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HIST 2424: Global China: A History of Migration

Sample Memoirs

The Americas, United States

  • Eddie Huang, Fresh Off the Boat (2014)
  • Yan Phou Lee, When I Was a Boy in China (1887)
  • Yung Wing, My Life in China and America (1909)
  • Chen Chen, When I grow up, I want to be a List of Further Possibilities (2017)
  • Zheng Wang and Xueping Zheng, ed. Some of Us: Chinese Women Growing Up in Mao’s China (2001)
  • Maxine Hong Kingston, The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts (1989)
  • Louise Leung Larson, Sweet Bamboo: A Memoir of a Chinese-American Family (1989)
  • Chai May-lee, The Girl from Purple Mountain (2001)
  • Scott Tong, A Village with my Name: A Family History of China’s Opening Up to the World (2017)
  • Jennifer Lin, Shanghai Faithful (2017)

The Americas, Other

  • Staceyann Chin, Crossfire: A Litany for Survival (2019)
  • --, The Other Side of Paradise (2009)
  • Tingxing Ye, A Leaf in the Bitter Wind (1997)

Japan

  • Yu Dafu, “Sinking” (1921)
  • Lu Xun, “Mr. Fujino” (1926)

Taiwan

  • Wu Zhuoliu, The Fig Tree: Memoirs of a Taiwanese Patriot (1970)
  • Jessica Lee, Two Trees Make a Forest (2019)
  • Tephen Tsai, Elegy of Sweet Potatoes (2021)
  • Chen Shuibian, Son of Taiwan: The Life of Chen Shuibian and his Dreams for Taiwan (2000)
  • Peng Ming-min, A Taste of Freedom: Memoirs of a Taiwanese Independence Leader (2017)
  • Chen Lifu, The Storm Clouds Over China: The Memoirs of Chen Lifu (1993)

Hong Kong

  • Hana Meihan Davis, For the Love of Hong Kong: A Memoir from my City Under Siege (2021)
  • Ho Fan, A Hong Kong Memoir (2021)
  • Feng Chi-sun. Diamond Hill, Memories of Growing Up in a HK Squatter Village. (2009)
  • Eileen Chang, The Fall of the Pagoda and The Book of Change (written in the 1940s)

Europe

  • Wang Gungwu, Home is Not Here (2018)
  • Suzanne Ma, Meet Me in Venice: A Chinese immigrant’s journey from the Far East to the Faraway West (2015)
  • Wang Fan-hsi, Memoirs of a Chinese Revolutionary (1957)
  • Han Suyin, A Mortal Flower (1966) and Birdless Summer (1968)

South Asia, Southeast Asia and Australia

  • Robert Kuok, A Memoir (2017)
  • Stuart Pearson, Bittersweet: The Memoir of a Chinese-Indonesian Family in the Twentieth Century (2008)
  • Aihwa Ong, On Not Speaking Chinese
  • Han Suyin, My House Has Two Doors (1980) and A Share of Loving (1987)