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At the age of twenty-seven, Jade Snow Wong has a surprising and fascinating story to tell of growing up between the Old World and the New World in San Francisco's Chinatown. Today she is one of America's leading artist-ceramists. But before she achieved professional prominence she was her father's fifth daughter, born into a household where propriety and decorum reigned, where only Chinese was spoken, where family life went hand-in-hand with the manufacture of overalls, where the birth of a boy was occasion for very special rejoicing.
These are charming memoirs with a distinct and unusual flavor, thoughtful and informative and highly entertaining. They give not only the portrait of an individual young woman and her unique family, but they are rich in the details which light up a world within the world of America. First the child narrowly confined by the family and factory life, bound to respect and obey her elders while shouldering responsibility for younger brothers and sisters—a solemn child well versed in the proper order of things, who knew that punishment was sure and certain for any infraction of etiquette. Then the schoolgirl caught in confusion between the rigid teaching of her forefathers and the strange ways of her foreign classmates. After that the college student at Mills feeling her way toward personal identity in the face of parental indifference and outright opposition. And finally the artist whose early triumphs were doubled by the knowledge that she had long last won recognition from her reluctant family.
Miss Wong's story, simply told and flecked with delicious humor, is one of struggle and achievement. Throughout its course are wonderful glimpses of the colorful life of Chinatown and the people along its streets: Father Wong, who ruled his family with firmness and justice, never doubting the validity of the old precepts, although as a Christian he made certain concessions to foreign ways; Uncle Kwok, the factory worker and inveterate hand-washer; the herb merchant; the shoemaker; the watch repairer; and the shop owner who was not a Christian but would do a good deed if it came to the door and asked.
These are a few of the characters who enliven a record that will have meaning and importance for readers of widely varied tastes.
—from the dust jacket
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