Exciting News!!

Did you happen to read Wild Swans when it came out in 1991? The book was chosen by my Atlanta Book Club, and I initially balked at reading such a long one. After all, I worked and went to school and ran a household and had a husband and two children and two dogs–whew!! Lots more energy in those days. Well, I read the book, and it ended up being one of the best books I have ever read!! I learned so much about the history of China in much of the 20th Century and truly became an admirer of the author Jung Chang. She tells the story of her grandmother, born into the feudal Chinese Warlords system and how her own mother transitioned from a happy childhood to the horrors of World War II. She then writes about growing up with a mother and father who struggled to make it through the many iterations of Communist China. The book ends around 1978 when Chang leaves China for the United States. And that’s it!! End of book.

Now Jung Chang has written a sequel to Wild Swans entitled Fly, Wild Swans: My Mother, Myself and China. Her story brings us up to date with what she has been doing as well as the events in her mother’s life and that of the country in general. This is not an entirely cheery memoir. How could it be? She doesn’t mind going into the good, the bad and the ugly. Both of her books have been banned in China! But the reader does not despair. There is something about the candor and bravery of Jung Chang that makes us admire her and ultimately all of the Chinese citizens who have lived lives much the same as she has, both in and out of mainland China.