Private Revolutions

Starred review from May 15, 2024
The stories of four women who came of age during China's economic boom. When Yang, a columnist and Europe-China correspondent for the Financial Times, returned to her native China, she met other professionals who, like her, had been "left behind." While their parents sought opportunities in the factories and cities, fueling the country's opening to global manufacturing and trade contracts, these children were often raised by their grandparents and other relatives in rural villages. The author follows four women--Siyue, Leiya, Sam, and June--through their adolescence and early adulthood, delineating their experiences during China's drastic transition to authoritarian capitalism. While their economic roots, family dynamics, and professional prospects vary, these four exemplify the country's rapid, almost whiplash-inducing, change over the last two decades. Yang attends primarily to the individual dreams, relationships, and trajectories of these four women, but as their paths intersect with economic trends and political movements--from the trajectory of China's stock market to modern Marxist activism--the author includes relevant commentary that grants fuller context to global headlines. Her treatment of a variety of relevant topics--oppressive labor conditions, the high stakes and competitive market around education, the lasting implications of the one-child policy, and government surveillance--is embedded in the roles her characters play as daughters, students, mothers, workers, and romantic partners. The overlap of the four women's stories and their individual wrestling with the challenges presented by their country demystifies the too-easy narrative of China as a behemoth set on a linear path to superpower. Through these interlocking biographical sketches, Yang offers a fresh interpretation of the ongoing nature of China's many upheavals, the actual effects of its oft-discussed policies, the cost of its meteoric economic growth, and the role a new generation of women is poised to play. A highly revealing, human-centered cultural inquiry.

COPYRIGHT(2024) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Starred review from July 1, 2024
The nation of China has experienced unprecedented economic reform over the past five decades, offering seemingly limitless possibilities--but also unimaginable competition. Hundreds of thousands of students vie for admission into top universities each year, and there can be tens of thousands of applicants for a single professional job posting. This engaging offering follows four women from childhood to the current day as they navigate city life and establish careers, documenting their struggles with school admissions and quotas, educational scams, unsafe working conditions, forays into social activism, and family and corporate intrigues. Alternating chapters allow each subject's story to emerge, and while personal details vary (one spent her early years in a remote village with her great-grandparents, another discovered her true vocation while teaching soldiers basic English greetings in preparation for the 2008 Olympics), similarities emerge: intense pressure exerted by the one-child policy, needed support from other women, and shared dedication to hard work (evidenced by an inability to function during time off from factory shifts). There are no happy endings; these women's experiences continue to morph along with new, twenty-first century realities. This very readable account offers rare and unblinking insights into modern China.

COPYRIGHT(2024) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.