A Thousand Miles of Dreams: The Journeys of Two Chinese Sisters (Asian Voices)

A Thousand Miles Of Dreams ; Contents; List of Illustrations; Acknowledgments; Note; Prologue: Departure; Part I: Moving House; 1 Origins; 2 Ambition; 3 Disappointment; 4 Courtyards; 5 Mountains and Walls; Part II: Casting Off; 6 Lessons; 7 Mist; 8 Amid Ghosts; 9 Into the Streets; 10 Romance; 11 Gatherings; 12 Modern Medicine; 13 Crescent Moon; Part III: Seeking a Mooring; 14 Arrival; 15 Adrift; 16 Souvenirs; 17 The Entangling Net; 18 Rice Porridge; 19 War Letters; 20 An American Home; 21 Wandering; 22 The Chinese House; Epilogue: Return; Sources; References; Permissions; Index.;A Thousand Miles of Dreams is an evocative and intimate biography of two Chinese sisters who took very different paths in their quest to be independent women. Ling Shuhao arrived in Cleveland in 1925 to study medicine in the middle of a U.S. crackdown on Chinese immigrant communities, and her effort to assimilate began. She became an American named Amy, while her sister Ling Shuhua burst onto the Beijing literary scene as a writer of short fiction. They were both Chinese ""modern girls"" who sought to forge their own way in an era of social revolution and followed trajectories unimaginable to.

A Thousand Miles of Dreams recounts the evocative and intimate biography of two intensely rivalrous Chinese sisters, a writer and a doctor, whose eventful lives took very different paths in their quest to be independent women. They were Chinese modern girls who sought to forge their own way during a period of social revolution that unsettled relations between men and women, even among nations. Daughters of an imperial scholar-official and a concubine, the two sisters followed professional trajectories unimaginable to their parents' generation.

Publishers Weekly

Welland, a lecturer in anthropology and women's studies at the University of Washington-Seattle, reconstructs the lives of her elite Cantonese grandmother, Amy Ling Chen, who in 1925 won a scholarship to study medicine in the United States, and of Amy's elder sister, Ling Shuhua, a writer and painter who remained in China until 1945. Welland balances family sources with meticulous research and insightful reading of Shuhua's fiction. Describing the anti-Communist paramilitary violence targeting Chinese "modern girls" that precipitated Amy's emigration, Welland charts her grandmother's courageous years as a medical intern and her subsequent pursuit of all-American respectability after marriage to a successful Chinese researcher. Welland also recounts Shuhua's frustrated existence as a faculty wife and struggling writer at Wuhan University, sensitively examining records of Shuhua's affair with visiting British lecturer Julian Bell, Virginia Woolf's nephew. Welland also tracks Shuhua's tenuous postwar relationship to the Bloomsbury Group (Julian Bell having died in the Spanish Civil War) and the genesis of her memoir Ancient Melodies-published by Leonard Woolf's Hogarth Press in 1953. This restrained and melancholy biography is filled with fascinating glimpses of 20th-century Chinese women's intellectual history and insights into the Chinese-American and Anglo-Chinese experience. (Sept.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

*For the bibliography mentioned in the book, click here. A Thousand Miles of Dreams is an evocative and intimate biography of two Chinese sisters who took very different paths in their quests to be independent women. Ling Shuhao arrived in Cleveland in 1925 to study medicine in the middle of a U.S. crackdown on Chinese immigrant communities, and her effort to assimilate began. She became an American named Amy, while her sister Ling Shuhua burst onto the Beijing literary scene as a writer of short fiction. Shuhua's tumultuous affair with Virginia Woolf's nephew during his years in China eventually drew her into the orbit of the Bloomsbury group. The sisters were Chinese "modern girls" who sought to forge their own way in an era of social revolution that unsettled relations between men and women and among nations. Daughters of an imperial scholar-official and a concubine, they followed trajectories unimaginable to their parents' generation. Biographer Sasha Su-Ling Welland stumbled across their remarkable stories while recording her grandmother's oral history. She discovered the secret Amy had jealously hidden from family in the United States—her sister's fame as a Chinese woman writer—as well as intriguing discrepancies between the sisters' versions of the past. Shaped by the social history of their day, the journeys of these extraordinary women spanned the twentieth century and three continents in a saga of East-West cultural exchange and personal struggle. Visit the author's website for more information and upcoming events. http://www.sashawelland.com/index.html A Thousand Miles of Dreams is an evocative and intimate biography of two Chinese sisters who took very different paths in their quests to be independent women. Ling Shuhao arrived in Cleveland in 1925 to study medicine in the middle of a U.S. crackdown on Chinese immigrant communities, and her effort to assimilate began. She became an American named Amy, while her sister Ling Shuhua burst onto the Beijing literary scene as a writer of short fiction. Shuhua's tumultuous affair with Virginia Woolf's nephew during his years in China eventually drew her into the orbit of the Bloomsbury group. The sisters were Chinese 'modern girls' who sought to forge their own way in an era of social revolution that unsettled relations between men and women and among nations. Daughters of an imperial scholar-official and a concubine, they followed trajectories unimaginable to their parents' generation. Biographer Sasha Su-Ling Welland stumbled across their remarkable stories while recording her grandmother's oral history. She discovered the secret Amy had jealously hidden from family in the United States - her sister's fame as a Chinese woman writer - as well as intriguing discrepancies between the sisters' versions of the past. Shaped by the social history of their day, the journeys of these extraordinary women spanned the twentieth century and three continents in a saga of East-West cultural exchange and personal struggle. Visit the author's website for more information and upcoming events. http: //(http://www.sashawelland.com/index.html) www.sashawelland.com/index.html The biography of two intensely rivalrous Chinese sisters, a writer and a doctor, whose eventful lives took very different paths in their quest to be independent women. Daughters of an imperial scholar-official and a concubine, the two sisters followed professional trajectories unimaginable to their parents' generation, one emigrating to America and the other achieving fame in China as a writer, but also leaving China in 1945. They were Chinese modern girls who sought to forge their own way during a period of social revolution that unsettled relations between men and women--and among nations.--From publisher description The biography of two intensely rivalrous Chinese sisters, a writer and a doctor, whose eventful lives took very different paths in their quest to be independent women. Daughters of an imperial scholar-official and a concubine, the two sisters followed professional trajectories unimaginable to their parents' generation, one emigrating to America and the other achieving fame in China as a writer, but also leaving China in 1945. They were Chinese modern girls who sought to forge their own way during a period of social revolution that unsettled relations between men and women--and among nations.--Résumé de l'éditeur Traces the rivalry between two Chinese sisters, a doctor and a writer, whose lives took very different paths in their respective quests to become independent women, from Lin Shuhao's medical studies in America during the anti-Asian hostilities of the 1920s to Shuhua's rise within the Beijing literary scene.