Bound (Hardcover)

~ (Author) "Xing Xing squatted by the water, silent and unmoving..." (more)
Key Phrases: Xing Xing, Wei Ping, Yao Wang (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Starred Review. Grade 5-9–Napoli takes the elements of the traditional Chinese version of "Cinderella" and creates a powerful and moving story. Xing Xing is left to the mercy of her stepmother after the death of her father. Focusing on a good marriage for her own big-footed daughter, the woman binds the poor girl's feet even though she is past the usual age for this painful procedure. Xing Xing's only pleasure is her daily contact with a beautiful white carp in the pond where she draws water. To her, the fish seems to be the spirit of her mother helping her endure her difficult life. When the stepmother kills it, the girl is devastated, but she retrieves the bones from the garbage heap and, in the process of hiding them, discovers a green silk gown and gold slippers that belonged to her mother. Dressed in this rich garb, Xing Xing goes to the festival where she loses one slipper in her effort to escape detection. The slipper is eventually bought by an unconventional prince; when he finally finds its owner, Xing Xing considers her options and decides to marry him. Napoli retains the pattern of the traditional Chinese tale with only a few minor changes: she sets the story in the northern province of Shaanxi during the Ming dynasty rather than in a minority community in southern China. She fleshes out and enriches the story with well-rounded characters and with accurate information about a specific time and place in Chinese history; the result is a dramatic and masterful retelling.–Barbara Scotto, Michael Driscoll School, Brookline, MA
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

*Starred Review* Gr. 7-12. Drawing from traditional Chinese Cinderella stories, Napoli sets this tale in a small village during China's Ming period. Since her beloved father's death, Xing Xing has become "hardly more than a slave," serving her acrimonious stepmother and pitiable stepsister, Wei Ping, whose botched, bloody foot binding has left her perilously unwell. A dangerous trip in search of medicine for Wei Ping brings Xing Xing into the wider world, but she returns to find home more treacherous than before. Napoli creates strong, unforgettable characters--particularly talented, sympathetic Xing Xing--and her haunting, sometimes violent tale amplifies themes from well-known Western Cinderella stories, making them fascinating questions: Could ancestors serve as "fairy godmothers"? In a society that so grossly undervalues females, what does "happily ever after" really mean? Teens and teachers will want to discuss the layered themes of freedom, captivity, love, human rights, and creative endeavor within this powerful survival story, which, like the yin and yang forces Xing Xing thinks about, balances between terror and tenderness, and is both subversive and rooted in tradition. Gillian Engberg
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Reading level: Young Adult
  
• Hardcover: 192 pages
• Publisher: Atheneum (November 2, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0689861753
• ISBN-13: 978-0689861758
• Product Dimensions: 7.4 x 5.2 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (27 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #782,565 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Bound to a life of service, October 25, 2004

By	hiphopgirl_1000 - See all my reviews

Fourteen-year-old Xing Xing lives in ancient China and her life is literally "bound". Bound by the old traditions of China where she must become the servant of her stepmother after her father's death. Bound by the injustice and ill treatment of women. Bound to remain a servant the rest of her life and be neglected by society. Bound to never find a husband because she has no parents to arrange her a suitable marriage. Xing Xing spends her days being a slave girl to her half-sister Wei Ping who is also bound, but in a different way. Wei Ping has her feet cruelly bound to make them small, a tradition in China, that symbolizes wealth and elegantness, a painful compulsory act if a girl is going to marry into the high society. Xing Xing however does not complain about her role in the family and secretly feeds her passion of and gift of poetry and calligraphy. She secretly dreams of a different life of freedom, a life that seems so far away, that is until the village has its annual festival, a big celebration in which Xing Xing's stepmother hopes to find a husband for Wei Ping. Things are going to change however and greed in the end might threaten all that Xing Xing has built up for herself.

I am a Chinese-American and I really did feel this book lived up to my expectations and the Chinese Cinderella myth that is was based on. Life in Ancient China was not easy for women and the bound feet was something that my great-great-grandma had to go through too and it was a terrible experience for her. I have become a fan of Donna Jo Napoli after her book Daughter of Venice and Bound lived up to everything I'd hoped for. A definite recommendation!

23 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Cinderella unbound, January 17, 2005

By	Jennifer Mo - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This is not your familiar, comfortable Cinderella story. There are no magic wands or pumpkin coaches, and happily ever after happens only in, well, fairy tales. Real life offers few of these sugar spun fantasies, particularly for three unsupported women in a Ming dynasty Chinese village. Fourteen year old Xing Xing, her stepmother, and her half-sister Wei Ping are each bound: socially, ideologically, and financially. The physical, crippling binding of Wei Ping's feet is a metaphor for an encompassing system of patriarchal privilege. But in another sense of the word, to be bound is also to be heading towards something-- not so much a fate, as a rare and precious choice of fates.

That freedom of choice is the greatest of presents from Xing Xing's dead mother. She may (or may not) be incarnated as a giant white and red carp, in a pond near the potter's cave in which the three women continue to live with increasing poverty after the death of Xing Xing's father. The orphaned Xing Xing lives on her stepmother's charity, such as it is, as a virtual slave. Life isn't all bad, of course. Xing Xing finds joy in writing calligraphy and poetry into the sky, in visiting the beautiful carp, in the beauty of a painted pottery shard, and in the green dress and very special pair of slippers her mother secretly left behind for her.

These four women-- Xing Xing, her dead mother, Stepmother, and Wei Ping-- and their relationships to each other are at the heart of the story. Napoli redraws Stepmother as an understandable, if not likable, figure who behaves as she does for very good reasons: ideology, jealousy, and an anxiety for Wei Ping's and her own wellbeing, for which she is willing to sacrifice Xing Xing's. The psychological undercurrents, particularly the hint of tensions between Stepmother and Xing Xing's mother when they were both alive as the potter's two wives, drive and fill in the frame of the story. No effort is made to make a traditional villain into a heroine, as with Napoli's earlier retelling of Hansel and Gretel (The Magic Circle), but Stepmother is a fully realized and complex character.

Other characters are less well drawn than Stepmother. Xing Xing is a little bland in comparison, though her conflicting desires to conform to social norms for women and to find her own voice make her a likable heroine who, though forward thinking, is not jarringly anachronistic. The prince is appealing, but he appears only briefly and rather belatedly. Despite (or because of) this, Napoli pens a conclusion as convincingly real as it is satisfying.

It doesn't all work perfectly. The magic is incorporated with subtle ambiguity in the figure of the carp, but it seems to be almost a cop out to have a blatantly magical slipper that is too small for bound feet (only when belonging to the wrong people) but fits unbound ones (belonging to the right person). The details of historical setting can also be rather awkwardly introduced, like when Stepmother mentions the "jiang hu lang zhong," immediately adding, "a barefoot wandering doctor." Overall, however, Cinderella fits in so well with a Chinese setting-- unsurprising, given that the oldest recorded versions of the tale are Chinese-- that it seems odd that Cinderella isn't set there more often.

Napoli rewrites a tale that traditionally takes place, once upon a time, in a kingdom far away, with an unflinching honesty that comes with its own brand of wisdom, logic, and magic. Bound is no longer quite a romance, in either form or content, but it is a deeply thoughtful retelling that reads as though a slipper were finally returning to its proper owner; that this was the way it really happened.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent book!, November 14, 2004

By	Lyn (Virginia) - See all my reviews

I was VERY excited to see that a new book had come out by Donna Jo Napoli. I love many of her books. My favorite is Zel, and Sirena is also very good. Bound is a very excellent book and I am very pleased with it, especially because it was better than Beast, which i personally thought could have been a bit better.
Bound is based on the Chinese version of Cinderella. I loved how it was filled with details about life in ancient China, and it was very interesting to learn more about the tradition of girls having their feet bound to make them smaller. The only small complaint I have with this book is that the end seems a bit rushed, but I really loved how the whole book was filled with Xing Xing's daily life. I especially was fascinated with Xing Xing's crazy stepmother. The book IS expensive, but i suggest you buy it!