Name: Little White Duck
ISBN: 9780761365877

Na Liu

Andrþes Vera Martiþnez

A young girl describes her experiences growing up in China, beginning with the death of Chairman Mao in 1976.

A Childhood in China

Little White Duck

Nadine 

This is a really hard book to review. On the one hand the author is to be lauded for bringing her growing up to a wider and younger audience, on the other.... I know too many adult Chinese - perhaps of a generation older than her who suffered terribly under Mao. The saying "ren shi ren" arose in the great famine where people were literally eating other peoples children to survive. Her parents benefited from communism as the were born on the right side of the wrong side of the tracks. If they'd been intellectuals or landowners it would have been a different story. And yet, it is a lovely book, and beautifully illustrated. I think what I'd like to see is several parallel books - growing up if your parents were sent to be re-educated. Growing up as one of her illiterate cousins, growing up as her paternal or maternal grandparents. Only then do I think could her life be seen in context. 
And those are all books that need to be written.

Little White Duck A Childhood in China

Reviews

Highlights