Daughter of the River

A gripping autobiography of a Chinese woman born near the Yangtze River in the early 60s during the big famine of China. The famine, whose magnitude I never imagined, killed tens of millions of people. Through her raw and honest account of the hard life in China throughout her childhood, I got a glimpse of the country where my parents were making a parallel struggle in another city, and came to a better understanding of the political and physical turmoil they lived under. During those years and even a decade later when I and my brother were born, my parents had to "tighten their belts" and save their food for us.

With the backdrop of the epidemic plight in China, the author told vivid details of her personal experience, and such details as people drowning in the river, dying of hunger, sharing extremely tight living quarters with no privacy and falling in the poop in public toilets give a very stark impression of the gross level of existance the Chinese people had to endure. Besides poverty, the political oppression at that time did not make life a bit easier. I could not help but shed many tears during my reading.

The book also talks about Hong's sexual awakening as well as the mystery that has shrouded her whole childhood. This mystery surrounding her birth is gradually revealed toward the end of the story. A very sad revelation yet a turning point that pushed her into a new direction in life--to leave home and become a writer.