Fifth Chinese Daughter

I enjoyed reading this book.

I became interested in buying this book after reading the author's fascinating story in the L.A. Times last year. Since reading Fifth Chinese Daughter a few months ago, I have given it as a gift to three friends who also found this young woman's story as heartwarming and courageous as I did. Side benefit: I learned a great deal about Chinese-American culture and about American history, circa 1930s - 1950s. It's also a great book for teen girls. Reading about Jade Snow's sometimes difficult youth and teen years and how she met her goals will be very inspirational to that age group.

This book is one of the favorites of my childhood -- I still have the copy I acquired in 1963, when I was 12. I am thrilled to see that it is in print so that my students can read it. Fifth Chinese Daughter is an autobiography, not a novel, as a number of reviewers wrote. The story is so compelling, however, that I can understand why a young reader might think of fiction. Readers are treated to an inside look at a closed immigrant community. Chinese culture and language made assimiliation complicated, and not even desired by many Chinese families in the first half of the 20th century. It is easy to identify with Jade Snow's struggle to balance her quest for independence with the expectations, and respect for,her family and her culture. The universality of these conflicts presents readers with the opportunity to develop insight into their own lives, while Jade Snow's collision with American culture still applies to contemporary issues faced by first generation Americans.

The Fifth Chinese Daughter is an excellently written novel about a Chinese American girl growing up in San Francisco's Chinatown. When this book arrived in the mail the last thing I wanted to do was read it when I could play my X-box and watch T.V. After a week I finally got around to reading a chapter and was surprised to find myself reading it all day. Unfortunately I didn't pick it up again until I was in Sedona with my Dad. There I read all but fourteen pages. It wasn't for another week until I finished.This story was expertly written and fun to read. Despite my early protests I enjoyed hearing about a young oriental girl change from a well-disciplined Chinese daughter growing up in Chinatown to an artist who finally achieved the recognition from her family she had longed for since childhood. It gave a sense of evolution, struggle, and triumph, as the book progresses. It explains a child's need for acceptance, respect, and material riches as Jade Snow Wong progresses through school, odd jobs, collage, and adulthood. This book is obviously a book I would recommend to others because it always has the main character striving to survive in a stereotypical world. It shows Jade Snow's personality being that the harder it got the harder she would try. This is shown many times in the book, like when she went to the employment agents and found jobs in house working. Also when she got into Mills Collage, that she wanted more then just to clean houses and end up as a house wife like she had been raised and become something more. Unlike other novels I've read this summer this one sticks out by its great writing style and many twists. An example of witch is when she gets a job at a shipyard and works for what seems might be the whole war when she gets only one job option, to be a secretary. She turns it down when she gets an idea to shape pottery and then to sell it. Her accomplishments as an artist finally drive her family to recognize her. The book has many unexpected twists and turn and was a joy to read.

I first read Fifth Chinese Daughter as a high school assignment in 1967. I was taking a San Francisco history course. I read the book as required and then put it back in the library and moved on to other things. 20 years later I found a very used copy in a second hand book store and decided to give it another read. I am glad I did. Fifth Chinese Daughter is a story of growing up in one world and growing out into another. Jade Snow Wong was born into the family of a Chinese businessman who was also a protestant church minister. Her story is one of the tradition of a Chinese family where sons are valued and daughters seemingly less so. Jade Snow Wong overcomes the traditions of her family and her heritage and proves herself in the classroom. She also learns the independence required to progress in American society, taking odd-jobs throughout her high school career; finding herslef in constant contact with a very alien world she has up to then only seen at a distance, a world of American families. She faces critical choices in her college aspirations, when she has to decide between the University of California or San Francisco City College. Her choice of City College, was in the long run, one of her wisest choices because it moved her into a much more representative segment of American and San Francisco society. Her decision to attend Mills College was also a wise choice for it allowed her to develope her skills as a potter and lead her to a new vocation, far from the traditional ones of the period. Her war work in the ship yards is also extremely well told and is, again, an extremely important segment of American history that needs to be told. Jade Snow Wong emerges from World War II able to work as a potter and show her talents to a very interested public, and grow in the opinion and respect of her family. This is a story of persistence,love of learning, growth and at the same time it is a book of love and respect for her family. I highly recommend it to any student of American history.

This book is one of the few which captures a lot of the emotions, both the joys and continuous angst which Americans of Asian descent of all ages still have to contend with, especially females. Her identity crisis and emotional turmoil give validation to the intense internal struggles which Americans born children of Asian immigrants wrestle with. Despite the fact that her story evolved decades ago, her issues still arise today, two generations later. I have re-read this book several times.