Wild Grass: Three Portraits of Change in Modern China
by Ian Johnson
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Book Summary Information
Author: Ian JohnsonEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2005-03-08
ISBN: 0375719199
Number of pages: 336
Publisher: Vintage
Book Reviews of Wild Grass: Three Portraits of Change in Modern China
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Summary: 5 Stars
As a mother who adopted my daughter from China in 2005, I read everything about China I can get my hands on and I have a library of books on China I am collecting and saving for my daughter.
Wild Grass is a must read for anyone who is serious about learning about Contemporary China, Chinese history and the lives and struggles of Chinese people.
It is especially valuable for parents adopting from China. We need a deeper understanding of China than the travel guides and a three-week visit can give us and we need to step beyond stereotypes of China to share China with our children. Johnson reveals the realities our children from China could have faced had they stayed and the life struggles our children's biological birth parents and siblings face today. We can empathize and come to a greater understanding of our children's histories and culture and we can help our children understand through this book.
Johnson gives his insightful and perceptive view into Chinese lives that we can't get for ourselves. He allows us to imagine we are Chinese while we walk in the shoes of three different Chinese citizens. He describes life under communist party rule and some of the ways the Party inhibits personal freedoms... just like the one-child policy does...the basic freedoms many of us take for granted in the United States. Lucky for us, Johnson is an expert on China as well as a gifted writer and he weaves these stories like a mystery making them fun to read, fascinating and as quirky as China can be.
I hope this is only the first of Johnson's many books on China. There are simply not enough books with this caliber of writing to inform us about China. We are fortunate he is in China and continues to write.
Summary of Wild Grass: Three Portraits of Change in Modern China
In Wild Grass, Pulitzer Prize?winning journalist Ian Johnson tells the stories of three ordinary Chinese citizens moved to extraordinary acts of courage: a peasant legal clerk who filed a class-action suit on behalf of overtaxed farmers, a young architect who defended the rights of dispossessed homeowners, and a bereaved woman who tried to find out why her elderly mother had been beaten to death in police custody. Representing the first cracks in the otherwise seamless façade of Communist Party control, these small acts of resistance demonstrate the unconquerable power of the human conscience and prophesy an increasingly open political future for China.China Books
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