Rating: 
Summary: an amazing story of her life
Review: This book is well written, as is the children's version called the Chinese Cinderella. It is the true tale of Adeline's life as an unwanted child in a wealthy Chinese family, starting with the arrival of the "wicked stepmother" when she is 5 years old. In children's literature there are two notorious families: the Dursleys of Harry Potter fame, and the parents of Roald Dahl's Matilda. In real life, I have found only one story more puzzling and disturbing than Falling Leaves, and that is Herve Bazin's Vipere au Poing, the story of his youth and his devious, nasty mother. Set against the turbulent times in China and Hong Kong from 1930 to 1990, Adeline describes her youth in various private schools in China, through college and medical school in England, on to her success as an anesthesiologist in California. All her life she struggles to prove her worth, and earn her family's respect and love. She believes that if she can only work hard enough, she can create a loving family around her. She recounts what one must regard as amazing strength of will against her tyrannical parents. Her personal explanations of life in China and Hong Kong are quite interesting, and there is the inspiring aspect of her tale, the victory against such crushing odds. I really enjoyed this book, and did not want to put it down, as I was always hoping the next chapter would relate how she got the recognition she sought. I strongly recommend this book, and the children's version.
Rating:
Summary: touching!
Review: I was weeping constantly when I was reading this book. It's truly a wonderful book that one rarely finds. some say this book is nothing but about self-pity and complains. it is not! it's more about faint hope, struggle, starvation of family love, and lingering optimism. althought it needs more touch in organization of thoughts, this book promotes a valuable and simple message for its reader: though living in an unfavored circumstances, one still has the power to change his life; thus, keep on hoping, dreaming, daring to go on !!!!!
(for those who think it's a plain book, I suggest you should go to your doctors to check your hearts . ^_^ . *peace* !)
Rating: 
Summary: Falling Leaves: A sad, but true tale of an unwanted girl
Review: I read the autobiography, Falling Leaves , by Adeline Yen Mah. I had read Chinese Cinderella by the same author earlier this year. The first book had covered only her childhood. I was interested in reading more about Adeline Yen Mah?s life. Falling Leaves tells the story of her entire life. At first, I thought the book would be about an orphan who became successful in life. It was really about a woman realizing that she could never get back her families acceptance and love.
As a young child in China , Adeline was unwanted. Her mother died giving birth to her. In Chinese tradition, this cursed her for the rest of her life. Just like in the fairy tale Cinderella, her father remarried a woman called Niang, who hated Adeline and mistreated her throughout her childhood until Adeline left for boarding school. Even though she went on to Medical School and later became a U.S. citizen, she continued to remain unhappy. After divorcing her first husband, she remarried and finally found love and acceptance. In the end of the book,however, she does not live happily ever after. I liked this book because it showed what life was like for females in China . While her brothers became independent and responsible, Adeline was always told what to do and how to live her life . She didn?t have many choices. When she went to collage she was treated as if she wasn?t capable of learning and didn?t have all the rights that she was entitled to. This was due to her being female and Chinese.
I disliked the book because it was too sad, and it is difficult to read about someone else?s tragedy. Niang treated her kids much better then she treated her step children. Her own kids got sweets and allowances when her step children got only healthy foods and no spending money. Really, Adeline never got to the ?And they all lived happily ever after? part of her life. Although this book was tragic for the protagonist, I enjoyed reading it. I would recommend this book to people who like to become involved in emotional stories.
Rating:
Summary: Strong themes
Review: This was a heartbreaking story of how one girl was treated growing up. It was harder for me to continue felling sorry for her after she left home. She seemed too fixated on getting her parent's love. She just kept going back for more rejection. Also, the main story is interspersed with bits of history, which made it slightly confusing.
Rating:
Summary: A family's pain, a child's sorrow.
Review: What a family! Adeline Yen Mah's description of growing up in a dysfunctional family defy's comparison. Well, I suppose that should not be surprising, since Tolstoy said that, "All happy families resemble one another, but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." I didn't want to read this book. I have been very interested in the history of Modern China (by which I mean roughly the period of time since the Macartney Mission of 1793), but I didn't think this book would add a lot of insight to my study, and...well, I guess I just wasn't in the mood for another "poor me" book. In retrospect, the book really did add more to my feel at least for the period since the revolution in 1949 than I had expected, and once I had allowed myself to be drawn into the incredible pain of this book, it could never be just another story. One of the main questions that plagued me as I began reading this book was just where the "center" of the problem lay. Adeline talks a lot about her step mother, and what a terrible person she was. But all stepmothers are "terrible." Of course I don't mean that literally, but what I do mean is that the "step mother" syndrome is as old as history, and it is just very, very hard for a step mother to be viewed as a "good" person by all her children. None of that takes away from the fact that Adeline's step mother was a spoiled brat, but it does tend to make me slow to judge. The answer really came to me on page 63, when Adeline's father held her little pet duckling in front of the family dog to test his obedience. The dog failed the test and Adeline was devastated. Her father was the problem. No question about it. The effects of his complete inability to be a father were far reaching. Relationships among siblings were fragmented, with very little family cohesiveness. To say that there was sibling rivalry wouldn't mean much, because that is pretty normal. But there seemed to be an edginess that went beyond childhood into adult life, reaching a level of mean-spiritedness quite different from mere sibling rivalry. Of course Adeline herself is not completely free from this, as exemplified by the regrettable lines where she is describing her brother Edgar's physical features in an absurd attempt to establish that he is the ugliest of her brothers. Is it just convenient coincidence that the brother she likes least is the one that is "least favored?" And Edgar proves himself to be worthy of her contempt, serving his own urine to her as orange juice at their stepmother's funeral. The promotion on the cover on this book calls it a "triumphant story." I disagree. This book is not triumph. It is tragedy. But, as tragedy, it is nonetheless profound and compelling. Adeline Yen Mah is a very gifted writer. But even this fact reiterates the pathos of her condition. Adeline wanted to be a writer, but her father insisted that she become a physician. If he had let her be herself, I have no doubt that she could have been a great writer. I didn't mean that the way it sounded. She is a great writer, of course, but I just wonder what she might have become if she had been allowed to fulfill her dream, especially given her unusual talent for expressing herself in writing. This brings to mind an additional dimension to this book. The book is full of pithy phrases drawn from traditional Chinese culture in order to make a point relevant to the events of Adeline's life. Whatever else may be said, the literary quality of Adeline Yen Mah's writing cannot be denied. I still have mixed feelings about the merits of airing this kind of pain before the whole world. And I can only imagine what her relationship (relationship??) with her siblings must be like since the publication of this book. But I gave this book five stars for two reasons: First, I never found myself questioning Adeline's basic integrity. Her brothers and sisters (especially Lydia, who is vilified with particular energy at the end of the book) may disagree, but I can only give my honest impression. I never got the feeling that Adeline was making up the story as she went along. If her siblings wish to discredit her, they will have a difficult time, because she is very believable. Second, Adeline Yen Mah's gift for expressing herself in writing makes reading her stuff an enriching, if not always painless experience. As a result of this experience, I am drawn to anything with her name on it. Should she have written this book? I don't know. I need more time to think about it. I suppose, in the end, it had to be her decision, but I can't help wondering if the release she sought by baring her soul was worth what it must have cost her. One can only hope that her future books will be less painful for her, because they will, without question, be a great delight to read.
Rating:
Summary: Not what I expected
Review: Perhaps this is a better book than I realized because it did not live up to my expectations. I was expecting history told through the events of someone's life versus just a personal histoy. And one that wasn't well told at that. Wild Swans is a much better example of learning about communist China through the eyes of someone(s) who lived it. Even Amy Tan's fictional Joy Luck Club provides a better example of how people's actions, feelings, and survival skills are shaped events.
Rating: 
Summary: One Word Is Worth 1000 Pieces of Gold
Review: Yen Mah brings the reader into the world of an unwanted and unlucky child in her haunting biography. It is amazing the trials she had to endure on her way to becomming a medical doctor and now an accomplished writer. The story she tells in this short book is rich and full of detail, an amazing portrait of her life. Her writing, while inexperienced, successfully brings the reader into the story. Having been in Shanghai myself I can still smell the sweet buns and the crabapples when I read her story.
Rating:
Summary: Heartbreaking
Review: As the title suggests, this book is about Adeline Yen Mah's childhood and what she went through as the unwanted child of the family. Regarded as bad luck because her own mother died while giving birth to her, Adeline is constantly blamed by her brothers and sisters for their mother's death. Later her father remarries and her stepmother, a beautiful Eurasian woman takes an instant and intense dislike to Adeline for a comment she made. She deliberately makes Adeline's home life a miserable hell and even once sent her to an boarding school cum orphanage.
This book depicts Adeline constantly trying to win the love and approval of her father and stepmother even into her adult years.
A good book thats well written by Adeline Yen Mah, it gives hope to all the unwanted and abused children out there, that you can find peace withing yourself with or without the approval of your parents.
Rating: 
Summary: Pity Party
Review: This book is a regurgitation of Mah's first novel, "Chinese Cinderella." I'm having problems finishing the book, but I'm finding that the events mentioned in the first novel are appearing in this "memoir", as well. On the front cover of the book, there is a quote by Amy Tan, "A marvel of memory." This is exactly what I was thinking. How does someone remember every small thing in life that happened to her? Some stories are so far-fetched that this so-called "memoir" loses a lot of credibility. Mah does not take into account that all throughout China during that time, and throughout the world even now, that there are children suffering worse fates than she did. She grieves over every small thing in life that has gone "wrong", from the rather accidental death of her duck to her controlling stepmother's refusal to allow her friends to play with her. She was not unwanted; rather, suffered from living with a stepmother that did not acknowledge either her OR her siblings. She was not the only one that was ignored; none of her other four siblings gained recognition, either. Reading this memoir was like reading a child's diary about all the so-called wrongs in her life, a child who could not look past her own little "horrible" world and open her eyes to see the lives of other people. Mah is almost seventy- you would think at such a ripe old age, she would realize that so many other children suffered in China in the aftermath of the war. You wonder if she has ever paid a visit to Beijing, China. Children as young as three or four roam the roads in ripped clothing, clutching to the legs of tourists and natives alike, begging for just a dollar or a couple cents, anything. Mah should just be GLAD that she grew up priveleged, with a private education, a meal every day, and a roof over her head. Even today, China's view towards women is backwards compared to that of the rest of the world. During her time, the 40's and 50's, you could imagine that women were of even lower class than they are today. The fact that she had a life better than that of other daughters (girls that were sold to other families, and made into almost slaves just because they were female) is something to rejoice in; at least her family kept her. They may not have acknowledged her, but her siblings were only children. THey could not have known the hurt that they were inflicting on her or the other brothers and sisters that she had, because they were CHILDREN. Mah doesn't realize just what she had. If you want to read a story of a truly unwanted child, I would recommend A CHILD CALLED "IT" by David Pelzner. A truly inspirational and heart-wrenching novel of a little boy growing up in more recent times than Mah in the United States, who was brutally abused by his mother and scorned by his siblings and father alike. It succeeds in everything that Mah tried to accomplish with both her novels and failed miserably in.
Rating:
Summary: More than a memoir
Review: Adeline Mah's story is unlike any other I've encountered; elegantly
written and honest, her memoir may not be for everyone. It is most assuredly not a whiner's account: her spirit was constantly tested by her unloving and spiteful father, siblings, and particularly "Niang"(who gives new meaning to the phrase "wicked stepmother"). If you are expecting a family saga where the principals squabble over money, that's here -- but Mah's only real wish was for love and respect, and the denial of that love shapes her life. Mah gives
fascinating insight into China's cultural evolution as she tells her family's story. It is subtle, modest and unforgettable.
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