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Video |
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see some historical footage showing
China during World War II as well as background
about The Girl from
Purple Mountain |
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Reading Group Questions |
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This family memoir begins with a mystery. The Chai family matriarch, Ruth Mei-en Tsao Chai,
dies unexpectedly and her grieving husband
discovers that she had secretly arranged to be
buried alone--rather than in the shared plots
they had purchased together years ago. Years
later, author May-lee Chai sets about trying to
understand why her grandmother would do such a
thing, and in the process she forces her father,
Winberg Chai, to help her reconstruct his
family’s life in China before and during World
War II. Together they uncover a story full of
love, betrayal, and at long last healing.
May-lee Chai spent 10 years researching the
background of her grandmother, who was a
remarkably modern and liberated woman for her
generation. Mei-en was one of the first Chinese
women to be allowed to attend a public
university in China in 1920, received her
Master’s degree in America, chose her own
husband instead of the one her parents had
originally arranged for her to marry, and later
became the head of a school and a professor of
English. She served as Lady Mountbatten’s
translator in WWII.
To research the book, May-lee pored over
thousands of family documents and photographs,
lived in Mei-en’s hometown of Nanjing for two
years, and then followed the family’s route
throughout China when during WWII the Chai
family was forced to flee the advancing Japanese
Army.
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Additional
Reviews |
Buy it Now |
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“Tragic, funny,
lyrical, and respectful, this intimate and unforgettable
family chronicle is also a history of modern China.”
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“A multilayered
memoir that successfully weaves historical detail with
familial emotions of different generations.”
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“Together
May-lee and Winberg Chai have created a testament that
reads like a compelling and rich novel, full of
incident, soul, and fire.”
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- Luis Alberto Urrea |
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author of The
Devil's Highway
and the national
bestselling novel,
The Hummingbird's
Daughter |
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“An amazing
story of survival and endurance, fierce love and bitter
resentments, and the failures and triumphs of the human
heart.”
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- Lisa See |
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bestselling
author of
Snow Flower
and the
Secret Fan
and On
Gold
Mountain |
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“A breathtaking
epic encompassing not only family dramas but also the
Chinese civil war, the Japanese attack on Nanking, and
the difficulties of immigration and return. This is a
gripping and historically grounded read.”
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“This is an
intricately orchestrated cross-generational memoir, and
one that is particularly successful in linking the world
of China in the first half of the twentieth century to
the opportunities and ambiguities of those Chinese who
grew up as Americans. It is a subtle book that resonates
in the mind as well as being a true family history that
spans moods and generations.”
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- Jonathan
Spence |
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author of
The Search
for Modern
China
and The
George
Burton Adams
Professor of
History at
Yale
University |
Chai, May-lee & Chai, Winberg
The Girl from Purple Mountain
To order a video
or DVD of May-lee and Winberg Chai reading and
discussing The Girl from Purple Mountain on
C-Span’s Book TV, go to the BookTV website:
www.booktv.org or shop www.c-span.org or call
1-877-ONCSPAN.
Program
ID:165531
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