Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China

Description from Amazon.com: "Blending the intimacy of memoir and the panoramic sweep of eyewitness history, Wild Swans has become a bestselling classic in thirty languages, with more than ten million copies sold. The story of three generations in twentieth-century China, it is an engrossing record of Mao's impact on China, an unusual window on the female experience in the modern world, and an inspiring tale of courage and love.

Jung Chang describes the life of her grandmother, a warlord's concubine; her mother's struggles as a young idealistic Communist; and her parents' experience as members of the Communist elite and their ordeal during the Cultural Revolution. Chang was a Red Guard briefly at the age of fourteen, then worked as a peasant, a "barefoot doctor," a steelworker, and an electrician. As the story of each generation unfolds, Chang captures in gripping, moving -- and ultimately uplifting -- detail the cycles of violent drama visited on her own family and millions of others caught in the whirlwind of history."

My thoughts: I enjoy reading memoirs by people vastly different than myself. This book was lengthy, but worth the read. A lot of Chinese history is included, woven with Chang's personal family history. I have read superficially of the Cultural Revolution in China. Chang provided me with more details and put human faces on this historical period. I recommend this to all readers that enjoy memoirs or history. The one complaint I would express is that the book, to me, is long on detail and short on emotion.