Customer Reviews

Feather in the Storm: A Childhood Lost in Chaos

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What a harrowing and yet beautiful set of memories Emily shares with us in this book. It's a painful story illustrating the loss of innocence that so many children suffered at the hands of a brutal regime, but it is also a story of courage and hope and renewal.

The prose flows nicely and provides the reader with a clear, visual feast of details, which helps put the story in context for those of us who are not scholars of Chinese history.

Emily's story is a testament to the enduring resiliency of children and their capacity to survive, forgive and prosper. Read this lovely memoir and be inspired!

This book was a revelation to me. It moved me as few other books I have read have, and from the moment I began reading it I could not put it down. Emily Wu's story is a poignant and compelling memoir that describes in intimate detail the impact that China's Cultural Revolution had on her, as a young girl, and on her family. In a beautifully written narrative, Wu tells of the ongoing humiliation, horror and abuse that she and those she loved endured over a period of nineteen years. The book provides insight into the terrible human tragedy and cost inflicted on millions of Chinese, and especially children, by Chairman Mao's so-called Great Leap Forward. But Emily's story is more than that. It is also an unforgettable testament to the human spirit and the will to survive. This is a tale of courage that will affect and inspire everyone who reads it.

Feather in the Storm provided me with a stunning insights of life in China during the Cultural Revolution. Emily Wu's recounts through both her memories and extensive research the turbulent and often terrifying lost childhood she experienced. The story is powerful, heartbreaking, a testimony to man's inhumanity to man, and ultimately a tribute to the human spirit that holds out for hope and a future.

In today's atmosphere in which political expediency urges us to not look too closely at the historical record of the half-century rule of the totalitarian communist regime, Emily Wu's story of what happened to millions of Chinese caught up in the Cultural Revolution is a needed corrective. Many of these "feathers in a storm" arbitrarily lost their homes and jobs, families, their dreams and -- by the tens of millions -- their lives. What Emily Wu never lost was her hope for the future, and her hope came to fruition. However, her story of survival includes the story of countless decent people who became statitics of death during the nightmare years of the 1960s and 70s.

The book is beautifully written with wonderful images and stories of friendship and family solidarity. This is a must-read for anyone interested in China, the forces that have shaped the world we live in today, and a wonderful story of human survival against great odds. I loved this book and highly recommend it. It is a story you will never forget!

Feather in the Storm is to Asia in our time what the Diary of Anne Frank is to Europe in World War II. Emily Wu's autobiographical tale of a little girl caught up helplessly in the chaos of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution in China is both heart breaking and inspiring. This is the sort of beautifully composed prose that breaks your heart and then, in the end, encourages you to have hope for the future. Emily Wu is a survivor of an incredibly cruel government and society. Thank goodness she has provided this testament so that those who were lost will not be forgotten and that those who were responsible will also not be forgotten.

Feather in the Storm is to Mao's China what Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes is to early last century Ireland and the streets of NY - a heroic, beautifully written, honest, simple, clear and compelling story of a life lived under oppression (here of politics and communism, there of poverty, though these intersect). Lovely in its poetic truth, important in the victory of the author in surviving and telling her tale, and important in its history, this story should not be missed.

Emily Wu's vivid memories create a heartbreaking story of growing up in China under Mao. Although many years have passed, Emily writes with fresh emotion about her childhood experiences: we are immediately drawn in. This book is an opportunity to see through a child's eyes during this bewildering and chaotic time in China. If we think children do not see and hear everything, we are mistaken. Children are often "under the radar." Emily is frequently unseen--hidden in a tree or in a barn--observing and recording the events she is witnessing.

Emily's family was persecuted because her father was an intellectual, a professor of English, and worse yet, he had studied in America. So the family's treatment was particularly harsh. One feels the impact of the enormity of the harsh treatment because it is being suffered by a child who has done nothing to deserve it.

The book gives insight into politics, education, childhood, and mass psychology. The question,"How could a phenomenon like the Cultural Revolution happen?" crosses your mind as you are reading. China's growing position and power in the world today, makes it important for us to know its past.

Emily's book is testament to survival under terrible, often tragic conditions. One wonders how a child can survive these experiences and still have a smile on her face. A must read.

Rarely do I read a book that makes me sooo happy to be an American. Not proud, but happy. Emily Wu's narrative of her childhood memories in China initially made me wince, yet at the same time grateful such experiences were inconceivable here. The injustices, the brutalities, the fear of Mao's doctrines upon the people of China have never been displayed with such force as with Larry Engelmann's fidelity to Emily's spoken words. Without embellishment Engelmann trusted her words to prove emotions fiction can only pretend to create. Though this is not an "easy" book to read, I recommend it highly to anyone who thinks they understand the trials the Chinese had to endure through the seventies, much less a little girl.

My wife and I met Emily Wu at SIUE while on her book tour. Her story was amazing, so we had to buy the book to get the details.

It normally takes me about a year to read a book, but this one I devoured in a matter of days. The perspective of the book grows as she grows. In the beginning it is written as though you are only a couple feet tall - the details are in the words she hears, people's feet and the underside of cribs and tables. Later on she gets taller and you start to experience more of the people around her. But, like the limitations put on a pre-teen, she can only see so much and know so much, therefore her story is limited to just what she could see and understand. You feel as though you are a child right alongside her.

Often I found myself trying to figure out what things meant (names of Mao's movements and doctrine), but that just muddled the story. At times you feel like more should be written about the backstory of the Red Guard, but if you think about the fact that she didn't know much about them at the time it leaves it all in that child-like perspective. She writes about what she saw and read and experienced as a child, especially her reactions to how it changed the people around her.

The tempo is well-paced and manages to catch you off-guard. It covers issues like capping and de-capping, the invasion of the Red Guard at the Anhui University campus in Hefei, book burning, cleansing of the "Old" ways, living conditions, food, suicide, female infanticide, arranged marriage, bound feet, class struggles, child-on-child violence and much more.

When you are finished, you will view your life through a new pair of glasses. You won't be able to go 5 feet without finding 100 things to be truly thankful for.

Fortunately some of the survivors of the terrors and deprivations of Mao's China came through it whole enough that they were eventually able to bring themselves to tell the story. For every one of those there must be thousands of walking wounded, both the tormentors and the tormented, who are unable to allow themselves to even think about those times.

Hopefully, someday "Feather in the Storm" and the other great biographies from this period of China's history will be widely read in the country that produced such appalling experiences. In the meantime these stories serve as a warning to the rest of us of how precious and precarious is the civilized behavior that we tend to take for granted.

People throughout the world need to know the hardships created by a society that went crazy - China's cultural revolution, so that this will not be repeated. This book gives a very personal and moving account of Ms. Wu's experience as a child growing up during that time of chaos. You will simply fall in love with the sweet and self-reliant little girl as her stories unfold. The book is also very well written. The passages flow effortlessly from the page into the mind's eye. You feel like you are watching a movie, not reading a book. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!