About this item
Sisters separated by war forge new identities as they are forced to choose between family, nation, and their own independence.Jun and Hong were scions of a once great southern Chinese family. Each other's best friend, they grew up in the 1930s during the final days of Old China before the tumult of the twentieth century brought political revolution, violence, and a fractured national identity. By a quirk of timing, at the end of the Chinese Civil War, Jun ended up on an island under Nationalist control, and then settled in Taiwan, married a Nationalist general, and lived among fellow exiles at odds with everything the new Communist regime stood for on the mainland. Hong found herself an ocean away on the mainland, forced to publicly disavow both her own family background and her sister's decision to abandon the party.
About the Author
is a professor of East Asian studies at Brown University and the author of as well as four scholarly books on linguistics and contemporary China. She lives in Providence, Rhode Island.
