Shanghai Quartet: The Crossings of Four Women of China

Published in 2001 | 300 pages | paper | ISBN: 978-0-8207-0322-0 Book Information: Steeped in the Chinese tradition of recording family tales and keeping the family register, Min-Zhan Lu gives us this moving and powerful memoir describing the lives of four women of China—her grandmother, her nanny, her mother, and herself. “I wrote these family stories hoping that you will someday want to read them,” she writes to her daughter in the book's opening lines. “I offer them to you as beginnings: notes on a lifeline of crossings for you to take over and work on.” The complex emotional landscape of this book centers around Min-Zhan Lu—both the immigrant who has crossed over to America and the tale-teller. In each of four sections, she tells us the intergenerational story of these women, each of whom crosses over time, history, custom and geography to come into her own. This overall frame is a vehicle for a woman trying to recite the family stories for her daughter—partly to heal the complex d