Summer Reading - Wild Swan: Three Daughters of China

This books covers three generations and tells readers a story of the three with great detail and allows readers to imagine the experience that the family went through. It shows the face of society and Communism's aftermath of failure. This book has allowed me to see Communism through a whole new light and how the people believed Mao’s word so easily in their state of worry, hunger, and economic failure. It allows readers to understand the worry of the people after Communism how they felt after being pulled out of their equally poor utopia. The author is conflicted about the idea of communism as Mao starts to change things. She asks if the Red Guards are something that is correct for the society, she later pushes asides these thoughts questioning whether the thoughts she is having is good and what would happen if she said it aloud. Later on, in the book, she starts doubting the leader and his theory more. She then when she and her family run away to England she realizes that everything in the idea of Communism was not something that worked out and realizes that her thoughts were right although she still feels she shouldn’t feel that way as it is still her home country.

The most surprising thing to me was that people even though they realized the segregations of blacks and grays to the reds and whites or the Kummington to the revolutionaries, Kummingatans are seen as the people who are corrupt and hurting the poor and all of them were blamed for the poverty and deaths in Old China, the Red Guards were very violent toward the alleged Kummingtans or just anyone they wanted to get revenge on because they were jealous of that person, annoyed or angry at that person. The reason for punishing the people who still desired Old China was just false accusations to get revenge.

When reading the I also thought that the idea of Communism wasn’t that bad at first and I questioned why people thought a Communist government was bad but as the story proceeded I realized the negatives of Communism and the hypocrisy of Mao himself. The story didn’t have much equality towards women especially in the author’s great-grandmother and grandmother’s time they were seen as lowly and horrible if they didn’t marry a man of high status or if they didn’t follow the husband’s order then they were to be set low in society and the family was disgraced just like it is still in some societies and was also similar for the women.

This book has some content of descriptive violence and words that may not be suitable for a person under the age of 14 but the book is interesting and informing about three generations of China that lived through major events of Chinese history and how they survived through the Communism and the violence caused by it. I would definitely recommend reading it. The book is something that can be enjoyed it tells you about the history of women and it also gives a little bit of the context of the lives of women and other roles and responsibilities and gives the reader a timeline of what is going on outside of China like the Korean War etc. The author seems to show no biases during the story and tells the story according to her family history and her memory.