The Ultimate China Bookshelf #49: Leslie T Chang’s Factory Girls

From Village to City in a Changing China — Published: 2008

Blurbs: 

“Engrossing… an exceptionally vivid and compassionate depiction of the day-to-day dramas, and the fears and aspirations, of the real people who are powering China’s economic boom.” — The New York Times Book Review

Chang delves deeply into the world of migrant workers to find out who these people are and what their collective dislocation means for China. Chang skilfully sketches migrants as individuals with their own small victories and bitter tragedies, and she captures the surprising dynamics of this enormous but ill-understood subculture. — The Washington Post

Chang reveals a world staggering in its dimensions, unprecedented in its topsy-turvy effects on China’s conservative culture, and frenetic in its pace. . . Chang deftly weaves her own family’s story of migrations within China, and finally to the West, into her fascinating portrait. . . Factory Girls is a keen-eyed look at contemporary Chinese life composed of equal parts of new global realities, timeless stories of human striving, and intelligent storytelling at its best. — San Francisco Chronicle

Both entertaining and poignant… Chang’s fine prose and her keen sense of detail more than compensate for the occasional digression, and her book is an intimate portrait of a strange and hidden landscape. — The New Yorker

Author Bio:

An American journalist, Leslie T. Chang is a Harvard graduate and former decade-long correspondent for the Wall Street Journal in Beijing. She has also written for The New Yorker, National Geographic, and Condé Nast Traveler. As well as China she has worked as a journalist in the Czech Republic, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. Chang was born in New York the daughter of a physicist. She is married to the author of book #36 on the Ultimate China Bookshelf, Peter Hessler of River Town fame — the first couple to make our esteemed list! Factory Girls was awarded the PEN USA Literary Award for Research Nonfiction and was a New York Times Notable Book.