in Chongqing. More importantly, it embodies almost exactly the literary project which has long been fermenting in my mind. I have always longed to read something or even write something which could show that big words such as freedom, democracy and human rights are not just some high-sounding principles; that they affect millions of ordinary people's lives in many concrete ways.

In my discipline of political science, the rise of East Asia in the 1980s spawned a huge industry of academic research on the relathionship between political system and economic development. For quite a while, Western scholars who were critical of their own democratic system joined the chorus of East Asian dictators such as Suharto, Lee Kuan Yew and Dr Mahathir (of Malaysia) to defend the "necessity" of authoritarianism for the sake of economic development and political stability. I think your book would be an ideal antidote to this typical "arm-chair" scholarship devoid of any sense of reality. To me, your book serves as a powerful warning that development without democracy simply

creates another privileged class standing above the law and everyone else. I am often angered and depressed by the world I live in. It seems to me so many human injustices stem ultimately from the fact that too many human beings are greedy and cruel.