Bound Feet & Western Dress: A Memoir
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.81 (945 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 0385479646 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 215 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2017-03-10 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
"In China, a woman is nothing."Thus begins the saga of a woman born at the turn of the century to a well-to-do, highly respected Chinese family, a woman who continually defied the expectations of her family and the traditions of her culture. Growing up in the perilous years between the fall of the last emperor and the Communist Revolution, Chang Yu-i's life is marked by a series of rebellions: her refusal as a child to let her mother bind her feet, her scandalous divorce, and her rise to Vice President of China's first women's bank in her later years.In the alternating voices of two generations, this dual memoir brings together a deeply textured portrait of a woman's life in China with the very American story of Yu-i's brilliant and assimilated grandniece, struggling with her own search for identity and belonging. Written in pitch-perfect prose and alive with detail, Bound Feet and Western Dress is the story of independent women struggling to emerge from centuries of customs and duty.
After following her husband, poet Hsu Chi-Mo, a noted philanderer, to Oxford, she made history by becoming the first Chinese woman to have a western-style divorce at age 22. Written by Yu-i's great niece, Pang-Mei Natasha Chang, Bound Feet and Western Dress chronicles the life of this exceptional woman. Determined to make her own way, she moved to America and served in a series of prestigious positions, including president of a bank. . This break with convention foreshadowed the extraordinary life Yu-i was to lead. But the child's cries so tormented her brother that he convinced their mother to s
Top-Hats, Half-Moons, and the Painful Glint of Changes ThatUmbrellaGuy Change can be a frightening affair, and looking back at change can be something that seems almost alien when beheld in the light of certain convictions. That seems to encapsulate the whole of the experience that Chang Yu-I talks about as she tries to explain something of who she is to her granddaughter, Pang-Mei, and it is one of the things that seemed to haunt me as a reader as I listened to Yu-I's tale. The chapters switch from Yu-I to Pang-Mei to give you and idea of how things have changed and to try to identify one person with the other, and I have to say that I found myself glued to the . Kay Mitchell said The Ultimate Breaking Away. The popularity of Asian stories has increased over the last few years and Bound Feet and Western Dress, A Memoir is certainly one of the most endearing. The story of Chang U-i, a woman born in a traditional China who was trained in traditional Chinese thought and responsibility, but whose life spanned both the traditional and the modern--western--world, highlights the difficulty of bridging the very distant gap between ancient Chinese custom and the vast changes thrust upon it by the emerging western world. Married off at the early age of fifteen to a man she had never seen--as was the custom-. "Just ok, not great." according to Jovena DePalma. Took a while to get to any real substance. A little on the boring side.