Falling Leaves

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"Riveting. I read for two nights, sleepless, my heart pierced by Adeline Yen Mah's account of her terrible childhood. Poignant proof of the human will to endure."
—Amy Tan, author of The Joy Luck Club

There is a Chinese proverb that says, "Falling leaves return to their roots." For Adeline Yen Mah, this return to her roots brought her back through five decades of China's history to produce a truly moving modern-day Cinderella story, in her extraordinary and internationally bestselling memoir,Falling Leaves.

Unfolding against a turbulent backdrop of social, political, and cultural upheaval, Falling Leaves is the moving and unforgettable story of a courageous woman's triumph over despair in a lifelong search for acceptance, love, and understanding.

Born in 1937 in Tianjin, a port city 1,000 miles north of Shanghai, Adeline Yen Mah was the fifth and youngest child of an affluent family. Her great-aunt — in an unprecedented achievement — had founded the Shanghai Women's Bank in 1924, and her father was a revered businessman whose reputation for turning iron into gold began when he started his own firm at the age of 19. Yet wealth and position could not shield young Adeline from a childhood of appalling emotional abuse at the hands of her own family.

Adeline's mother died giving birth to her. As a result she was deemed bad luck and considered inferior and insignificant by her older siblings, who bullied her relentlessly. When her father took a beautiful Eurasian, Niang, as his new wife — at a time when everything Western was covetedassuperior to Chinese — Adeline found herself in the thick of an almost-fairy-tale, before the happy ending, that is, living at the mercy of a cold and cruelly manipulative stepmother. While Niang treated all of her stepchildren as second-class citizens, the full power of her wrath was unleashed on Adeline. Her only refuge was in the arms of her beloved Aunt Baba, who lavished affection and encouragement on the child. Despite her unhappiness, Adeline excelled at school and became a top student.

As the Red Army approached in 1949, the family moved to Hong Kong, and Adeline was shuttled off to boarding school in virtual isolation, forbidden visitors, mail, and all contact with her family. Burying herself in books, she dreamed of freedom and a new life. Armed only with the memory of the love of her Aunt Baba, and a driving determination to achieve unlimited success — to prove herself worthy of her family's love — Adeline Yen Mah survived her life of loneliness and rejection to build a successful medical career in the United States.

Told in her own words, the story of Adeline's valiant, painful, and ultimately triumphant struggle toward adulthood and independence unfolds with stunning emotional power. Falling Leaves is a haunting and unforgettable tale of people caught in the swirl of events beyond their control, buoyed by the indomitability of the human spirit.

San Francisco Chronicle

Poignant...affecting. An example of how...survival can be found in scholarshiplove and forgiveness.

USA Today

Falling Leaves is a moving autobiography of a Chinese woman's ultimately triumphant struggle to overcome rejection by her family as a child.

Washington Post

Painful and lovely, at once heartbreaking and heartening.

Publishers Weekly

Although the focus of this memoir is the author's struggle to be loved by a family that treated her cruelly, it is more notable for its portrait of the domestic affairs of an immensely wealthy, Westernized Chinese family in Shanghai as the city evolved under the harsh strictures of Mao and Deng.

Yen Mah's father knew how to make money and survive, regardless of the regime in power. In addition to an assortment of profitable enterprises, he stashed away two tons of gold in a Swiss bank, and eventually the family fled to Hong Kong. But he was indifferent to his seven children and in the thrall of a second wife who makes Cinderella's stepmother seem angelic. His first wife, Yen Mah's mother, died at her birth, and the child, considered an ill omen, was treated with crushing severity. But she was encouraged by the love of an aunt and eventually made her way to the U.S., where she became a doctor, married happily and, ironically, was the one her father and stepmother turned to in their old age.

In recounting this painful tale, Yen Mah's unadorned prose is powerful, her insights keen and her portrait of her family devastating.

Library Journal

This dramatic autobiography by a writer and doctor begins with the reading of a will that mystifies, then flashes back to recount events in a truly unpleasant family of seven brothers and sisters, a cruel French-Chinese stepmother, and a rich, uncaring father. In 1937, Adeline's mother died giving birth to her in Tienjin, marking her forever as bad luck. The family moved to Shanghai, then Hong Kong, with trips to Monte Carlo, London, and, finally, California for Adeline. In the meantime, with World War II, the Communist takeover in 1949, Maoism, the Cultural Revolution, and the return of Hong Kong to mainland China. Mostly, however, rivalries, jealousies, injustice, neglect, conniving, backbiting, and betrayal dominate this family. An intriguing tale, though it says less about China than about one particular Chinese family.
--Kitty Chen Dean, Nassau College, Garden City, N.Y.

Library Journal

This dramatic autobiography by a writer and doctor begins with the reading of a will that mystifies, then flashes back to recount events in a truly unpleasant family of seven brothers and sisters, a cruel French-Chinese stepmother, and a rich, uncaring father. In 1937, Adeline's mother died giving birth to her in Tienjin, marking her forever as bad luck. The family moved to Shanghai, then Hong Kong, with trips to Monte Carlo, London, and, finally, California for Adeline. In the meantime, with World War II, the Communist takeover in 1949, Maoism, the Cultural Revolution, and the return of Hong Kong to mainland China. Mostly, however, rivalries, jealousies, injustice, neglect, conniving, backbiting, and betrayal dominate this family. An intriguing tale, though it says less about China than about one particular Chinese family.
--Kitty Chen Dean, Nassau College, Garden City, N.Y.

Cleveland Plain Dealer

Another hot-selling, sad autobiography from China. Everyone in China has a story and Adeline Yen Mah's is a profoundly sad and harrowing one.

Kate Gilbert

Falling Leaves...is the tale of a child, told by a woman who in many ways remains that child for her entire life....Gathered in Hong Kong to hear the reading of their wealthy father's will, Adeline and her five siblings are blandly informed by their stepmother that their father died "penniless" and that there is no need for them to read his final instructions....[T]his becomes the central question around which she builds the book....
— The Women's Revew of Books

San Francisco Chronicle

Poignant...affecting. An example of how...survival can be found in scholarship, love and forgiveness.

Sunday Oregonian

Falling Leaves, Yen Mah's first book, reads as a fresh and haunting account of a childhood that nearly paralyzed its author for life.

Kirkus Reviews

A well-told "wicked stepmother" story, with the vicious backdrop of racial inequality. Growing up in a wealthy Chinese family (first in Tianjin, then in Shanghai), Mah, born in 1937, is considered unlucky because her mother died giving birth to her. Her father marries a beautiful Eurasian woman, Jeanne, whom the children call Niang. Niang begrudges her stepchildren train fare to school while her own children are served tea in their rooms and are treated to beautiful new clothes. Mah's father, Joseph, too, mistreats his first wife's children. The family has a racial hierarchy; in marrying a partly French woman, Joseph hoped to improve his social status, his full-blooded Chinese children probably reminded him that he, too, was Chinese. But Mah, more willing than the others to defy Niang, is singled out for cruelty. The other six children, following Niang's lead, pick on her, too. She is physically beaten and constantly insulted; she isn't allowed to have friends; her beloved pet duckling is fed to her parents' dog, deliberately and for sport. Her childhood is only bearable because her aunt Baba loves her and believes she's destined for success. An exceptional student, Mah is allowed to study medicine in England, where, free of her stepmother, she is happier than she's ever been. Eventually settling in the US, she marries, divorces, and finds happiness in motherhood, her work as a doctor, and an eventual second marriage. But the Yen family drama goes on: When Joseph dies, Niang cheats all of the children out of his fortune. Then when Niang dies, Mah, who thought she was on good terms with her stepmother toward the end, finds herself completely and inexplicably disowned. The betrayalsand conspiracies surrounding that incident are nearly as chilling as those she suffered in her childhood. A compelling story of family cruelty.