61 pages • 2 hours read
Jung ChangWild Swans: Three Daughters of China
Nonfiction | Biography | Adult | Published in 1991A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Essay Topics
Wild Swans describes the experiences of three generations of women in 20th-century China: Chang’s grandmother, Chang’s mother, and Chang herself. In what ways did their experiences differ, and in what ways were those experiences similar?
How does the book portray why so many people, including Chang’s father, gave complete submission to the Communist Party? Why did the Party demand complete submission, and what were the consequences of it?
How would you describe the place of family in Wild Swans and Communist China as a whole?
Mao Zedong, Chairman of the Communist Party, emerges as the book’s central villain. Without attempting to psychoanalyze, explain Mao’s purposes and methods of control. How and why do you think he succeeded in terrorizing so many people for so long?
Why do you think ordinary people participated in the Communist regime’s persecutions and the Cultural Revolution’s wanton destruction?
Tens of millions of people perished due to the Great Leap Forward and because of the Cultural Revolution. According to the book’s portrayal, to what extent is Mao responsible for these catastrophes, and to what extent are the ordinary people of China who contributed to them responsible?
Among the book’s key figures, whom do you regard as most heroic, and why?
Wild Swans covers nearly 70 years of Chinese history. Along the way, it introduces dozens of individuals who appear only briefly or periodically, but with great significance. Select three of these minor figures. Describe their roles in the story and explain how those roles relate to the larger narrative.
Chang remembers her father as an honest man and concludes that honesty had no place in Mao’s China. Why did honesty have no place in Mao’s China?
Do you regard Wild Swans as primarily a work of history, describing a unique place and time, the worst elements of which are unlikely to reappear in the modern world? Or do you see aspects of totalitarianism in your society?
