Dogs Daughter: My Life in Communist China and Liberal America
by Lindsay Lei Wang, John Franklin Copper
Category: China

Lindsay (Lei) Wang was born in China during the worst of times. The daughter of parents condemned as 'counter-revolutionaries' and enemies of the Communist state during the Anti-Rightist Campaign, she was conceived in a labour camp near Beijing. Fearing she would die in the camp as her sister had, her father had to send her away when she was only a week old. In Shanghai, she grew up with politically out-of-favour grandparents and miraculously survived the government's policy of starving its opponents. Under the hostile stare of Communist leaders, Lei endured the harassment of officials, teachers and Red Guards and the verbal and physical abuse of her peers, who labelled her a 'dog's daughter' -- the lowest of the wretched. She was made to watch her relatives tortured and friends and family turn against one another, as everyone rushed to toe the line of political correctness under Mao Zedong's extreme leftist, egalitarian regime. Then, in 1976, as if silent prayers were heard, Mao died. The political line changed and Lei was allowed to attend college. An outstanding academic and professional career followed, opening the doors to study in a foreign land that seemed to represent everything China was not -- the United States. But contrary to Lei's impressions, the university that she attended revealed itself to be a microcosm of Communist China, and the United States a more insidious land of persecution... Learn about one woman's tenacity in the face of starvation, rejection, and prejudice -- her journeys, sorrows and joys, as she travelled from East to West. Dog's Daughter reveals hard lessons in politics, human nature and life itself.