This was a wonderful book in the best sense--great thought provoking story with feeling. I always love an author willing to stir the pot and Cleage does not disappoint. I did take issue with her comment about Condoleezza Rice, but, hey, isn't that the beauty of a free mind in a free country?

This was a moving book about friendship and how different perceptions can affect it. I also learned a lot about women's lives and customs in 19th century rural China.

I am currently reading Snow Flower And The Secret Fan by Lisa See.

Snow Flower And The Secret Fan
Lisa See
China-Historical Fiction
288 pages

Lily is haunted by memories-of who she once was, and of a person, long gone, who defined her existence. She has nothing but time now, as she recounts the tale of Snow Flower, and asks the gods for forgiveness.

In nineteenth-century China, when wives and daughters were foot-bound and lived in almost total seclusion, the women in one remote Hunan county developed their own secret code for communication: nu shu ("women's writing"). Some girls were paired with laotongs, "old sames," in emotional matches that lasted throughout their lives. They painted letters on fans, embroidered messages on handkerchiefs, and composed stories, thereby reaching out of their isolation to share their hopes, dreams, and accomplishments.

With the arrival of a silk fan on which Snow Flower has composed for Lily a poem of introduction in nu shu, their friendship is sealed and they become "old sames" at the tender age of seven. As the years pass, through famine and rebellion, they reflect upon their arranged marriages, loneliness, and the joys and tragedies of motherhood. The two find solace, developing a bond that keeps their spirits alive. But when a misunderstanding arises, their lifelong friendship suddenly threatens to tear apart.

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan is a brilliantly realistic journey back to an era of Chinese history that is as deeply moving as it is sorrowful. With the period detail and deep resonance of Memoirs of a Geisha, this lyrical and emotionally charged novel delves into one of the most mysterious of human relationships: female friendship.

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See
The basis for this story is nu shu...a old secret language developed
by Chinese women in order to communicate and share their lives with
each other in secret. The story takes place in mid 1800's. This was
also the time of foot binding for women and there's a lot of
history about that as well.

This book is about two young girls in China who become laotongs ("old sames"). The story follows their lives; which become very different. A really good book.

One of the best books I have ever read: Foot binding; nu shu, a secret language used exclusively by the women of Hunan Province for 1000 years; and laotong, the arranged friendship between little girls meant to last a lifetime, provide the framework for See's riveting look at a little-known chapter in 19th-century Chinese history. In 1903, 80-year-old Lily looks back on her life, which was anchored by her laotong relationship with the beautiful Snow Flower. As little girls, the two communicated in nu shu, writing of their mutual devotion on a fan they passed between each other over the years. Raised according to the traditional restrictions of the times, they lived most of their lives confined to the upstairs women's chamber in their homes, enduring the relentless societal insistence that women are worthless except for their value in producing sons. The laotong bonds of Lily and Snow Flower endure through family tragedies, a typhoid-fever epidemic, and the Taiping Rebellion of 1851???64, but it is a misunderstood message in nu shu, the language that held them together for decades, that ultimately tears them apart.

Could not put this book down. I could totally imagine myself being back in this day and time. I would have been friends with Snow Flower.