Author Description

Hong Ying's Daughter of the River is a memoir of China unlike any we have seen before. Acclaimed around the world, it is both a compelling self-portrait by a remarkable writer and an unforgettable expose of life at the bottom of Chinese society. Hong Ying was born during the Great Famine of the early 1960s, which claimed the lives of tens of millions, including several of her relatives. Growing up in a slum on the bank of the Yangtze River, in a neighborhood veiled in fog and superstition, she was constantly aware of the sacrifices her family made so that she would survive. And as she neared her eighteenth birthday, she became determined to unravel some of the enigmas that had troubled her all her life: a stalker who had shadowed her since childhood, an anomalous record in her father's government file, and an unshakable feeling that she was an outsider in her own family. Hong Ying's search for truth led to the discovery of family secrets that changed her life - and her perceptions of her parents, her sister, and herself - tragically and irrevocably. But these same events also set her free to leave home for good and become a writer.