My Half of the Sky - Tapa dura

Li Hui graduates from university and is assigned a position teaching in another province. Only an assignment in the right city-Beijing-will please Father. Li Hui defers, then loses all chance of working as a teacher in China. So begins Li Hui's real education in life.Li Hui arms herself with Mao's dictum that "women hold up half the sky" and moves forward. Can she care for her parents, choose romantic love over and arranged marriage, and become a teacher? Each person she encounters influences her choices and sucessess: Mother has failed to produce-or adopt-a son. Feng Gu runs a tea shop wher Li Hui is pressed into service. Corrupt Snakehead Chairman Huang smuggles workers to other countries and offers Li Hui alternative avenues to prosperity. Madame Liang's son Guo Qiang lives in Singapore and needs an appropriate Chinese wife.The most important person who enters Li Hui's life is Chan Hai, who would face criticism if only to help an old woman with her shoping bags. He too has dreams to fulfill while personal burdens, local politics, and economic realities intervene.Li Hui finds valuable counsel in folktales and memories of Waipo, her beloved grandmother. And Madame Paper Cutter, the itinerant crafts woman who lives in the local park, has more folk tales with different interpretations. Even Lee Sa, that strange, loud, and crazy American woman whome she meets in Singapore could be helpful.Jana McBurney-Lin has written a novel of people and culture, romance and expectation. She brings into our lives the vivid and powerful culture of China along with the realities and results of that ancient country's history and politics. All these elements come together in Li Hui, a young woman who only want to hold up her half of the sky.

Jana McBurney-Lin lived in Asia for fifteen years. Jana wrote for media in seven countries, as well as for National Public Radio, Writers Digest, Hemispheres (United Airlines), Islands Magazine, Singapore Straits Times, Japan Times and dozens of others. She was an editor at ALC Publishing in Tokyo, when she met her husband, a native of southern China. They then lived inSingapore, frequently visiting his family in Fujian province.Jana now lives in the Santa Cruz mountains of California with her husband and four children. She's a dedicated participant in the Bay Area writing community, having served five years as President of the Penninsula Branch of the California Writer's Club. She also founded the Writers Camp for Kids and volunteers annually in the local schools to teach creative writing.