Daughter of the River

The daughter is Hong Ying, a Chinese poet and novelist whose Summer of Betrayal (1997) was banned in the People's Republic, published in Taiwan and translated into English and published in the U.S. by FSG. The river is the Yangtze, whose steady presence comforted Hong during her childhood in a Chongqing slum, despite her inability to swim and her terror of the ferry crossing to the city center. In this memoir, she expresses a similar ambivalence toward her family, whose cold treatment left her resentful and hungry for love. In the days leading up to her 18th birthday, Hong's growing need to understand why she was an outsider in her own family was counterbalanced by a budding affair with her history teacher. Against a backdrop of abject poverty (her family of eight lived in two tiny rooms), political oppression (the teacher was targeted by the Communist Party) and starvation (Hong was born in 1962, during the Great Famine), the mystery of Hong's birth comes to light through childhood memories, the stories of her parents and the discovery of the identity of the stalker who regularly followed her home from school. After learning that she was the result of an adulterous relationship, Hong suffered a painful evening with her biological father, cruel accusations from her siblings and the abrupt end of her affair with the teacher. ""I suffered from escapism, the disease of weaklings,"" Hong writes in explaining how and why she left home. She's too hard on herself. This memoir is an astonishing picture of inner fortitude marshaled against insult and injury amid the turmoil and repression--both political and emotional--of mid-century China. (Jan.)