Legacy

Interviewing the turbulent recent events in China with her own personal life story and those of family, friends, and acquaintances, the author creates an evocative portrait of China and its people

YA --Using the dramatic chronology of the "China Spring" demonstrations in 1989 as her structure, Lord illuminates the mystery that is China for Westerners. While in The People's Republic of China as the wife of the American Ambassador, she renewed family ties that had been severed in 1949 when she and her family departed for a political assignment in America. Using narratives from her Chinese family and new friends, Lord is able to repair her family heritage and come to terms with the disparity of the two cultures that she shares. This is a fascinating account of China from 1949-1989 and the tenacity with which the Chinese people hold on to life within a constantly vacillating world. The book is a valuable resource in helping students better understand the background from which the "China Spring" came. It also illustrates the demands placed on an individual who must live a bicultural life. An outstanding chronology is included. --Dolores M. Steinhauer, Jefferson Sci-Tech, Alexandria, VA
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Consultant for CBS News in Beijing, Bette Bao Lord had left China for a visit to New York just days before the Tiananmen Square massacre. Yet her kaleidoscopic blend of reportage, oral history, reminiscence and family reunion sets the agony of China's current situation against decades of smoldering ferment for democratic change. A popular novelist ( Spring Moon ) and wife of Reagan's ambassador to China, Winston Lord, the author interweaves a chorus of Chinese voices: an actress whose father committed suicide rather than submit to the Party's will; a journalist paralyzed with fear; an aged scholar who was tortured and imprisoned for years; a doctor appalled at the bribery and "gift"-giving rampant in Chinese medicine. Lord writes beautifully and poignantly. 150,000 first printing; BOMC alternate; author tour.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From the autobiographical recordings which Chinese friends gave her in spring 1989 upon her departure from Beijing as the wife of Reagan's U.S. ambassador to China and the stories of her own relatives, Lord, also author of the popular novel Spring Moon ( LJ 10/15/80), creates an intimate portrait of Chinese lives and politics. Her strong prose reveals people who endured persecution and imprisonment with courage and even humor during the Cultural Revolution, experiences which seem to foreshadow the recent events and aftereffects of Tiananmen Square. Comparable in its interview style to Xinxin Zhang & Sang Ye's Chinese Lives ( LJ 11/1/87), Lord's book is both more somber about China and more hopeful about the human will to survive amid hardship. It will give a deeper understanding of the Cultural Revolution and contemporary China to many readers. BOMC alternate; previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 12/89.
-Elizabeth Teo, Moraine Valley Community Coll. Lib., Palos Hills, Ill.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.