"Wild Swans is about 20th Century Chinese history, but it's told through the perspective of three different generations of Chinese women. So you see a grandmother who's from the era when women were still having their feet bound all the way -- and then her daughter, which is the mother of the author; and the author is primarily growing up during the Communist regime.

Why I wanted to read the book was because my aunt had told me a story about how my grandfather and my mother's father had fled from China himself; it's this whole crazy story about a boy -- involving a boy with ducks and the father having to -- coming up to him and telling him that was scheduled to be executed but that he could provide him safe passage to Hong Kong. So I'd heard this story and didn't know if it was true; and I asked my mom and she had never of the story before. So then finally, I think -- or I got a chance to ask my grandmother if the story was true; and she said it was true, and she had more details about it. So then after that, I was really energized just to know more about Chinese history and other people's stories that were similar.

I was surprised by the details in the book because I think I had maybe an outline of Chinese history in my head, but to see the author filling it in with these really extreme details of hardship and women having to work up until the day they have to give birth and just the extremes that food wasn't available or how people were tortured, that was actually really surprising to me. I knew a little bit about foot binding or concubines and things like that, but I didn't know as much about the cultural revolution and how much that affected people. I'm glad I made it through all almost 700 pages, but the book provided me with a lot of questions I could ask my mom or my grandmother, so it was actually really personally relevant to me. I would give it probably four out of five stars."

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