In addition to white-washing their Mandarin Chinese identities, her stepmother treats Adeline and her blood siblings with disdain, while visibly lavishing attention on Yen Mah's half siblings.
Adeline was originally named Jun-ling and her brothers and sisters are all given Mandarin names at birth, their stepmother, a French-Chinese woman named Jeanne Prosperi (also known as Niang) renames all of her children Francophone and Anglicized names. Subtitled The Secret Story of an Unwanted Daughter and an outgrowth of her earlier memoir, Falling Leaves, Yen Mah's story takes its name from a Chinese proverb: "Falling leaves return to their roots." Though she grows up wealthy and privileged, Adeline's childhood is anything but easy.
Considered bad luck by her family for causing her mother's untimely death in childbirth (a not-unusual conclusion in Chinese culture), her childhood goes from bad to worse when her father remarries an "evil" stepmother. As much a coming of age story as it is a vivid picture of early 20th Century China, Chinese Cinderella weaves personal experiences together with larger, historical events such as the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong.
A story of triumph over adversity, confronting one's roots, and the power of literature to help in finding one's way in the world, this autobiographical tale of Adeline Yen Mah's childhood during the Second World War begins with the unfortunate circumstances of her birth.
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