Book Club - November Meeting

Our book for November is Wild Swans. Please contact Catherine Jones at 505-690-7449 for more information.

Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China by Jung Chang is an internationally acclaimed 1991 family memoir that spans a century of Chinese history through the lives of three generations of women: her grandmother, her mother, and herself. [1, 2]

Key Aspects of the Book

• The Grandmother: Born in 1909 with bound feet, she was married off at a young age as the concubine of a high-status northern Chinese warlord.

• The Mother: Rose as an idealistic member and official of the Chinese Communist Party, enduring political struggles and the hardships of the Mao era.

• The Author (Jung Chang): Recounts her youth during the Cultural Revolution—briefly as a Red Guard, then working as a peasant, "barefoot doctor," and steelworker—before leaving for England in 1978 after the Mao era ended.

• Impact & Legacy: Selling over 15 million copies worldwide and translated into dozens of languages, the book remains banned in the People's Republic of China. Chang later wrote a sequel, Fly, Wild Swans, which picks up the family and national history from the late 1970s onward.