Mulberry and Peach: Two Women of China

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Feminist Press at CUNY, 1998 - Biography & Autobiography - 231 pages
This extraordinary novel, winner of a 1990 American Book Award, recounts the story of two women--Mulberry and Peach--who are really one. Mulberry is a young woman who has fled the turmoil of postwar China to settle in the United States. Unable to forget the terrors she has witnessed or resolve the conflicts between her new life and her old, she develops a second personality: fearless, tough-talking, sexually uninhibited, Peach. While Mulberry clings to her cultural and ethical roots, Peach renounces her past to embrace the American way of life with a vengeance.

Brilliantly innovative in style, Mulberry and Peach offers a rare women's perspective on the upheavals of modern China, and presents an unforgettable portrait of the pain of cultural dislocation and the anguish of psychological disintegration.
 

Selected pages

Contents

Peachs first letter to the man from the USA Immigration Service January 1970
11
Mulberrys Notebook from the Chutang Gorge July 1945August 1945
15
Peachs second letter to the man from the USA Immigration Service 2 February 1970
59
Mulberrys Notebook Peking the Besieged City December 1948March 1949
66
Peachs third letter to the man from the USA Immigration Service 22 February 1970
113
Mulberrys Notebook an Attic in Taiwan Summer 1957Summer 1959
116
Peachs fourth letter to the man from the USA Immigration Service 21 March 1970
157
Mulberrys Notebook USA July 1969January 1970
160
Princess Bird and the Sea
207
Afterword
209
Copyright

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Page 6 - You're wrong. Mulberry is Mulberry and Peach is Peach. They're not the same at all. Their thoughts, manners, interests, and even the way they look are completely different. Mulberry, for instance, was afraid of blood, animals, flashing lights. I'm not afraid of those things. Mulberry shut herself up at home, sighing and carrying on. I go everywhere, looking for thrills. Snow, rain, thunder, birds, animals, I love them all. Sometimes Mulberry wanted to die, sometimes she wanted to live. In the end...