Chicken Feathers & Garlic Skin: Diary of a Chinese Garment Factory Girl on Saipan

We all live different lives.From the girl living two blocks away to someone on the other side of the world, the lives we lead are so different from one another that it often makesfor a compelling tale.Chicken Feathers and Garlic Skin is the diary of a Chinese garment factory worker living in Saipan. Chun Yu Wang goes there to make money for her family, leaving behind a husband she doesn’t love and a 2-year-old child.The book was translated from Mandarin to English, so I am sure there were a number of things that could have been lost in translation, but one of my favorite parts were all the Chinese idioms Wang revealed throughout the book.Her story is intriguing as she explains living in a barracks filled with bugs and rats, sharing a room with eight other women, dealing with natural disasters such as a tsunami and a typhoon. If she got out of work late, she would have to wait on line to take a shower that could sometimes take hours to filter through.The garment factory wasn’t what she expected with corruption and favoritism rampant no matter where she worked, and the bosses trying to do everything to prevent women from going to the hospital when they were ill. However, she dealt with it because she needed the money, but it seemed she also needed to feel as though she had control of her life. While living in China she married for the wrong reasons and felt she couldn’t leave. But in Saipan, she could be whomever she wanted.Despite being called a diary, it seemed as though her feelings were still just on the surface, which is what prevented me from giving this book five stars. This didn’t read as a diary one would write for themselves with depth of feelings that you couldn’t tell others, but as though she knew someone would eventually read it, and she didn’t want to reveal the full scope of her emotions including her failures in and outside of the factory.It is still well worth the read with a glimpse into another world, another life.**Originally written for "Books and Pals" book blog. May have received a free review copy. **

I truly enjoyed reading this book for it's inside glimpse into the life of factory workers living in the harshest of conditions. The author did a great job of painting the picture for her readers with her vivid descriptions and her ability to tell it all without leaving details behind. Aside from this being an assigned reading for our class, I would definitely recommend this book to friends and family who may have interest in global issues such as these. The boo give us a look into the inhospitable living conditions that these woman faced for years (all in silence and distance from any media attention.) Gender I believe played a huge role in the troubles of the characters we followed. These are woman living in poverty-stricken villages with only themselves to rely on. In order to help themselves and their struggling families, they must sacrifice their own happiness for better opportunities for their family ties. The woman plays a strong yet submissive role in the book. At times we view these females matriarchs fighting to give their families a better life...other times we see them as the example of a sacrificial family member who is expected to give up her own happiness. There are strong racial symbols that the American reader may not have an acquaintance to. For example, the competitive nature within their workforce, the codes females are expected to abide by and the cultural formalities about superiors is well portrayed in the book. We see how these racial characteristics sometimes paralyze people's lives and at other times add color to them. Seeing globalization from the perspective of a smaller party looking up at the grand system is overwhelming and one can't help but feel out of control in this system. They are damned if they join the forces of globalization (in this case pack up and move to a factory city), and damned if they don't (be poor, live a harder life.) We see that the individual people who turn the wheels of globalization are often crushed by that same wheel and no one seems to notice/care enough to change that.

When I first opened this book, I assumed it would be the stereotypical poor woman that works in a factory to earn money for her family. Even though this is similar to what the story was actually about, it had so much more depth and emotion than I expected. Chun Yu Wang was nothing like the stereotypical character I expected this migration story to have. She was strong willed and very different from other women of her culture. I think this aspect of it not only made the story more appealing, but the idea that is a true story and currently happening makes the point come across that much more. Usually you here about bad labor conditions years and years after the fact but the last year mentioned was 2008, which is very recent. I could expect this type of treatment hundreds of years ago but I just can’t believe that something like this is able to still occur. The saddest part about the book is watching her desperation for a better life and her will power to make the decision to move, but it ends up being nothing like she expected. I also like how her culture was thoroughly expressed because it allowed me get more familiar with it. At times I could put myself in her shoes because of how detailed her emotion and overall journey was. She is a good role model for women all over the country and I love how she is able to take the situations given to her and use her courage to deal with it. I would definitely recommend this book for classes that deal with globalization, and especially how this impacts women.

A very enlightened account of one girls experiences of working in a garment factory. Do we in the west ever wonder about the people who make our clothes and the condition.s they work in it is horrendous