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nikim_burg's review against another edition
4.0
Really interesting story of one family's immigration to America. It follows the family and their families and their children's families over a span of a hundred years.
tekchic's review against another edition
This is a DNF (did not finish). I love Lisa See's novels, and am looking forward to reading The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane. I love the history of the American West in the 1880's. This however, was an exhaustive history of her family's lineage dating back to the 1880's. It was okay in parts, but then almost ended up feeling like the "begats" in the Bible, where it kept including minutiae I wasn't interested in.
I was hoping to get more history of the area, conditions, and the building of the American West vs the history of one family down to the specific details of their immigration records interviews (consequently where I gave up). If you're a "See" family, awesome book. Anyone else, it might be a difficult read to get through.
Still looking forward to The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane, though. :)
I was hoping to get more history of the area, conditions, and the building of the American West vs the history of one family down to the specific details of their immigration records interviews (consequently where I gave up). If you're a "See" family, awesome book. Anyone else, it might be a difficult read to get through.
Still looking forward to The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane, though. :)
srah's review against another edition
3.0
A very entertaining and interesting family story, although I wasn't crazy about the writing style, which occasionally reminded me of The Boxcar Children (which is a fine and dandy writing style when you're writing for elementary school students, but this one was full of whores and opium). I also kept finding myself thinking, "How could she have KNOWN what he was thinking at that moment?" so I think either her family interviews were EXTREMELY in-depth or she speculated about a lot of stuff. I took it as sort of a fictionalized memoir, like the Little House books.
peachmoni's review against another edition
informative
slow-paced
3.5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Alcoholism, Infidelity, Racism, and Toxic relationship
Moderate: Death, Domestic abuse, Sexism, Xenophobia, Grief, Death of parent, and Pregnancy
Minor: Cancer, Mental illness, Miscarriage, Racial slurs, and Kidnapping
onejordo's review against another edition
3.0
I've enjoyed nearly every book I've read by Lisa See. I had this book on my To Be Read shelf for quite a while before I finally picked up a copy. It wasn't as exciting as I'd hoped, but it was an interesting biography of a family that immigrated to America.
See's other books are fictional. I appreciate the amount of research she had to do in order to put this book together, but I think she's a much better fictional writer than a biographer. The family members she writes about are intriguing. The 100 year history sure does contain a large number of characters, as one might imagine. However, I don't feel like this story is probably all that unique. Yes, it's quite different from my family's history. But this certainly isn't the only family to come to America from China and work hard to make a home for themselves.
The history of the Chinese population coming to America was pretty interesting. The way American citizens treated the Chinese is deplorable. However, the determination of Fong See to become a wealthy, respected man in a place where he was initially unwanted was inspiring to read about. Overall, this was a good book to read, but nothing that will knock your socks off.
See's other books are fictional. I appreciate the amount of research she had to do in order to put this book together, but I think she's a much better fictional writer than a biographer. The family members she writes about are intriguing. The 100 year history sure does contain a large number of characters, as one might imagine. However, I don't feel like this story is probably all that unique. Yes, it's quite different from my family's history. But this certainly isn't the only family to come to America from China and work hard to make a home for themselves.
The history of the Chinese population coming to America was pretty interesting. The way American citizens treated the Chinese is deplorable. However, the determination of Fong See to become a wealthy, respected man in a place where he was initially unwanted was inspiring to read about. Overall, this was a good book to read, but nothing that will knock your socks off.