Feather in the Storm: A Childhood Lost in Chaos By Emily Wu

It is my hope that this memoir may serve as a reminder and a memorial to all of the children who were lost in the Chaos, Emily Wu writes at the beginning of Feather in the Storm.
Told from a child's and young girl's point of view, Wu's spellbinding account-which spans nineteen years of growing up during the chaos of China's Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution-opens on her third birthday as she meets her father for the first time in a concentration camp. A well-known academic and translator of American literary classics, her father had been designated an ultra-rightist and class enemy. As a result, Wu's family would be torn apart and subjected to an unending course of humiliation, hardship and physical and psychological abuse. Wu tells her story of this hidden Holocaust, in which millions of children and their families died, through a series of vivid vignettes that brilliantly-and innocently-evoke the cruelty and brutality of what was taking place daily in the world around her. From watching helplessly as the family apartment is ransacked and her father carted off by former students to be publicly beaten, to her own rape and the hard labor and primitive rituals of life in a remote peasant village, Wu is persecuted as a child of the damned.
Wu's narrative is poignant, disturbing and unsentimental, and, despite the nature of what it describes, is filled with the resiliency of youth-and even humor. That Emily Wu survived is remarkable. That she is able to infuse her story with such immediacy, power and unexpected beauty is the greatness of this book. Feather in the Storm is an unforgettable story of the courage and silent suffering of one small child set in a quicksand world of endless terror. Feather in the Storm: A Childhood Lost in Chaos

This was a random pick recommended by Amazon. It was a very interesting story. There are a few parts that reference children starving that are a bit upsetting - but how do you write about this era in China without that? It was well written. I read it nearly a year prior to writing this review, so it's not as fresh in my mind as it ought to be. Feather in the Storm: A Childhood Lost in Chaos Emily Wu delivers a spellbinding, captivating, but also a very scary story in Feather in the Storm. Scary and haunting, because it is a true story. We see the world Emily Wu grows up in, through the eyes of herself as a child. Feather in the Storm is written through a child's perspective, and therefore also through a child's innocence and very down to earth way of seeing and comprehending the events taking place. It shows the cruelty and horrors taking place during the Culture Revolution and afterwards. Especially for the black families, the educated people and even more so the innocent children of parents that aren't red enough for the Chinese communist regime. Emily Wu sends a powerful, thought provoking message through Feather in the Storm, but not only about the hardship so many Chinese families and children had to endure, but also the importance of hope, hope for a change and hope for better times. Feather in the Storm: A Childhood Lost in Chaos Shocking insights into a girl's life under Mao's dictatorship. The storyline is very straightforward and does not get over-emotional at any time, so it seems creepily bleak and neutral sometimes - just like the conformist Chinese society. Nonetheless, the author never fails to add her very personal note and shows the reader how the citizens actually thought about their lives.
A mind-boggling eye-opener to us Western people who take a civilised life in freedom for granted and will struggle to believe that such events took place only decades ago (and partly still do). Feather in the Storm: A Childhood Lost in Chaos Before I finished this book, I had no real idea what was going in China, decades ago. It's still alarming what's happening there now, but what was happening in the past as well.
I really admire the people, who survived such a hard times and I feel with the author. I love how the book is written. Truthful, shocking, clutching your heart.. I admire there was still a place for jokes, however sarcastic they were. Books like this should be mandatory to read. Feather in the Storm: A Childhood Lost in Chaos WOW!
This book had me crying through out the reading and left me speechless at the end!
To really imagine this being someones child hood memoir is insane, compared to the 90's child hood this is devastating but again we're pretty safe, and sadly where she lived wasn't. Her living situations, her friends she'd lost and mainly just the events and things she saw at a young age made my jaw drop! i feel like it takes a very strong person to share their story; but the way she shared her story really made me feel like i was right there next to her helping her fight and stay strong. Feather in the Storm: A Childhood Lost in Chaos

summary ë eBook or Kindle ePUB ´ Emily Wu

For us,is hard to believe back then how people survive from a chaos in the country. Emily Wu describes her life under Mao governing, her family and her face so much situation that we can barely imaging. Her family is total torn apart because of Mao's Cultural Revolution. Her father was criticized by society because he had sort of relationship with foreign country and became a class enemy in China. Emily Wu not just had to help herself to survive, but also her siblings. During Cultural Revolution, she had experienced some things she could not imaging what would happen to her when she grows up. For example, she had a friend, Chunying, got married. Several time Chunying had gave birth a girl, the family threw them down the river. By the time, Emily Wu heard about this bad news and went back to river, it was frozen due to the cold winter. Things not just this horrible. More circumstance were seem by her own eyes in later.


I got frustrated when the story describe how the girl was not important back in the day. It promoted to put myself into Firdaus' character shoes (a protagonist from Women at point Zero By Nawal El Saddawi), and feeling of hating men being dominated to the society. Now, I can feel how overwhelming Firdaus was that women were considered as low power.

Why are men having so much power than the women?

However, I do feel sympathy for Emily Wu that she is a strong girl for fighting every obstacle at her period at very young age. I can see though my imagination that how difficult her life is to her.

I would recommend this book to anymore. The character, Emily Wu, is demonstrating how to stay strong and have good self-esteem when a situation is on the way. Feather in the Storm: A Childhood Lost in Chaos One of those books that make me never, ever want to bitch about anything ever again. Feather in the Storm: A Childhood Lost in Chaos Non-Fiction - Kind-of depressing book about a girl in China during the cultural revolution. I felt like it was missing an 'afterward' because the book ends while the author is still in China, but you know she currently resides in CA. I would have liked to have known how to got to America and if her life changed or improved after the Cultural Revolution. Feather in the Storm: A Childhood Lost in Chaos Autentická a zároveň čtivá výpověd o životě v Číně v druhé polovině dvacátého století, zejména o jejím zaostalém a neuvěřitelně chudém venkově: https://milyctenarskydenicku.blogspot... Feather in the Storm: A Childhood Lost in Chaos I love reading about all things Chinese. The people and the culture fascinate me. I've read many books both fiction and memoir about the Chinese way of life. Feather in the Storm is Emily's story of her life and that of her family while caught in the middle of Chairman Mao's Cultural Revolution.

What struck me the most while I read this story is that this was all happening in the 1960's and 70's. Emily is the same age as me. There I was going to school, shopping in a well stocked grocery store and having a carefree childhood. On the other side of the world, Emily is denied the ability to read books, food is rationed and she's shuffled from town to remote village and back again at the whim of the Communist party. I was safely tucked into my same cozy bed each and every night. And when my parents made me clean my dinner plate by saying, There are starving children in China, they didn't make that up. They had watched the evening news.

Much of this story is tough to read. Emily is a sweet and loving girl who makes a lot of friends along the way. And she learns how to discern between the good and the bad, or in other words how to play the game. She reaches her breaking point many times, but she gathers her inner strength and keeps on going.

Feather in the Storm is a story that is a history lesson with a personal touch. This memoir is a true testament to the strength and resiliency of the human spirit. Feather in the Storm: A Childhood Lost in Chaos