Ginger Tale

Ever since Jung Chang's Wild Swans became a global publishing sensation, booksellers have decided that the Beautiful Chinese Literary Heroine is a golden goose. I don't know if there's an official literary term for this genre yet, but let's call it Chinese Chick Lit. If you look at books like Adeline Yen Mah's Falling Leaves and Anhua Gao's To the Edge of the Sky , you'll find a basic formula: a feisty, exotically gorgeous woman suffers hell. Hell comes in the form of an oppressive regime (usually the Cultural Revolution) or through abuse inflicted by male power figures (heartless fathers or cruel...

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