Rating: 
Summary: A "must read" book
Review: A very moving account of life in China for women. It's thought-provoking, eye-opening and heart-wrenching. I couldn't put it down and couldn't help crying for these women. I wish I could buy a copy for every woman I know.
Rating: 
Summary: Heartfelt and honest
Review: Although I was a little taken aback by the style, these stories are a great read and certainly speak to the heart in a way that only a person from China would know. Highly recommended
Rating:
Summary: Soul-Changing
Review: First off - please ignore other reviews that say this book is a novel! All of the stories in this book REALLY HAPPENED.EVERY woman must read this book. Some of the chapters are very painful. Your emotions will be tested. It is so hard to imagine that some of the occurences actually happen in the world (like Soul Mountain, whose women are forced to use leaves for their periods and are used by many men, causing them serious scarring and forever damaging their wombs). The book is so uplifting as a whole - the strength these women show is incredible. It will make you proud to be a woman.
This book will forever change you, lifting a veil of a world we don't often get to see. If I could give this book more than five stars, I would.
Rating:
Summary: I could not put this one down!
Review: For anyone who is embarking on learning about the culture and history of China, this is a great place to begin. Xinran tells stories of various women in China that she meets through her radio show, and shares unbelievable accounts of the extreme repression that we in the western world can only imagine. Imagining this is something you will do with aching in your heart and sadness. It is truly a great read!
Rating:
Summary: I could not put this one down!
Review: For anyone who is embarking on learning about the culture and history of China, this is a great place to begin. Xinran tells stories of various women in China that she meets through her radio show, and shares unbelievable accounts of the extreme repression that we in the western world can only imagine. Imagining this is something you will do with aching in your heart and sadness. It is truly a great read!
Rating:
Summary: An amazing book
Review: I am forever looking for it's match and failing to find it. This book consists of many seperate stories horrifying yet beautiful in the amazing strength of the human character. It is definately a must read. It raises the bar on what you would hope for in a book. It is most soul enriching to understand just what some people must face... for family....for government....for themself. It is beyond explaining. You have to read it to understand the feelings it envokes. THE must read.
Rating:
Summary: Moving testimony
Review: I don't know why readers are giving this book such a hard time for its style. I like the book's personal style. It makes me love it as opposed to like it. The writer's emotions are close to the surface and provide a particularly engaging way of gaining insight into the Cultural Revolution. I personally don't believe the book is fiction and even if the author creates in her characters composites of various women's experiences the book would still have great value.
Rating:
Summary: Wow.
Review: I enjoyed reading this book so much, but there was some chapters that were too painful for me. What is more painful is knowing that these are true stories that happened to real characters. I enjoyed it also because it taught me so much about the chinese history which I knew nothing about.
It's very interesting, I couldn't keep it down.
Read it but don't blame me if you don't like it.
Rating: 
Summary: Eye opener, but writing style leaves something to be desired
Review: I really wanted to love this book, but I had such a hard time getting through it. I dislike not finishing something I start and so I doggedly read on. While not a complete disappointment, and I must admit the book was moving in some parts, Xianran's wriing style was downright amateurish. Granted, English is her second language, but you'd think as a journalist...and her editors would at least refine it somewhat. I kept thinking she must've been struggling at the keyboard trying to get her words and thoughts out on paper because it seemed like each time she was trying to convey an idea or emotion, she couldn't quite nail it down. At times, it came out sounding like a personal diary entry. The ideas were somewhat lacking and begged for more elaboration or explanation.
If you can look beyond that, which I had difficulty doing every once in a while, the book itself was truly a voice for women in a China that was in flux. An incredible accounting of womens' experiences during the Cultural Revolution, it chronicles the secondary role women play regardless of stature or affiliation. So often, history is written with a bias we sometimes fail to recognize. History books are written in a "neutral" perspective, or so we think until a book such as this gives us a whole new viewpoint. A viewpoint that demonstrates womens' lives and expereinces so different from the opposite sex, we are surprised our history books don't teach us.
If you can get beyond her overly emotive and amateur-style writing, this book is worth reading. Certainly someone needed to write about the Good Women.
Rating:
Summary: Solid but unexceptional
Review: I think one's opinion of this book is inversely proportional to how much s/he has read in the field of China studies. If a person in not well-versed in Chinese sociology, s/he will undoubtedly find this a riveting read that is deeply moving and perhaps even shocking. But for most people who are widely read in the field, this book fails to rise above the standard oppression-of-women stories that other China-related books encompass. In fact, for those who have read several Chinese women's memoirs, this book will not even be as emotionally involving as those book-length stories, since the vignettes in this book are short and largely unrelated. The format of the book is definitely a strength for many readers, as it makes the book "read" much faster, and makes it a good "subway" read since the stories are relatively stand-alone and short. However, it is also a weakness, as it keeps the reader from being as emotionally drawn as possible to the various speakers. Book-length memoirs are probably a better format for stories like these, that are in part meant to shock the reader out of Western complacence regarding the Third World. Overall, this is probably a better women's studies books than an Chinese studies book--the stories almost could have happened anywhere in the Third World, and indeed anywhere where power is unevenly distributed and overconcentrated in the hands of men.
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