Customer Reviews

Little Sister: Searching for the Shadow World of Chinese Women

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I've read stacks of books on China--both before, during, and after living there--and I will certainly add this one to my recommendation list. There are plenty of writers comfortable with giving pure "reportage" on a foreign country they have lived in, supposedly factual accounts of dramatic encounters or distanced anecdotes about the sights and sounds, but few willing to speak honestly about how they are personally affected by that place and the people they grow close to--or the complicated reasons that motivate them to go in the first place. Why travel to another country if you aren't willing to be changed by it or admit the concerns and questions you bring with you? Why read a memoir if you want just the facts or a large scale "objective" account and not something of the writer too? Read an encyclopedia or history book if that's what you're after, although these won't give you a sense of what it is for you as an individual to be in that place. Checkoway's beautiful account of her year in Hebei Province and the lives of the Chinese women who were brave enough to tell her their stories enriched my own understanding of the women in China who had befriended me, leaving me longing to return and at the same time profoundly aware of the way travelers are constantly compelled, each for their own reasons, to try to connect across cultures and political divisions. There is a haunting, respectful quality to Checkoway's prose. She admires these women for their courage, determination, and insights, and by the end of the book, I admire them--and Checkoway--too.

I work in higher education and picked up this book looking for insight into the lives of students coming from China to study in the U.S. I became quickly engrossed by the authenticity of the writer's voice. The book is a beautiful evocation of how the need to heal ourselves can inspire acts of scholarship, artistry and friendship. This is a lovely read.

This tells you more about the author than it does about China; the writer claims to know Chinese but commits some obvious howlers ("horse-horse camel-camel" for "ma-ma hu-hu") that shows she speaks very little. Much better books about China include Kristoff & WuDunn's China Wakes, the Tysons' Chinese Awakenings: Life Stories from the Unofficial China, or Jan Wong's Red China Blues : My Long March from Mao to Now.

This novel is even more trite, than the authors boring monologues on mail order brides. Rather than familiarize the reader with the subject matter at hand, the author pumps her own ego repeatedly. What I did find amusing were the multiple references to the author's own homoerotic, incestuous, and pediphilific tendencies. In a word this novel blows. literally.