Factory Girls by Leslie Chang

Imagine this is your workday:

You wake up from your bunk bed in a cramped dorm room for eight, and with the morning alarm promptly ringing at 6am you are up and fighting for use of the bathroom with all the other women on your dorm floor. By 7am you have eaten in the factory cafeteria along with the other 50,000 employees in the factory complex. That’s right- the factory employs over 70,000 people, more than the population of a small American city! After breakfast you are stationed on your assembly line team. Your task: to cut the upper materials that will eventually become the body for sneakers of famous brands like Puma, Nike, Adidas, and many others. You do this for 12 hours everyday, with a 1 hour lunch break and dinner break. You finish work by 9 or 10pm and return to your dorm to begin a new day tomorrow. It’s only Monday, and you still have 5 more days of work before your one Sunday off. You make roughly 1,000 rmb a month- $160.

Such is the life of many factory girls in China, yet their move from the farming villages into working conditions such as these are seen as a success and a triumph for millions of migrant women.

Leslie Chang offers a fascinating glimpse into the lives of real young migrant women in China, girls our age, who move from their rural villages to bustling centers like Shenzhen, Dongguan and Guangzhou, all of a two hour train ride away from Hong Kong. Simultaneously, Chang also weaves in her family’s own personal history in China. And for once it felt very satisfying to get a Chinese American’s perspective on all the happenings of modern China. She is also the wife of writer Peter Hessler, who wrote two great books on teaching and living in China- Buki has the one I traded at our book swap, Oracle Bones.

Whenever I read books about China, I always reflect upon my own experiences there, and I feel like I’m re-living much of it all over again. Chang provides amusing and humorous glimpses into facets of Chinese society I may never encounter, making the book a fast and entertaining read. I also really appreciated the way in which she worked in the personal story of her family, as I felt it was something I have been wanting to do with my own experiences in learning about my family’s history in China and Hong Kong.

Another favorite scene in the book is when she writes about one of the main characters who works in a handbag factory. It turns out that the handbag factory makes purses for Coach, but the girl and her fellow workers never really understand the true value of how much the bags are worth, trading them among friends and never really using them.

Hope you will all get a chance to read this!

Shanghai Girls

I've spent the last month reading like a mad woman. While I'm really enjoying school, it's so nice to be able to read for pleasure. Of the books I've read in the past few weeks (I may blog about a few of the others later), Shanghai Girls by Lisa See was by far the most fascinating.

The book follows the lives of two sisters from (you guessed it) Shanghai from the 1930s to the 1950s. I don't want to give away too many details about the story because I think those of you who choose to read it will enjoy discovering them for yourself, but anyone with a sister or a close friend will appreciate the relationship between the two sisters Pearl and May. The story of Pearl and May travels from Shanghai to the U.S. after a suprising turn of events.

In addition to its engaging narrative, I particularly enjoyed learning a little bit about Chinese history from Shanghai Girls. I wasn't aware of the turbulent relationship between the Chinese and Japanese in the late '30s and '40s, and while I was somewhat aware of the immigration challenges in the U.S. mid-century, Shanghai Girls provided me with additional insight and perspective.

During my visit to Florida last weekend, I borrowed Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, also by Lisa See, from my grandmother (we did a Lisa See book exchange), and I am excited to get started on it sooon.

Has anyone else read any books by Lisa See? If so, what are your thoughts?

The Elegance of the Hedgehog

I recently read "The Elegance of the Hedgehog" by Muriel Barbery and while it took me almost half of the book to finally get into it, at the end I felt like it was well worth it. The novel was originally printed in French and was on the New York Times Bestseller list.

The story is mainly about an older woman who works as a concierge in an apartment building and a young girl who lives in the apartment building with her family. Both women are extremely smart and feel completely isolated from the world because of it. The older woman is of a lower station and therefore keeps her intelligence a secret for fear of others around her treating her badly because of it. The young girl comes from a wealthy family but her intellect separates her from her family who only seem to care about the most insignificant and trivial things in life. Both women's lives are changed forever when a new tenant moves into the apartment building.

I won't say anything more than that so that I don't ruin anything for anyone who wants to read it, but I was really touched by this story. Has anyone else read this? What were your thoughts?

Gomorrah - Novel to Film #2

The next book on the "novel to film" list was Gomorrah by Roberto Saviano. I had watched the film when it came out last year and was not impressed by what I saw at all. I know that there were plenty of people who did love it though (it was nominated for an Oscar!) so I was interested in reading the book to hopefully change my thoughts about the film.

I found the film extremely confusing with all of the different storylines not really fitting cohesively with the others. I thought maybe it was the editing, but now that I've read the book, I see that it was the style of the way the book was written.

The book itself was interesting when discussing the role of women in the Italian mafia, as well as how Hollywood has been influenced by the Italian mafia and then conversely how the mafia has been influenced by Hollywood. Those chapters kept me engaged and weren't a chore to get through.

However, the parts I didn't appreciate so much were the chapters where the author just told story after story of how different mobsters were killed. I felt like I was reading a police log from a newspaper! I didn't feel like I could connect to any of the characters in the story and I think it was because the author didn't allow for that connection to happen.

Did anyone else feel the same way? What were your other thoughts on the novel?