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My Mother, Myself and China
by Jung Chang
The long-awaited sequel to Wild Swans, the multi-million copy, international bestselling sensation that traces the history of modern China through the true stories of three generations of women in one family.
Jung Chang's epic family memoir, Wild Swans, defined a generation, chronicling the experiences of Jung, her mother, and her grandmother—"three daughters of China"—as China transformed from empire to Communist nation. Fly, Wild Swans continues the story of Jung's family—and China—from the late 1970s until today. During that time, China rises from a decrepit and isolated state to world power challenging American dominance as Jung makes a new life in the West—one of the first Chinese to leave her homeland at the end of the Cultural Revolution. As Jung becomes a writer, her life remains intimately entwined with her native land, a relationship made more complex because her books are banned.
A love letter to her mother, and a tribute to her grandmother and father, victims of the Cultural Revolution, Fly, Wild Swans reveals that for Jung, the past is never far away. It has shaped her, just as it has molded modern China and continues to influence its future.
Today, China is again at another watershed moment: Chairman Xi Jinping seeks to return the country to the Maoist days, building a Communist state with capitalist features. This new Xi era is greatly affecting both Jung and her mother. Fly, Wild Swans brings their story into the present, offering an immersive, deeply moving, and unforgettable account of life in a communist dictatorship and the threats modern China poses to the international world order. It is family history at its best.
"Historian Chang parallels China's political upheavals with the evolution of her and her mother's relationship in this powerful memoir… Edifying, heartbreaking, and infuriating, this is tough to shake." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"An essential, unexpectedly relevant account of a people divided and turned against themselves by politics." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"An enthralling look into modern Chinese history and the impact on a family." —Booklist
This information about Fly, Wild Swans was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Photo: Jon Halliday
Jung Chang is the author of Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China, Empress Dowager Cixi; and Big Sister, Little Sister, Red Sister, as well as Mao: The Unknown Story, with her husband, Jon Halliday. She was born in Yibin, Sichuan Province, China, in 1952, and is the first person from the People's Republic of China to receive a doctorate from a British university. She has been awarded a CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) for services to literature and to history, and lives in London with her husband.
If you liked Fly, Wild Swans, try these:
by Eve J.. Chung
Published 2025
A propulsive, extraordinary novel about a mother and her daughters' harrowing escape to Taiwan as the Communist revolution sweeps through China, by debut author Eve J. Chung, based on her family story.
by Wiz Wharton
Published 2025
Set between the last years of the "Chinese Windrush" in 1966 and Hong Kong's Handover to China in 1997, a mysterious inheritance sees a young woman from London uncovering buried secrets in her late mother's homeland in this captivating, wry debut about family, identity, and the price of belonging.
by Linda Rui Feng
Published 2022
A lyrical novel set against the backdrop of China's Cultural Revolution that follows a father's quest to reunite his family before his precocious daughter's momentous birthday, which Garth Greenwell calls "one of the most beautiful debuts I've read in years."
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