Paper Daughter: A Memoir

Paper Daughter: A Memoir
by M. Elaine Mar

Paper Daughter: A Memoir
List Price: $13.95
Our Price: $3.95
You Save: $10.00 (72%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $3.81 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions


(Click here)
Buy this book at online book store in your country
Canada | UK | Germany | France

Book Summary Information

Author: M. Elaine Mar
Edition: Paperback
Published: 2000-08-01
ISBN: 0060930527
Number of pages: 304
Publisher: Harper Perennial

Book Reviews of Paper Daughter: A Memoir

Book Review: Haunting glimpses into lives of immigrant's families
Summary: 5 Stars

I loved this book and found it immensely readable. The writing carried you along without you wanting to stop. I have met many Asian immigrants and read many Asian immigrants books, but this is the most stark and informative in it's revelations of what it can be like for such children and their families encountering a different and sometimes unwelcoming USA culture. I do hope this author continues to write as she is a superb and unforgettable storyteller.

Summary of Paper Daughter: A Memoir

Born in Hong Kong to parents who immigrated there from the Toishan region of mainland China, Elaine Mar came to America in 1972, when she was not quite 6. Colorado was quite a shock to a girl who had previously shared a five-room apartment with four other families. "She must be rich," Man Yee (her Chinese name) thought, emerging from the basement room where she and her parents slept to explore her Aunt Becky's three-bedroom house in a working-class Denver neighborhood. Not so: her aunt, father, and other relatives worked in the kitchen of a restaurant owned by others, and Mar's pungent memoir of her odyssey from poor immigrant to Harvard undergraduate shatters stereotypes about Asians as the "model minority." She was a smart girl and a good student who soon preferred the American name Elaine and "only spoke Chinese when absolutely necessary," but she found it hard to decipher the "cultural cues" on which social success in school depended. Honestly chronicling conflicts with her parents, whose horizons and expectations seemed unbearably limited, Mar outlines her youthful rebellion and their response with mature understanding. Her observation of American life is as clear-eyed and unsentimental as her self-portrait of a girl adrift between two cultures. --Wendy Smith

When she was five years old, M. Elaine Mar and her mother emigrated from Hong Kong to Denver to join her father in a community more Chinese than American, more hungry than hopeful.

While working with her family in the kitchen of a Chinese restaurant and living in the basement of her aunt's house, Mar quickly masters English and begins to excel in school. But as her home and school life--Chinese tradition and American independence--become two increasingly disparate worlds, Mar tries desperately to navigate between them.

Adolescence and the awakening of her sexuality leave Elaine isolated and confused. She yearns for storebought clothes and falls for a red-haired boy who leads her away from the fretful eyes of her family. In his presence, Elaine is overcome by the strength of her desire--blocking out her family's visions of an arranged marriage in Hong Kong.

From surviving racist harassment in the schooIyard to trying to flip her straight hair like Farrah Fawcett, from hiding her parents' heritage to arriving alone at Harvard University, Mar's story is at once an unforgettable personal journey and an unflinching, brutal look at the realities of the American Dream.

Chinese Books

Book Subjects
Most talked about in My Un-Typical 45 Year Old Single White Male Book Listing
The Waiting Child: How the Faith and Love of One Orphan Saved the Life of Another ImageThe Waiting Child: How the Faith and Love of One Orphan Saved the Life of Another
by Cindy Champnella
St. Martin's Griffin; Published: 2004-05-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.74
Price in other shops: $13.95
Loved By Choice: True Stories That Celebrate Adoption ImageLoved By Choice: True Stories That Celebrate Adoption
by Susan Horner, Kelly Fordyce Martindale
Revell; Published: 2002-03; Paperback; Book
Best price: $1.98
Price in other shops: $18.99
Hudson Taylors Spiritual Secret ImageHudson Taylors Spiritual Secret
by Howard Taylor
Moody Publishers; Published: 1955-09-30; Mass Market Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.89
Price in other shops: $7.99
Green Mansions (Dover Books on Literature and Drama) ImageGreen Mansions (Dover Books on Literature and Drama)
by W. H. Hudson
Dover Publications; Published: 1989-05-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.50
Price in other shops: $12.95
A Tale of Two Cities (Penguin Classics) ImageA Tale of Two Cities (Penguin Classics)
by Charles Dickens
Penguin Classics; Published: 2003-05-27; Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.35
Price in other shops: $8.00
Daniel Deronda (Penguin Classics) ImageDaniel Deronda (Penguin Classics)
by George Eliot
Penguin Classics; Published: 1996-02-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.77
Price in other shops: $9.95
Safely Home ImageSafely Home
by Randy Alcorn
Tyndale House Publishers; Published: 2003-01-23; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.11
Price in other shops: $13.99
The Strength of Mercy: Making a Difference in the World One Child at a Time ImageThe Strength of Mercy: Making a Difference in the World One Child at a Time
by Jan Beazely
WaterBrook Press; Published: 1999-04-20; Paperback; Book
Best price: $2.10
Price in other shops: $8.99
Fields of the Fatherless ImageFields of the Fatherless
by C. Thomas Davis
Global Publishing Services; Published: 2002-08-01; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $1.99
Price in other shops: $12.00
God's Passion for His Glory: Living the Vision of Jonathan Edwards (With the Complete Text of The End for Which God Created the World) ImageGod's Passion for His Glory: Living the Vision of Jonathan Edwards (With the Complete Text of The End for Which God Created the World)
by John Piper
Crossway Books; Published: 2006-01-06; Paperback; Book
Best price: $9.58
Price in other shops: $15.99
Similar Books and other products
Crossing Over: A Mexican Family on the Migrant Trail ImageCrossing Over: A Mexican Family on the Migrant Trail
by Ruben Martinez
Picador; Published: 2002-09-07; Paperback; Book
Best price: $2.00
Price in other shops: $15.00
Bone Black: Memories of Girlhood (Bone Black) ImageBone Black: Memories of Girlhood (Bone Black)
by bell hooks
Holt Paperbacks; Published: 1997-10-15; Paperback; Book
Best price: $1.50
Price in other shops: $14.00
Falling Leaves: The Memoir of an Unwanted Chinese Daughter ImageFalling Leaves: The Memoir of an Unwanted Chinese Daughter
by Adeline Yen Mah
Broadway; Published: 1999-04-06; Paperback; Book
Best price: $2.84
Price in other shops: $14.95
On Gold Mountain: The One-Hundred-Year Odyssey of My Chinese-American Family ImageOn Gold Mountain: The One-Hundred-Year Odyssey of My Chinese-American Family
by Lisa See
Vintage; Published: 1996-08-27; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.85
Price in other shops: $15.95
The Concubine's Children ImageThe Concubine's Children
by Denise Chong
Penguin (Non-Classics); Published: 1996-01-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.48
Price in other shops: $15.00
The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down ImageThe Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down
by Anne Fadiman
Farrar, Straus and Giroux; Published: 1998-09-28; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.00
Price in other shops: $15.00
Making the Grade: Reinventing America's Schools ImageMaking the Grade: Reinventing America's Schools
by Tony Wagner
Routledge; Published: 2003-03-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $13.75
Price in other shops: $24.95
Learning Disabilities and Life Stories ImageLearning Disabilities and Life Stories
by Pano Rodis, Andrew Garrod, Mary Lynn Boscardin
Allyn & Bacon; Published: 2000-06-19; Paperback; Book
Best price: $40.00
Price in other shops: $52.00
Bound Feet & Western Dress: A Memoir ImageBound Feet & Western Dress: A Memoir
by Pang-Mei Chang
Anchor; Published: 1997-09-15; Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.95
Price in other shops: $14.95
Fifth Chinese Daughter ImageFifth Chinese Daughter
by Jade Snow Wong
University of Washington Press; Published: 1989-06; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.20
Price in other shops: $13.95
Book store. Illustrated catalog of books on different categories