Fly, Wild Swans: My Mother, Myself, and China

Historian Chang (Big Sister, Little Sister, Red Sister) parallels China’s political upheavals with the evolution of her and her mother’s relationship in this powerful memoir. Born in 1952 Yibin to an influential Communist couple who were frequently imprisoned for speaking out against Mao Zedong, Chang won a scholarship to London in 1978 to study Western culture as party leader Deng Xiaoping opened borders and attempted economic reforms. Inspired by her mother’s tenacity and willingness to confront CCP officials over her father’s 1967 imprisonment, Chang reveled in her newfound freedom, earning a doctorate in linguistics and writing extensively on China’s history. Much of the account examines how her work brought Chang closer to, then further away from, her mother: after the success of Chang’s 1991 memoir Wild Swans, the two bonded over their shared understanding of China’s past and their vision for its future, and as Chang made bombshell discoveries about Mao while writing a 2006 biography of the former chairman, her mother shielded her from blowback. After current president Xi Jinping ramped up censorship, however, in the late 2010s Chang’s mother stopped allowing family visits to China to protect Chang from imprisonment. Edifying, heartbreaking, and infuriating, this is tough to shake. Agent: Clare Alexander, Aitken Alexander Assoc. (Jan.)