Rating: 
Summary: Book Review
Review: "Bound Feet & Western Dress" is about the life of a Chinese woman, Yu-i, and how she struggles to follow Western culture and modernise herself while still adhering to the Chinese custom of respect and submission. Yu-i was born "in changing times" in China, so she made it her personal goal to be the first female in her family to break the cultural norms like foot-binding and women not being allowed to have an education. It covers many events, from Chinese foot binding and weddings, to the first divorce of China and how Chinese women are expected to wholly defer to their family's and husband's expectations. It is wonderful how the author blended historic and modern events into one story, and showed how difficult it is for one person to make such a leap between the times. Many of the events and issues in the book paved the way for today's modern society. This book would definately appeal to readers interested in history or different cultures.
Rating:
Summary: Book Review
Review: "Bound Feet & Western Dress" is about the life of a Chinese woman, Yu-i, and how she struggles to follow Western culture and modernise herself while still adhering to the Chinese custom of respect and submission. Yu-i was born "in changing times" in China, so she made it her personal goal to be the first female in her family to break the cultural norms like foot-binding and women not being allowed to have an education. It covers many events, from Chinese foot binding and weddings, to the first divorce of China and how Chinese women are expected to wholly defer to their family's and husband's expectations. It is wonderful how the author blended historic and modern events into one story, and showed how difficult it is for one person to make such a leap between the times. Many of the events and issues in the book paved the way for today's modern society. This book would definately appeal to readers interested in history or different cultures.
Rating: 
Summary: The past and the present, east and west, in parallel.
Review: Bound Feet & Western Dress is engaging and mesmerizing, as Chang tells the story in two voices, hers and her great-aunt Yu-i's. In switching between voices, the author is in turns heartbreaking and amusing. She manages to show that while footbinding may be a practice of the past, we in the present -- we who believe we are above such cruel practices -- have our own ways of binding and constricting ourselves. Yu-i spanned cultures and decades. By examining this woman's long life, her great-niece Pang-Mei finds lessons she can apply to her own future as a woman and as a writer
Rating:
Summary: compelling story
Review: A glimpse in the life of a Chinese woman at the beginning of the century as told by her grandniece. Chang superposes her own life experiences and doubts as a Chinese-American to her great aunt's life in China and Europe. It is beautifully written and very compelling. The plight of Chinese women is vividly described. When I was done I wanted to know more about China and Chinese culture in general
Rating:
Summary: a strong modern Chinese woman
Review: As the story progresses, I was taken to every scenery that Yu-i had been. I felt the pain when she lost Peter in Germany, I felt angry for her toward Lu Xiaman. In Hsu Chih -mo's eyes, Yu-i is a "country pumpkin", he asked the divorce to set both of them free. Yu-i did get her freedom from the divorce, what happened to her made her a strong woman. However, I don't think that Hsu Chih-mo was freed by the divorce. His marriage with Lu Xiaman was another prison for him, he even devoted his life to this marriage, prisoned himself as a slave of their marriage. I admire Yu-i's strength toward the crucial life, I respect her dignity and faith to the tradition. Even Hsu Chih-mo thought that she was a "pumpkin".I think what she had inside her was even greater than those "well learned women" that her ex-husband loved. To me, she is indeed a strong modern Chinese woman. By the way, I really like the author's writing style, I'm looking forward to read another book of her.
Rating:
Summary: a strong modern Chinese woman
Review: As the story progresses, I was taken to every scenery that Yu-i had been. I felt the pain when she lost Peter in Germany, I felt angry for her toward Lu Xiaman. In Hsu Chih -mo's eyes, Yu-i is a "country pumpkin", he asked the divorce to set both of them free. Yu-i did get her freedom from the divorce, what happened to her made her a strong woman. However, I don't think that Hsu Chih-mo was freed by the divorce. His marriage with Lu Xiaman was another prison for him, he even devoted his life to this marriage, prisoned himself as a slave of their marriage. I admire Yu-i's strength toward the crucial life, I respect her dignity and faith to the tradition. Even Hsu Chih-mo thought that she was a "pumpkin".I think what she had inside her was even greater than those "well learned women" that her ex-husband loved. To me, she is indeed a strong modern Chinese woman. By the way, I really like the author's writing style, I'm looking forward to read another book of her.
Rating:
Summary: Haunting - Illuminates how culture can cripple women's minds
Review: As Yu-i tells her story, it became clear to me that even though her feet had not been bound, her mind had been fatally wounded by the conditioning she received as a child that "woman is nothing." Mistreated and abused by her husband she still devoted her life to protecting the the "face" of his parents and even his perverse second wife. She would not allow herself to remarry until very old because of the shame it would bring on her family, though she was completely blameless in her husband's abandonment of her. Hearing her tell her story in her own words gave me much greater insight into why it is so often women who perpetuate the women-mutilating traditions of dysfunctional cultures. I could clearly see in the attitudes she shares with us how a woman, no matter how brave, who grows up in a culture that finds only mutilated women "beautiful" will internalize the self-destructive attitudes that have been drummed into her during childhood. I felt that the author's interweaving of her own story into the story of her great aunt weakened the book. The author is still very young and has not gone through the crises and major life decisions that would maker her own story complete enough to make it the kind of memoir material that could compete in interest with that of her great aunt. However, having I look forward to hearing "the rest of the story" when she is older. She is clearly on her way to being a fine writer!
Rating:
Summary: Haunting - Illuminates how culture can cripple women's minds
Review: As Yu-i tells her story, it became clear to me that even though her feet had not been bound, her mind had been fatally wounded by the conditioning she received as a child that "woman is nothing." Mistreated and abused by her husband she still devoted her life to protecting the the "face" of his parents and even his perverse second wife. She would not allow herself to remarry until very old because of the shame it would bring on her family, though she was completely blameless in her husband's abandonment of her. Hearing her tell her story in her own words gave me much greater insight into why it is so often women who perpetuate the women-mutilating traditions of dysfunctional cultures. I could clearly see in the attitudes she shares with us how a woman, no matter how brave, who grows up in a culture that finds only mutilated women "beautiful" will internalize the self-destructive attitudes that have been drummed into her during childhood. I felt that the author's interweaving of her own story into the story of her great aunt weakened the book. The author is still very young and has not gone through the crises and major life decisions that would maker her own story complete enough to make it the kind of memoir material that could compete in interest with that of her great aunt. However, having I look forward to hearing "the rest of the story" when she is older. She is clearly on her way to being a fine writer!
Rating:
Summary: Bound Feet And Western Dress
Review: Bound Feet And Western Dress is a book that discusses the differences between the Chinese and the American culture. The main character, Yu-i is a Chinese woman who the reader follows through her life journey. Yu-i is forced to marry someone who she has never met and has no feelings for. Their marrige is an unhappy one and eventually ends, making the first Chinese divorce. After her marrige, Yu-i tries to become modern, but is still forced to cooperate with the obligations of her ex-husbands family. The novel is sucessful in displaying the Chinese culture in an interesting way. The book, however, is somewhat confusing due to its constant switching of time periods.
Rating: 
Summary: Not quite a swan
Review: For anyone who read Wild Swans by Jung Chang, Bound Feet and Western Dress is a must-read. Both novels tell the story of China, setting out with a tale of the practice of bound feet from the beginning of the century. From a historial standpoint, Bound Feet and Western Dress, depicting the life of an affluent family as seen through the eyes of the daughter over a period of thirty years, is an excellent supplement to the story told on the first 30 pages of Wild Swans. Moreover, reading the books comparatively draws attention to one of the basic facts of living; the sum of troubles is experienced as being constant. While the main character of Bound Feet and Western Dress, Yu-i, does encounter great tragedies, such as the death of her baby boy, her everyday life, harsh as it may seem to her, is not comparable to the sufferings and hardships, physical and mental, endured by the women described in Wild Swans. Still the portrait of Yu-i has her lamenting her own destiny. Perhaps the shere volume of Wild Swans allows us to connect in a different way with the characters, but reading Bound Feet and Western Dress leaves behind a feeling of betrayel, a feeling that something important has been left out. The psychological portraits are thin throughout the book, but perhaps it serves to emphasize how tradition instead of personality was decisive. Still, Wild Swans is an epic story written in elegant prose; Bound Feet Western Dress is just another story.
|
