Falling Leaves : The Memoir of an Unwanted Chinese Daughter by Adeline Yen Mah (Broadway Books)

Adeline Yen Mah’s book Falling Leaves is the story of her life. It is the true story of growing up in a family where she tries her best to please her father and step-mother but nothing she does changes their apathy towards her. It is a heart-breaking story of family bonds and how those ties are often broken. 

Adeline Yen Mah was born into a very wealthy family in a city just north of Shanghai, China. Her mother died a couple of weeks after she was born. She was only thirty-years old. Her dying words were to Adeline’s Aunt Baba, “I’ve run out of time. After I’m gone, please look after our little friend here who will never know her mother”. Adeline has no idea what her mother looked like, she has never seen a photograph of her. 

In 1930’s China, men were expected to have a wife while women were “expected to sublimate their own desires to the common good of the family”. In the past there was a double standard between men and women. Single girls who were not married by the time they were thirty often remained single for the rest of their lives. Men, on the other hand, were expected to take at least one wife, regardless of his age. 

Adeline’s father was thirty-years old. He was the president of his own company. He had properties, investments and other successful businesses. He decided he would now do something to please himself. While driving around with his sons he spotted a woman who he became totally infatuated with. Her name was Jeanne Virginie Prosperi. She was the seventeen-year-old daughter of a French father and Chinese mother. 

He eventually marries Jeanne and had the family call her 娘 (Niang), another term for mother, as the other children often talked about their deceased mother and called her 媽媽 (Mama). As Niang became a part of life, great changes would come, and nothing would be the same again. 

It is now 1988 in Hong Kong. Adeline Yen Mah’s family had all gathered together for the first time in almost forty years. The only person who was absent was Adeline’s youngest sister, Susan. The occasion was for her father’s funeral and reading of his last will and testament. 

At the end of the will, the solicitor said, “It is my duty to inform you that I have been instructed by your mother, Mrs. Jeanne Yen, to tell you that there is no money in your father’s estate”. 

It was this reading of her father’s will which was the catalyst for Adeline to tell her story. She and her siblings could not believe that their father died penniless. Adeline Yen Mah says she had to go back to her Grand Aunt and grandfather’s time to explain why this came to be.

Adeline Yen Mah’s bittersweet memoir of a happy childhood turned nightmare is heartbreaking as it is inspiring. It’s a story of finding one’s identity and the search for the most important things in life - acceptance, love and understanding. I believe it’s a goal we all strive for and for those of us who have it should count our blessings. ~Ernie Hoyt