Oh, my, two nonfiction books in a row, this one entitled “Oh My Mother, A Memoir in Nine Adventures” by Connie Wang. Ms. Wang has appeared recently on The Today Show to pitch this book, and she has written about it in the New York Times. Her work has been favorably reviewed by Connie Chung and Oprah. She is best known for her writing in the fashion world for Refinery 29. This book is both a biography about her mother and an autobiography about her own most interesting life. Ms. Wang was born in China and was fortunate enough to immigrate to the U.S. with her parents and younger sister.
Ms. Wang vulnerably and honestly depicts her evolving relationship with her mother as the family meets the challenges of immigration. She and her mother perceive the world about them in very different ways. Not surprisingly, Ms. Wang did not feel as if she fit in socially during middle and high school in Minnesota, and then she landed at UC Berkeley which was, according to her, the least desirable of the schools where she was accepted. Upon graduation, she moved to New York where she pursued her interest in fashion. She was able to take her mother on trips to Fashion Week in Paris, Milan, and New York, which certainly provided some funny cultural-clash stories. There was an underlying tension between mother and daughter, but there was also love and security that was obvious to the reader. Ms. Wang described her own growing understanding of that love, while at the same time, writing ably about the differences in Chinese and American lifestyles.
Although well outside the genre in which I typically read, I thought this was a book worth reading.
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