Shanghai quartet

"Steeped in the Chinese tradition of recording family tales and keeping the family register, Min-Zhan gives us this moving and powerful memoir describing the lives of four women of China - her grandmother, her nanny, her mother, and herself. "I wrote these family stories hoping that you will someday want to read them," she writes to her daughter in the book's opening lines. "I offer them to you as beginnings: notes on a lifetime of crossings for you to take over and work on.""--BOOK JACKET.