Product Description

This is a Chinese woman's story of how she suffered appalling emotional deprivation and rejection by her family as a child growing up in China and Hong Kong in the 1940s and 1950s, and of its consequences in her adult life, above which she rose to make a happy marriage and become an extremely successful doctor and business woman in the USA. It is also a story about Hong Kong: of middle-class life at the time of the European concessions and thereafter.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1355949 in Books
• Published on: 1999-07-29
• Released on: 1999-09-29
• Formats: Abridged, Audiobook
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 2
• Binding: Audio Cassette

The Sunday Oregonian
"FALLING LEAVES, Yen Mah's first book, reads as a fresh and haunting account of a childhood that nearly paralyzed its author for life."--The Sunday Oregonian

The New York Times Book Review
"It's hard not to admire her [Mah's] persistence and perseverance..."--The New York Times Book Review

From the Author
Response from readers has exceeded my wildest dreams
For the first fourteen years of my life, I don't recall having opened my mouth once to volunteer a single spontaneous remark during any of the meal times I shared with my parents. Everything I repressed and dared not say as a child growing up in Shanghai is in Falling Leaves. I wrote it on behalf of all unwanted children in the hope that they will persist to do their best in the face of hopelessness, to believe that in the end their spirit will prevail, to transcend their abuse and transform it into a source of courage, creativity and compassion.

Customer Reviews

Falling Leaves are inspirational!
The True Story of an Unwanted Chinese Daughter during the last 60 years. In order to explain the first scene in this memoir, Adeline Yen Mah has filled the opening chapters with lusty images of an emerging nation amid burgeoning commercial & international life at the end of an empire & the start of a revolution.

It is after Adeline's birth, during the Japanese encroachment around Tianjin in 1937, that her mother succumbs to puerperal fever leaving five children motherless & the household rudderless. The family must watch as Father seeks & marries a beautiful young Eurasian woman.

From here on Adeline Yen Mah's memoirs take on a dour & malevolent aspect. In her scrupulous honesty, Adeline muses that Niang must have been happy in the beginning, however, she forced siblings to choose sides, spy on each other & curry her favor. This most beautiful of stepmothers singles out the infant girl with particular venom; until Adeline is banished to boarding schools.

I survived that particular exile myself, so I found this author's memories devastating as well as healing. Adeline Yen Mah manages to recount, without a scrap of self-pity or rancor, the years of betrayal & persecution until her scholarship, literally rescues her from her stepmother's clutches. In England & at medical school, Adeline thrives. Knowing the England of the 1950s I was fascinated & familiar with her experiences. I followed her adventures with growing gladness even as my heart dropped with every dreaded return to the withered core of her family.

Then she makes her way to America & falls for a handsome man; beauty is as beauty does & why, I wondered, would someone with Adeline's relationship training, know how to choose a good man? In California, however, she gets the opportunity to mature, safely raise her children & practice her medical profession. In fact, she becomes, to my naughty delight, the one resounding success in her family.

I was enchanted, enthralled & sometimes dreaded the next chapter. Now I have another definition of courage - that's all you can ask of a good book. Do check out my site for my full review of this & many other autobiographies.

Harrowing . . . gripping . . . enlightening.
Falling Leaves: The True Story of an Unwanted Chinese Daughter by Adeline Yen Mah is one of the most harrowing books I've read to date. A book that must be read by all, but especially by parents. Though many books have been written about the human ability and capacity for cruelty, Falling Leaves sears through one's soul with its accurate depiction of parental cruelty. Despite the fact that most of the inhumanity in the novel is both verbal, mental, and emotional, it is this kind of maltreatment that leaves the most permanent marks on the soul and human psyche. Predominated by manipulation, deception, and treachery, this autobiography also reveals the importance and strength of love and devotion, hard work and ambition as epitomized by Adeline's Grand Aunt and Aunt Ba Ba. Rich with Chinese history, Falling Leaves traces the detached machine-like behavior of warring armies and subhuman parents. Jeanne Prosperi (also known as Niang) is the domestic version of barbarity and political machinations, i.e., the symbol of evil and discord. The book is gripping, enlightening, and terrifying, yet Adeline Yen Mah's hankering after Niang's acceptance and her inability to see through the deceptions of her siblings remain a big disappointment for me. An overly forgiving nature has no place in a world that is becoming more and more inhuman. On the other hand, Adeline's subdued inner strength, determination, and resourcefulness are highly admirable.

doesn't leave your mind for days...
This is truly an excellent read, both as memoirs and the writing and prose. Niang and her cruelty captivated my mind; this woman really existed, she really did these things. It's mind numbing to think a person is capable of doing that to a little girl, more importantly it makes me wonder what happened in her life to make her cruel, even when she was so young and first stepped into the picture at age 23. I want to read Niang's memoirs! I also wondered, as probably Adeline has wondered many times herself, what Adeline would be like if she had had a different, loving stepmother. This story of this one woman emphasized the impact someone's parents - Adeline no doubt will have scars on her spirit even when she is a very old woman put there many years ago by Niang at a tender age. Sorry, I didn't mean for this to be so long winded - but this book is most certainly worth reading.