THE BOOK FAIR
READ AND FULFILL YOUR LIFE
Adeline Yen Mah
FALLING LEAVES
Author: Adeline Yen Mah
Published: 1997
Genre: Autobiography
Cover: Paperback
Pages: 224
Review:
Adeline Yen Mah, born in 1937, tells her story as the unwanted, fifth child. Adeline’s mother died after shortly after her birth, and she felt her father, and siblings never forgave her for her mother’s death. Her father, Joseph Yen, remarried a woman Niang, who abused Adeline from the onset.
Niang was cruel to Adeline’s siblings as well, but remained relentlessly focused on Adeline. Nothing Adeline achieved quelled the abuse from her step mother, both emotional and physical. Equally sad and damaging to Adeline was the cruel indifference of her father.
The author states that though she alone, of the children, was sent to boarding school, it allowed her the escape from Niang’s cruelty and the freedom to pursue her love of education. In later years, because of her outstanding academic achievement, her father, against Niang’s wishes, allowed Adeline to attend the universtiy in England.
The author’s strength of will and determination deliver a most poignant auto-biography.
Of interest: In 1911, foot binding in China was banned.
Chinese
Cinderella
Author: Adeline Yen Mah
Published: 1999
Genre: Autobiography
Cover: Paperback
Pages: 205
Review:
Adeline Yen Mah was born in 1937 in Tianjin, a port city in China. Born the fifth child of her father’s first wife, Adeline was blamed for her mother’s death by her family as their mother passed away days only after Adeline’s birth.
Some years later, a young woman, Niang, married Adeline’s father. Niang took an immediate dislike to Adeline for which she suffered years of abuse. At age ten, Niang sent Adeline to boarding school. Ms. Yen Mah writes that her father asked her, her birth date, as he filled in forms for the school, so little did he know of her. The author states she was the only child who never received a package or a visitor at the school.
Years later, Adeline Yen Mah’s father, against Niang’s protest, allowed her to attend college but determined the profession she would follow. Adeline preferred to study literature and become a writer, but her father insisted she study medicine and become an obstetrician to which she readily agreed.
Adeline is happily married and lives in California with her husband.
A warm personable well-written memoir, of a defenseless, rejected child and her ability and will to overcome obstacles.