None
3 stars
I'm trying to read wider on feminism outside of the Western world and Anglosphere. Jung Chang's book isn't quite about feminism - rather it is a specific look at three very different women who ended up shaping modern China.
Except... it isn't. In order to understand the history of China, you need to know about the men who shaped it. So the book almost relentlessly focuses on the men in the sisters' lives. I get that it is necessary - but it means we get endless passages about what the menfolk were doing, with nary a mention of what the sisters did or felt.
But even this falls a little short. At no point did the book ever explain what Sun Yat-sen and Chiang Kai-shek wanted. Were they just egomaniacs who wanted to rule? Did they have political demands? Were they reasonable? There's no real explanation of the politics behind …
I'm trying to read wider on feminism outside of the Western world and Anglosphere. Jung Chang's book isn't quite about feminism - rather it is a specific look at three very different women who ended up shaping modern China.
Except... it isn't. In order to understand the history of China, you need to know about the men who shaped it. So the book almost relentlessly focuses on the men in the sisters' lives. I get that it is necessary - but it means we get endless passages about what the menfolk were doing, with nary a mention of what the sisters did or felt.
But even this falls a little short. At no point did the book ever explain what Sun Yat-sen and Chiang Kai-shek wanted. Were they just egomaniacs who wanted to rule? Did they have political demands? Were they reasonable? There's no real explanation of the politics behind any of the people, so it becomes a bit of a soap opera.
It is a sweeping epic. A worldwide struggle for the heart of a nation - and for the hearts of the sisters. It's exciting and enlightening. It's also slightly infuriating. There are lots of "missing steps". There's very little discussion about the impact these people's actions had on ordinary people.
It is an excellent, if somewhat uncritical, biography of the power-players at the rebirth of a nation.
A few technical criticisms. The book file is 50MB due to its lavish use of photographs. But, annoyingly, all of the images appear at the end! This isn't a paper book, it doesn't need special paper inserts. It would have been great to see the people and places while they were being discussed.
The eBook is badly formatted. It is full of hard-hyphens. Again, it looks like the typesetting was just copied over from the paper book.
There's also a complete lack of Chinese characters. All the names and places have been Romanised - which feels a little patronising. There's also no Pinyin, which makes pronunciation difficult.
It's certainly an interesting biography (triography?) but I wish it went a little deeper.
