Summary and Reviews of The Lost Daughter of Happiness by Geling Yan

Media Reviews

Library Journal Though the historical setting is intriguing, Fusang never becomes a fully realized character, and it is unclear whether she survives her ordeals through the power of her personality or a lack of intellect.

Publisher's Weekly Fusang is a real historical figure about whom little is known; Yan's account does little to clarify Fusang's motives. Such opacity creates an intriguing mystery, but lack of resolution frustrates the reader. Yan's detached, dispassionate tone contributes to the sense of unreality pervading her narrative.

 Aimee Liu; author of Cloud Mountain Geling Yan is a courageous and immensely talented writer. Through a masterful interweaving of history and imagination, she has dared to face down the twin monsters of racism and sexual slavery, exposing both their vulnerability and, alas, their persistence. The result is one of the most unusual love stories I have ever read, in which the paradoxes of the human condition shimmer like threads of gold in a rich brocade.

 Bharati Mukherjee, author of Jasmine Cruel and sensual, Geling Yan's extraordinary novel is a dream enfolded within nightmare, and a nightmare enlightened by dream, an epic love story set in the brutal world of post-Gold Rush San Francisco and an American boy's love for a Chinese prostitute. And it is much more. The Lost Daughter of Happiness is finally a contemporary immigrant's testament to the fortitude of two historical characters, the Adam and Eve of a poisoned American garden.

 David Henry Hwang, author of M. Butterfly An erotic epic bursting with intelligence, forbidden emotions, and disregard for easy answers, The Lost Daughter of Happiness bravely unearths the secret fantasies and complex obsessions which pass between races, and between the sexes. With a work which suddenly makes terms like sexism and racism seem oddly quaint, Geling Yan has written the first great post-multicultural novel.

 Ha Jin, author of Waiting Geling Yan stands as an eminent writer from the Chinese diaspora. Her fiction has gained a high reputation in and outside China. The Lost Daughter of Happiness is her major novel, which combines myth and history and opens a new perspective on the American immigrant experience. It is an ambitious, eloquent, and unique book.