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DAUGHTER OF THE RIVER
By Hong Ying, translated by Howard Goldblatt
Grove Press, 278 pages, $24
Hong Ying was born on the wrong side of the Yangtze in Chongqing during a famine in 1962. Over the years, on the other side of the river, red flags flew and people sang political songs celebrating the Chinese Communist Party, but in the slum where the author lived, most residents slogged through filthy conditions and worked long hours at jobs such as carrying sand and bricks. Incredibly, Hong Ying managed to concentrate on her education, and was slowly able to escape what she calls in her arresting memoir “this rotting urban appendix.”
