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Library | Call Number | Status |
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Searching... McMinnville Public Library | 920.72 Mah, Adeline | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Woodburn Public Library | 305.488951 Mah 2001 | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
This powerful memoir about a girl growing up in a wealthy but dysfunctional Chinese family during the 1940s evokes the classic fairy tale, Cinderella.
Author Notes
Although Adeline Yen Mah was born into a wealthy family in Tianjin, China in 1937, her childhood was an unhappy one. Born female in a culture that often devalues women, her situation was made worse by the fact that her family blamed Yen Mah for her mother's death, which occurred just after she was born.
Her autobiography, Falling Leaves: The True Story of an Unwanted Chinese Daughter, details the emotional abuse she suffered from her father, siblings and, in particular, her stepmother. Most notable was the fact that her family, fleeing to Hong Kong in 1948 as the Communist army gained control of China, initially left the 10-year-old Yen Mah behind, in a boarding school in northern China.
An international play-writing competition made it possible for Yen Mah to escape her unhappy family life when she was 14. She won the competition, and this convinced her father to send her to a boarding school in England. Yen Mah remained in England for 11 years, attending college and earning a medical degree. When she returned to Hong Kong in 1963 to do an internship, however, Yen Mah found that her family's attitude toward her had not improved. She left again, this time to accept a residency in the United States.
In the U.S., Yen Mah found professional success, eventually becoming the chief of anesthesiology at Anaheim Community Hospital in California. She also found personal happiness with her second husband, Bob Mah, and their two children. However, she was always troubled by her estrangement from her father and stepmother, and after their deaths she went through a period of severe depression. She began writing Falling Leaves as a way to work through her feelings of rejection, never imagining that her story would become an international bestseller.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
School Library Journal Review
Gr 6 Up-This absorbing autobiography tells the story of an unwanted child in upper-class 1940s China. Because her mother died at her birth, Wu Mei (Fifth Younger Sister, renamed Adeline) was a "bad luck" daughter, never forgiven by her father or her four older siblings. When she was a year old, her father remarried. Her Eurasian stepmother produced two more children, who became the favored ones. Wu Mei's efforts to attract her father's attention by consistent top marks at school were ignored and ridiculed except by her Aunt Baba, who shared a similar outcast status in the family. Her aunt's constant affection and encouragement provided the only relief to the girl's daily humiliation and emotional abuse. Determined to separate the two, her parents sent the 11-year-old to boarding school. This was 1948; the Communists were consolidating their power. Soon she was the only student left, abandoned and forgotten by her parents when they fled to Hong Kong. Luckily, an aunt rescued her and returned her to her unwelcoming family. There, enrolled in another Catholic school, she finally gained her father's permission to study in England. Mah has told this story before, in her best-selling autobiography, Falling Leaves (Wiley, 1998). This version for younger readers is more sharply focused, seen through the lens of the story of Ye Xian, a version of the "Cinderella" tale dating back to the ninth century. Fourteen pages of front matter and the slow beginning necessary to introduce the unfamiliar setting may deter some readers, but those who persevere will be rewarded by the rich depiction of a very different world.-Kathleen Isaacs, Edmund Burke School, Washington, DC (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
Mah revisits the territory she covered in her adult bestseller, Falling Leaves, for this painful and poignant memoir aimed at younger readers. Blamed for the loss of her mother, who died shortly after giving birth to her, Mah is an outcast in her own family. When her father remarries and moves the family to Shanghai to evade the Japanese during WWII, Mah and her siblings are relegated to second-class status by their stepmother. They are given attic rooms in their big Shanghai home, they have nothing to wear but school uniforms, and they subsist on a bare-bones diet while their stepmother's children dine sumptuously. Mah finds escape from this emotionally barren landscape at school, but the academic awards she wins only enrage her jealous siblings and stepmother, and she is eventually torn from her auntÄher one championÄand shipped off to boarding school. That Mah eventually soars above her circumstances is proof of her strength of character. The author recreates moments of cruelty and victory so convincingly that readers will feel almost as if they're in the room with her. She never veers from a child's sensibility; the child in these pages rarely judges the actions of those around her, she's simply bent on surviving. Mah easily weaves details of her family's life alongside the traditions of China (e.g., her grandmother's bound feet) and the changes throughout the war years and subsequent Communist takeover. This memoir is hard to put down. Ages 12-up. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Horn Book Review
After her mother dies giving birth to her, Adeline's siblings, who consider her bad luck, scapegoat her, and her wealthy father and vain stepmother deprive her of friends and send her away to school. This riveting memoir of a turbulent childhood is enriched by Chinese-language lessons, a generous historical backdrop, and a half-dozen family photos; baldly expository dialogue is its only real flaw. From HORN BOOK Spring 2000, (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Booklist Review
Gr. 6^-12. "Mama died giving birth to you. If you had not been born, Mama would still be alive." Even though Mama died two weeks after the birth from a fever, this brutal message dooms Wu Mei (Fifth Younger Sister) throughout her sad and lonely childhood in China during the 1940s and 1950s. Wu Mei, whose English name is Adeline, faces the anger and cruelty of her family; only an aunt and frail grandfather are supportive. Shunted off to boarding schools, left out of family activities, Adeline nevertheless thrives academically and hopes desperately (and futily) to please her father. In this young adult version of the author's Falling Leaves, Mah offers a bittersweet look into the pain of childhood and a fascinating glimpse at a tumultuous time in China. Amazingly unscathed by the Communist revolution, her wealthy family heads for Hong Kong after Mao assumes power and resumes its privileged lifestyle. There are moments of clumsiness, as when Adeline verbalizes her distress in ways young people probably would not: "And if I should be so lucky as to succeed one day, it will be because you believed in me," she tells her grandfather. But this is a captivating read because we care so much about the heroine and her future. --Anne O'Malley