One Chinese Family, Three Generations of Strength in Under Red Skies


What’s clear from the beginning of Karoline Kan’s Under Red Skies is that her mother is strong, and her influence over Kan is likely going to make the writer into a strong woman, too. Kan is the second born of her family, which meant her parents had to pay a fee under China’s one child policy when the author was born in 1989. For Kan’s mother, the fee was never a hindrance: she and her husband wanted Karoline, and they were going to have her.

Kan digs further back into her family’s history and tells tale of her grandmother and grandfather, the former getting credit for keeping her family alive during the great famine.

Kan’s strength is also a focus of the book, as we see her overcome the stigma of being raised in a small town, where inhabitants aren’t supposed to want to graduate into Beijing universities, aren’t supposed to succeed as writers. Kan does both, and with a steady determination and a rebelliousness that at first rattles even her own strong-willed mother.

Showing reverence and kindness towards her family, Kan writes about her efforts to bring them forward in their thinking as hers evolves, such as when she insists her long-term boyfriend be allowed to share a room with her at her parents’ house during a visit home.

Under Red Skies, while engaging for its writing, can also be distracting for how common the stories are. Why is Kan’s family’s history worth the read? Worth a book? Is it only because she earned herself a job as a New York Times researcher? Whatever the reason, Under Red Skies offers a satisfactory glimpse into three generations of life in a changing China.

Thank you to the Boston Public Library for recommending Under Red Skies.

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