Factory Girls

This book explores the lives of young women in China who venture from the countryside to work in the urban factories. It covers the social, economic, and political forces at work in their lives in a personal way. However, a sense of repetition emerges when example after example is presented. The women are unique, but their stories have a sameness to them. This weakness gives the book the feel of being an overly long magazine article. The author translates their comments into standard English, not a literal translation. So when they are read in the same tone as the rest of the work, it takes a moment for the listener to decipher whether "I" is the author or another speaker. R.C.G. (c) AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine

Starred review from August 25, 2008
Chang, a former Beijing correspondent for the Wall Street Journal
, explores the urban realities and rural roots of a community, until now, as unacknowledged as it is massive—China’s 130 million workers whose exodus from villages to factory and city life is the largest migration in history. Chang spent three years following the successes, hardships and heartbreaks of two teenage girls, Min and Chunming, migrants working the assembly lines in Dongguan, one of the new factory cities that have sprung up all over China. The author’s incorporation of their diaries, e-mails and text messages into the narrative allows the girls—with their incredible ambition and youth—to emerge powerfully upon the page. Dongguan city is itself a character, with talent markets where migrants talk their way into their next big break, a lively if not always romantic online dating community and a computerized English language school where students shave their heads like monks to show commitment to their studies. A first generation Chinese-American, Chang uses details of her own family’s immigration to provide a vivid personal framework for her contemporary observations. A gifted storyteller, Chang plumbs these private narratives to craft a work of universal relevance.