A Tiger's Heart

June 29, 2009
This unflinching, unapologetic Cinderella story from Chinese immigrant and businesswoman Shen will bring perspective and understanding to readers puzzling over the long history and rapid modernization of China. Born in China's Yangtze River Delta, a desperately poor area where a child's worth is determined by the speed with which he or she can plant rice, Shen found solace in schoolwork while dreaming of a better life. In 1991, days before her 17th birthday, Shen became the first person ever to leave her hamlet for college; as a college student, she was "one of God's superior children", guaranteed a job for life. What seems to be the answer to her prayers, however, is just the beginning of a long and troubling journey; ahead of her are challenges including a bleak period of homelessness, poor health, lice infestation, and eventual salvation via the Internet and an ambitious Amway representative. Shen's patient delivery and exquisite eye for detail provide a vivid look into modern Chinese life, but she wraps up her story much too quickly, suggesting that she has a sequel in mind.

June 1, 2009
A woman's restless, often anguished journey from rural China to an American economic-consulting firm.

Shen was born to illiterate farmers in a commune-controlled hamlet along the Yangtze River. Starved for love from her parents, who were exhausted from long hours planting rice shoots in the fields, Shen found an outlet from the misery in her schoolwork. At age 17, she became the first in her family to attend college, which she soon discovered was nothing like the self-empowering Wellesley College campus she would eventually know. Instead, it was a set of cement buildings in which students simply went through the motions, having been guaranteed a teaching job for life by the government. Smart and ambitious, Shen performed well, but upon graduation lacked the money to bribe the Education Bureau for placement anywhere better than a suffocatingly small village not far from her own hamlet. As an impoverished English teacher, she fought the loneliness by sleeping with men for companionship while cursing herself for becoming a whore like her mother, who was carrying on a decade-long affair. Shen became pregnant by a married businessman, who smuggled her into the hospital for an abortion (without anesthesia)—the painful description of the event is haunting. The author finally scraped together enough money to visit booming Shanghai in 1995, which inspired her to join other desperate Chinese in"jumping in the ocean"—"giving up governmental jobs and joining the free market" in South China. Defying her parents, she worked as a secretary and Amway salesgirl before returning indebted and covered in lice. A translating job at a knitting company led to opportunities that finally made her rich—but not without moral sacrifice, a requisite (especially for women) in the corrupt business world of New China. Wealthy but still emotionally lost, Shen finally sought and found reconciliation with her family, as well as marriage to an American she met online.

A candid balance of perseverance and despair.

(COPYRIGHT (2009) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

Starred review from May 15, 2009
In her prolog, Shen immediately hooks readers by sharing her thoughts during a business meeting with a man who had appeared on the cover of "Forbes": just ten years before, she was homeless and wandering from city to city in China. She had been abused by her parents, who were illiterate peasants, and ostracized by her neighbors. She was also clever and fearless, telling a job interviewer in China who offered her three months to learn Cantonese that she'd need only two! Eventually, as her epilog reveals, she married an American she had met on the Internet, moved to the United States, graduated from Wellesley College, and began this memoir. Her riveting story is peppered with realities like lice, prostitution, abortion, and men literally using women in every way imaginable. As she shows, she also took advantage of people who saw her potential and helped her when she was most desperate. Like a suspense novel, this book is impossible to put down. All readers interested in China, as well as memoir fans (especially of success stories), "must" read this astonishing title.Susan G. Baird, Chicago

Copyright 2009 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

August 1, 2009
Adult/High School-"I can hear the mosquitoes buzzing around my ears and feel the leeches sucking the blood from my calves. I think of planting rice shoots in the paddies with my bare feet deep in the mud. I'm only 33, but I've faced enough for a hundred lifetimes," says Shen, describing her poverty-stricken childhood in rural China. In an effort to move up in life, she got into college, only to find that it was a vocational-type two-year teachers college from which she was placed in a backwoods village school. She soon followed her love to southern China to better her status, moving to increasingly better-paying (but sometimes unethical) jobs using her English, and moving on to other men. She thought she was plain and ordinary, but from others' reactions, readers know she was pretty and smart, and see her using those attributes to take control of her life. Young adults will respond to the authenticity of the author's language and her drive to move away from the primitive village to a modern, luxurious lifestyle in the city. Eventually, she reached the United States, where she graduated with honors from Wellesley College and was offered a job in a prestigious firm in Boston. Shen's spirit, wit, and drive draw readers faster and faster through the pages of this bird's-eye view of China at the brink of modern-day capitalism."Ellen Bell, Amador Valley High School, Pleasanton, CA"

Copyright 2009 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.