- Paperback: 224 pages
- Publisher: Virago Press Ltd (1 July 2004)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 1844080765
- ISBN-13: 978-1844080762
- Product Dimensions: 21 x 13.4 x 2 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,143,630 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
'No more money for school this year. I till the land in order to pay for my brothers' schooling. When I think of the happy times at school, I can almost imagine myself there. How I want to study! I want to go to school, Mother. How wonderful if I could stay at school forever!' - Ma Yan, aged 13 In a remote province in Northeastern China, in May 2001, the journalist Pierre Haski and his group are preparing to leave the tiny village they have been visiting. Suddenly a peasant woman approaches and urgently thrusts into their hands a letter, written on the back of a seed packet, and three small brown notebooks filled with characters in a finely drawn pencil. When their precious bundle is translated, they are astonished to find they hold thirteen-year-old Ma Yan's diary and a passionate letter she'd written to her mother, headed, I Want To Study. The Diary of Ma Yan tells the moving tale of a spirited girl who wants to overcome her impoverished life, who prefers to go hungry in order to save money to buy a pen, who feels deeply for her mother, and her young brother . It is a story of indomitable spirit, wonderful humour and thirsty intelligence. Autobiography Isbn 1 84408 076 5
About the Author
Ma Yan lives in Ningxia in North-eastern China
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Absolutely heart wrenching,
By
This review is from: The Diary of Ma Yan (Paperback)
The Diary of Ma-Yan is about a Hui Chinese adolescent. She and her family are desperately poor, so poor that her parents can't afford to send her to school. The girl is desperate to learn and her heartbreaking memoirs show a life where earning enough to eat is a struggle. She has one outfit, she saved for three weeks to buy a pen with which to write the diary and her mother, who was desperately ill, did back breaking work hundreds of miles away to earn enough money to get her daughter an education. She and her brother walk four miles to and from school and the journey is dangerous. One day a group of foreigners were driving through the village and Ma-Yan's mother desperately thrusts the diary pages into their hands. It is only then, when the diary is translated, do the foreigners publish her fascinating story and help Ma-Yan stay in school. She is at the top of her class and works her hardest every day that she is there, eternally humble and grateful to her parents for helping her.
This is a beautiful, heart-wrenching diary. Ma-Yan is a year younger than I am and I feel ashamed that I did not share her ambition and dedication to her family when she wrote it at fourteen. Please read this. You will not be disappointed.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Inspirational insight into "forgotten" China,
By Anna (Rugby) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Diary of Ma Yan (Paperback)
The the diaries of Ma Yan tell the story of a teenage girl as she struggles to continue her education in one of the poorest part of China against all odds. I believe that this book will stay with me forever.
5.0 out of 5 stars
a first hand view of poverty and the will to obtain an education to escape it,
By
This review is from: The Diary of Ma Yan (Paperback)
China is a country that has changed in the past 20 years out of all recognition, since the advent of the `open policy' advocated by Deng Xiao Ping. A visit to China nowadays is as likely to include hours of shopping as much as explorations of its amazing historical monuments. But there is a different China from that of the big cities of sky-scraping consumerism. It is this different side of China, that as a tourist you will normally never see, that is revealed in this amazing book. The diary was written by a thirteen year old schoolgirl - Ma Yan. However it was only published because of a chance event with a group of French journalists who were travelling through her home village in 2001. The diary was given to the western visitors by Ma Yan's mother. Otherwise there is a strong chance that, like a 6 month section of the diary, it would have all been used by her father to provide paper for rolling cigarettes (!!) and been slowly burned into obscurity. Instead it was translated, published in seventeen languages and the profits have been used to fund the education of many children in Ma Yan's home province of Ningxia. The book itself is a remarkable first hand insight into lives lived in real poverty in an environment wrecked by drought. This book gives a real feeling of what it means to be poor. Yet throughout it all is Ma Yan's indomitable spirit and desire, whatever the obstacles she must overcome, and disappointments she must endure, to rise above her situation and to get herself an education. Alternately the book is heartbreaking and inspiring. Ultimately it is a message of how hope and determination can win through whatever the hardship. I thoroughly recommend it. In fact, once I had finished reading it I had a strong feeling that it really should be compulsory reading on the school curricula of all 13 year olds living pampered middle-class lives in western society.
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