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While the women are impressive, one of the finest and most tragic images in Chang's book is that of her father, a self-sacrificing Communist official who denied his family party privileges as his part in an attempt to establish egalitarianism in the country. (At one point Chang's mother complained to him, "You are a good Communist but a rotten husband!" Her father only nodded, saying he knew.) He is swept away by the Cultural Revolution. But not before one supreme act of courage. Asked to praise so-called good officials by writing an adulatory wall poster, Chang's father refused -- even with the threat of beatings from Maoist thugs. His wife pleaded, "What is a poster compared to a life?" He answered, "I will not sell my soul."
Taken in pieces, Chang's narrative can be prosaic. But in its entirety, the author achieves a Dickensian tone with detailed portraits and intimate remembrances, with colorful minor characters and intricate yet fascinating side plots. There is a Chinese art of forgetting. Wild Swans is proof that there is an art of memory as well.