Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China

Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China (1991) is a family history and autobiography by Chinese writer Jung Chang. Set against the backdrop of 20th-century China, in particular the first three decades of Communist rule (1949-1978), Wild Swans appeared in print at an important historical moment. Communism was under siege worldwide. In 1991, the year of the book’s original publication, the Soviet Union collapsed. Meanwhile, the Chinese Communist government’s violent crackdown on pro-freedom demonstrators at Tiananmen Square in 1989 re-focused many Westerners’ attention on that regime’s fundamentally brutal nature. The global political context in which the book appeared, coupled with Chang’s storytelling and analysis, helped make Wild Swans a bestseller.

Plot Summary

Wild Swans tells the story of three generations of Chinese women: Chang’s grandmother, Chang’s mother, and Chang herself. The book opens with the birth of Chang’s grandmother in 1909 and concludes on September 12, 1978, when Chang, a 26-year-old scholarship recipient, left Peking to begin her studies in Great Britain. Interwoven with Chang’s family story is the often dark and brutal history of 20th-century China, which Chang chronicles from the fall of the Manchu Dynasty in 1911 through the aftermath of Mao Zedong’s death in 1976. Mao, the megalomaniacal dictator responsible for the persecution and death of tens of millions of Chinese citizens, emerges as the story’s primary villain.