A review by sarahtribble
The World of Extreme Happiness by Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig

3.0

I liked this! It suffered a little from being required reading for one of my English papers, but I still liked and engaged with it more than I thought I would. This play is about a lot of things, but to put it simply, it's about a young girl named Sunny who is born in rural China in a time of great political turmoil and unrest. Against all odds (and in spite of her gender, perceived to be inferior by Chinese culture), Sunny moves to the big city to work in a factory, where her ambitions -- financial stability, success, and an ultimate escape from poverty -- motivate her to climb the social ladder "By Any Means Necessary". There were places where I thought the main themes of the play -- gender, class, and capitalism -- became a little garbled, and the political jargon in the afterword was condescendingly difficult, but on the whole, I thought the play was an excellently educational, albeit unflinchingly graphic, commentary on China's class values, globalisation, and Western capitalism and consumerism.