But aside from the historical viewpoint of the novel, it also displays the Chinese superstitions and the importance of honor and the appearance of one’s family. Within the first few pages, you become a fly-on-the-wall in this poor girl’s childhood. The way Yen Mah writes thoroughly submerses the reader into a world not so long ago, yet so unnervingly different, in her simplistic but engaging writing style. This maltreatment culminates with Yen Mah being abandoned in a convent school in Tianjin, where everybody is fleeing from, as the Communists were winning the war and taking over larger areas of China: “A Chinese student in a foreign convent school is seen by them as a member of the same religious order and will be persecuted along with the nuns if they win the war.”Ĭhinese Cinderella is easy to read but difficult to put down. Yen Mah struggles for years yearning for the approval of her father and step-mother, Niang, through her academic persistence – but even topping her class for weeks on end gets her scolded for being “too proud”.

Yen Mah’s mother died giving birth to her, so for her whole life she was blamed, hated, discriminated against, and made to feel unwanted by most of her family, save her Aunt Baba and her grandparents. If the name ‘Cinderella’ evokes thoughts of a poor girl mistreated by her step-mother, then you’re headed in the right direction, but without the same happy-ever-after.Īdeline Yen Mah tells the true story of her childhood during the 1940s, during the midst of many wars in China.

“…As for Father, he doesn’t even remember my name.

Chinese cinderella by adeline yen mah