Wild Swans: Three Daughters Of China

The story of three generations in twentieth-century China that blends the intimacy of memoir and the panoramic sweep of eyewitness history.

An engrossing record of Mao’s impact on China, an unusual window on the female experience in the modern world, and an inspiring tale of courage and love. Jung Chang describes the extraordinary lives and experiences of her family members: her grandmother, a warlord’s concubine; her mother’s struggles as a young idealistic Communist; and her parents’ experience as members of the Communist elite and their ordeal during the Cultural Revolution.

Jung was a Red Guard briefly at the age of fourteen, then worked as a peasant, a 'barefoot doctor', a steelworker, and an electrician. As the story of each generation unfolds, Chang captures in gripping, moving, and uplifting detail the cycles of violent drama visited on her own family, and millions of others caught in the whirlwind of history.