Book Review: Second Chinese Daughter

THIS is author Shirley Fung's first attempt at non-fiction, and it is a compelling story about how three generations of women (grandmother Ah Soo, mother Li Li and granddaughter Feng) in a story set between 1930s to 1960s in old Malaya.
The main focus is on a woman of the third generation, Feng, who was almost given up for adoption due to economic factors.
As Feng struggles to find her place in a household of seven children, where a daughter (in particular, a second daughter) is not held in high esteem as the others, she also resolves to work hard to break free from the constraints that her mother and grandmother had to endure.
The story is compelling and worth a read. Although, it might struggle to stand out in a market where many female Asian writers have written about similar topics in the past.
However, there is something personal about what is written in this book, and that is what helps make it resonate more with the reader.