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?

Non-Fiction Fun

Thanks, Tiff, for your posts about the Hurricane and Northern Lights. It saddens me that I don't have time for pleasure reading, and I am looking forward to tackling the growing stack of books on might night table when I am off from school in January.

I'm really enjoying being back in school, and while the first half of the semester included some not so fun books (all 85 of the Federalist Papers, for example), I am really enjoying the books assigned in the second half of my Intro to Public Affairs course.

I've read most of What You Should Know about Politics...But Don't by Jessamyn Conrad. Though not the most sophisticated book (I like to think that Conrad, who is getting her PhD in Art History, wrote this book as a guide to politics for art history majors), it explains all sorts of political issues very well--and to her credit, Conrad does explain the many sides of political issues. The book is not entirely non-partisan, as it claims to be, but it does provide a well-rounded view of what is going on in American political life.

On the "I didn't know America had a eugenics program" front, I am currently about a third of the way through of War Against the Weak by Edwin Black. So far, it is incredibly fascinating. I had no idea that Germany learned about eugenics from the US! And with all of the debate over "human engineering" (did anyone see this week's Private Practice), the books feels incredibly relevant. I'll post more when I am done, but if you enjoy history, this is a good one.

The 16th Round by Rubin "Hurricane" Carter

We were supposed to read this book as the first in our "novel to film" round, but as luck would have it (or rather, lack of luck), none of us could get our hands on a copy in time, so we moved on to the next book on the list. I was still interested in reading this book, however, so I kept it on my library queue and read it after I was done with the bookclub book of the month.

I had seen the film with Denzel Washington, so I was vaguely familiar with Carter's story, but after now having read the novel, I see that the film definitely left out a lot of the events of his life in order to make a more sympathetic character out of Carter. You don't see Denzel Washington mugging people (or at least that I can remember...I'm going to netflix it so that I can refresh my memory...)

Considering that the novel is a memoir more than a biography, I couldn't help but question some of the things that Carter tells us. I'm not saying that I don't believe Carter's story to a certain extent because I know that racism plays an big part in the relations between many different ethnicities, but it seems that every time something happens to him, he blames it on the prejudice of others. He never seems to take responsibility for his own behavior (which includes mugging and robbing people) and instead tries to justify his actions by constantly reminding you of the circumstances of what most, if not all, Black people during that time were going through. Not everyone made the same choices that he did.

As for the murders that he was given the life sentences for, I believe him when he says that he didn't commit those crimes, if only because his life seemed to be going in a completely different direction than most of his life was heading and he seems to be on the right path. Married with a child on the way, a career that was flourishing...he'd have had to be an idiot to mess that up.

I found the novel to be an interesting read (especially since my dad grew up in Paterson and my grandmother still lives there...I was even able to picture some of the places that Carter mentions) and I was definitely intrigued by Carter, but I don't think that I ever allowed myself to truly open up to Carter. Perhaps that was because I never felt like he was able to truly open up to us...his audience.

Has anyone else read this novel? What were your thoughts? Do you think that Carter was able to give an objective view of his own life?

Northern Lights - Novel to Film #1

As the first book of our new round, we read Northern Lights by Nora Roberts. Personally, I was really interested to read the book because of all of the drama surrounding the stars of the made for tv film. I'm not proud of it, but it's the truth. Hehe.

I was pleasantly surprised that this was more than just a typical romance novel. True, it did have the sweeping, unrealistic (at least to me) love story, but what kept me turning the page was the murder mystery storyline that was woven in. I found myself really paying attention to the clues and trying to figure out who the killer was before the story revealed it. Of course, that didn't happen, but that's the point. The author let us know the answers when she decided it was time.

Beyond the love story with the murder mystery subplot, the core of the story, I found, was the internal struggle of Nate. He was a tortured soul who came to the town to escape his demons and he ends up going through a complete transformation. It was almost as if he was SUPPOSED to be in Lunacy at that exact time period so that not only he could experience the transformation, but so could other people in the town. I thought that he was the most interesting character of the book and the only one who could think with a clear head at all times. It was almost like he was the perfect man, except for the fact that you know that he's not. He's flawed, but he rises to the challenge of life and it was great to have someone like that to read about.

I haven't seen the film, but I just got it from work today (had no idea that we had the DVD rights to it! hehe) and so I'll definitely be sitting down to watch it soon. Not sure that I buy Leann Rhimes as Meg, but we'll see what happens...Eddie Cibrian as Nate almost works for me (he's very handsome), but I imagined Nate as a little older.

Who was your favorite character from the book? Any other thoughts on the book? Any thoughts on the film vs novel?