New Memoir From A Chinese Millennial About Family Life In China
The book is the first English-language memoir from a Chinese millennial to be published in America.
Here & Now‘s Lisa Mullins speaks to Karoline Kan about her new memoir, “Under Red Skies: Three Generations of Life, Loss, and Hope in China.”
Book Excerpt: Under Red Skies
By Karoline Kan
My parents always used to say I was a “strange” child. In the 1990s and early 2000s, when I was growing up in a northern Chinese village—and then in the small town we moved to—my favorite thing to do after school was to follow the adults around like a little tail and listen to them tell stories. They called me genpichong, or “bum beetle,” be- cause I stuck to them like glue.
No matter whether they were talking to me or to each other—whether it was my grandmother, mother, aunt, or the neighbor’s wife—I would always sit silently beside them, prick
