Lisa See’s Shanghai Girls and Dreams of Joy may be distinct publications, but they are two inseparable parts of the same story. They must be read together (and reviewed together), because without one, the other is far from whole. Shanghai Girls tells the story of two sisters, Pearl and May Chin, as they escape the […]
Review of Snow Flower and the Secret Fan
Lisa See’s Snow Flower and the Secret Fan is set in rural nineteenth-century China, where women spend most of their lives confined to the four walls of upstairs women’s quarters. They are bound by customs and rules in silent subservience to fathers, husbands, and sons. They cannot travel, they cannot receive a formal education, they […]