Chinese Cinderella: The True Story of an Unwanted Daughter - Softcover

Mah, Adeline Yen

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0440228654 ISBN 13: 9780440228653

Publisher: Laurel Leaf, 2001

Synopsis

A riveting memoir of a girl's painful coming-of-age in a wealthy Chinese family during the 1940s.

A Chinese proverb says, "Falling leaves return to their roots." In Chinese Cinderella, Adeline Yen Mah returns to her roots to tell the story of her painful childhood and her ultimate triumph and courage in the face of despair. Adeline's affluent, powerful family considers her bad luck after her mother dies giving birth to her. Life does not get any easier when her father remarries. She and her siblings are subjected to the disdain of her stepmother, while her stepbrother and stepsister are spoiled. Although Adeline wins prizes at school, they are not enough to compensate for what she really yearns for -- the love and understanding of her family.

Following the success of the critically acclaimed adult bestseller Falling Leaves, this memoir is a moving telling of the classic Cinderella story, with Adeline Yen Mah providing her own courageous voice.

About this title

Review:

Adeline Yen Mah first told her story in the emotive, bestselling Falling Leaves, an adult autobiography which charted her passage from childhood through to womanhood. Here in Chinese Cinderella she relates her tale for younger readers, detailing her difficult life as an unwanted and deeply misunderstood child.

Christened with the Chinese name Jun-ling, her mother died just a few days after her birth, and from that moment her fate within her family was sealed. As one of seven siblings, including two children from her father's second marriage, Jun-ling struggled to maintain her dignity from a young age, treated as she was with a vicious contempt by all around her at home, apart from her beloved Aunt Baba and her elderly grandfather.

Growing up as she did in a relatively wealthy Chinese family in the 40s and 50s, the privileges that money would normally give such a child passed her by, and even her intelligence which shone through as early as kindergarten could not save her from the emotional brutality of a family who simply did not love her.

Jun-ling¹s story, written from the very heart of the successful adult she has become, is a stinging and hostile tale of a child whose young life was blighted by lack of care and affection and is an emotional roller coaster journey which, without actually falling into the trap of melodrama, will wring tears of rage, sadness and deep, deep frustration from any reader. (Age 10 and over) --Susan Harrison

Review:

"This memoir is hard to put down." -- "Publishers Weekly", Starred

"From the Paperback edition."

"This memoir is hard to put down." -- "Publishers Weekly," Starred

"From the Paperback edition."

"This memoir is hard to put down." -- Publishers Weekly, Starred

From the Paperback edition.

About this edition

• Publisher: Laurel Leaf
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0440228654
• ISBN 13: 9780440228653
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• Number of pages: 203