Anchee Min

It is the final days of the Chinese Empire when Orchid, a beautiful 17-year-old from an aristocratic but impoverished family, finds herself unexpectedly chosen to become a lower-ranking concubine of the emperor....

At once a coming-of-age tale and a heart-rending love story, Wild Ginger explores the devastating experience of the Cultural Revolution, which defined Anchee Min’s youth....

Bringing her lush psychological insight to bear on the facts of history, Min penetrates the myth surrounding this woman and provides a "convincing, nuanced portrait of a damaged personality"....

Traveling to China during the Cultural Revolution to become an English teacher, Katherine awakens in her students a desire for Western lifestyles and becomes caught in a doomed love triangle....

At the end of the 19th century, China is rocked by humiliating foreign attacks and local rebellions....

Min returns to the story of her own life to give us the next chapter, an immigrant story that takes her from the shocking deprivations of her homeland to the sudden bounty of the promised land of America....