Bad Bad Girl

My mother had died, but still I heard her voice...

Growing up in an affluent neighbourhood in 1930s Shanghai, Loo Shu-hsin is told that it is ''no good for a girl to be smart'' - and yet when rumours of the revolution reach their enclave, she is the one sent abroad for an education. In New York, she meets Chao-Pei, a Chinese engineering student, and they set out to make a life together. By the time their daughter - Gish Jen - is born, her parents have only sporadic contact with their families, who are locked in repressive Maoist China. And in her struggle to discipline her American daughter, Loo Shu-hsin finds herself repeating the punishing refrains - ''Bad bad girl! You don''t know how to talk!'' - that punctured her own childhood.

Bad Bad Girl is a compelling exploration of a mother''s life in exile from one of America''s finest stylists.