Bound Feet & Western Dress

By Pang-Mei Natasha Chang

Book Overview

A harrowing dual memoir that braids the story of a Chinese-American woman's search for identity with the dramatic tale of her great-aunt, who was born at the turn of the century in tradition-bound China and went on to become Vice President of China's first women's bank.

"In China, a woman is nothing."

Thus begins the saga of a woman born at the turn of the century to a well-to-do, highly respected Chinese family, a woman who continually defied the expectations of her family and the traditions of her culture. Growing up in the perilous years between the fall of the last emperor and the Communist Revolution, Chang Yu-i's life is marked by a series of rebellions: her refusal as a child to let her mother bind her feet, her scandalous divorce, and her rise to Vice President of China's first women's bank in her later years.

In the alternating voices of two generations, this literary debut brings together a deeply textured portrait of a woman's life in China with the very American story of Yu-i's brilliant and assimilated grandniece, struggling with her own search for identity and belonging. Written in pitch-perfect prose and alive with detail, Bound Feet and Western Dress is the story of independent women struggling to emerge from centuries of customs and duty.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0385479646
• ISBN13: 9780385479646
• Release Date: September 1997
• Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.51 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.2" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Top-Hats, Half-Moons, and the Painful Glint of Changes

Change can be a frightening affair, and looking back at change can be something that seems almost alien when beheld in the light of certain convictions. That seems to encapsulate the whole of the experience that Chang Yu-I talks about as she tries to explain something of who she is to her granddaughter, Pang-Mei, and it is one of the things that seemed to haunt me as a reader as I listened to Yu-I's tale. The chapters switch...

I recommend the Chinese version of this book

I read the Chinese version of this book and I strongly recommend it. I was really moved by this book (based on the Chinese version, translated by Tan Jiayu, published in Taiwan, ISBN 957-9553-66-3). I could feel the struggling of all its characters. The struggling between cultures, humanity and changes. I could feel the helpless and weakness of mankind. I haven't had a chance to read the English version but I believe...

evocative and beautfiul

I could not put this book down and read it in a few hours. This is by far the best book I have read on traditional Chinese values and society in the early twentieth century from a feminine perspective. As a first-generation Chinese American, who grew up in Shanghai and came to America at the age of eight and attended an Ivy League school, I identified not only with the author's experience of growing up in America and the...

Makes a great gift ...courage in the face of change

This novel was given to me by my younger brother for Christmas 1997. He said he thought it might be interesting for me--I think it is the best gift he's ever given me. I am the eldest daughter of a Chinese family; my own mother came from China and I and my brothers were born here in America. The biography "Bound Feet and Western Dress" serves to further enrich all the stories and experiences that my mother has been telling...

Powerful story of old and new

This is an incredibly powerful story of one woman's struggle in China. Yu-i, the daughter of a distinguished family, was born at the turn of the century in China. "In China, a woman is nothing." So the story begins. Growing up between the fall of the last emperor and the Communist Revolution, Yu-i, like all other Chinese girls, was expected to have her feet bound. This was the beginning of Yu-i's life of rebellion. At...