Read this riveting memoir
that deals with child labor, fast fashion, and a fraught mother-daughter relationship
What to Read This Week
Made in China by Anna Qu
What It’s About
Anna tells her own story of growing up in several places—first, without her father, then without her mother in China, but she has fond memories of her grandparents and community in China. When she is brought to America years later, once her mother has established a job and found a new family, Anna feels upside down. Her mother has remarried and had two new children, and she lets Anna know constantly she should feel lucky to be here. Anna feels immediately isolated and not part of her family, and she’s put to work as the house maid in addition to being sent to work at the factory her mother and stepfather manage. On top of this, she still attends school, and all she wants is to have time to do her homework like her siblings.Â
The memoir also follows her through to adulthood, where she works at a startup and cannot stop thinking about her childhood and her strained relationship with her mother, which has never really improved, even after years and years and Anna achieving academic and career successes. It’s a book about immigration and how everyone isn’t given the same starting ground or chances that we like to think they are given.Â
Who Will Like It
If you’ve been looking for a book to follow The Radium Girls or Educated and haven’t quite found it, this is it. It combines a story of a girl who is overworked and mistreated with an incredibly personal account of her own upbringing and finding out everything she has been raised to believe is not what other children experience.Â
I read this absolutely incredible memoir in one day, and I was blown away by how riveting Qu’s storytelling was.Â
Next Up
Back to my regularly scheduled scary reading, I picked up Meddling Kids this week because I really wanted that Scooby-Doo vibe it seems to give off, but within the first chapter, I knew it’d be much darker, which I was very excited to see. I’m sad that October is coming to a close, but I’m sure I’ll still be doing some spooky reading long past the season.Â
Anyone picked up holiday books yet? Let me know if there’s something I should add to my list!
This newsletter is sponsored1 by The Adventures of Philippine Maximine, PI! Purchase your copy from Twinflower Books, online at Bookshop.org, or visit the author at danrehm.com, on Facebook, or Instagram. Thanks to The Adventures of Philippine Maximine, PI for sponsoring this newsletter.
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