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Author

Lisa See

9 fiction · 1 non-fiction

Lisa See is an American author best known for historical novels exploring Chinese and Chinese American history, family relationships and women’s experiences. Born in Paris and raised in Los Angeles, she spent considerable time with her father’s Chinese American family in Chinatown. Her first major work, On Gold Mountain, traces the experiences of her own family across several generations and established many of the themes that would shape her later fiction.

See achieved international recognition with Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, set in nineteenth-century China and centred on an intimate friendship between two women. Her other novels include Shanghai Girls, Dreams of Joy, The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane, The Island of Sea Women and Lady Tan’s Circle of Women. Her fiction combines extensive historical research with stories of migration, cultural tradition, political upheaval and the bonds between women.

Periods and events

Early People’s Republic of China1949–1966 CE Gilded Age Californiac. 1870–1912 CE Korean War1950–1953 CE Qing Dynasty1644–1912 CE Second Red Scare and McCarthyism1947–1957 CE Second Sino-Japanese War1937–1945 CE Taiping Rebellion1850–1864 CE

Historical fiction

Historical fiction series by Lisa See (1 series)

Shanghai Girls in Order

by Lisa See 2 books 4.3(9,458)

The Shanghai Girls sequence follows sisters Pearl and May from cosmopolitan Shanghai in 1937 to immigrant life in Los Angeles and then into the early People’s Republic of China. In Shanghai Girls, family debt, arranged marriage and the Japanese invasion force the sisters across occupied China and through…

1. Shanghai Girls

First published 2009 · 4.2(5,442)

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2. Dreams of Joy

First published 2011 · 4.5(4,016)

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by Lisa See

First published 2007 · 4.0(1,020)

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Non-fiction

Non-fiction by Lisa See (1 book)

Reference works, biographies and other non-fiction are kept separate from the historical fiction above.

On Gold Mountain

by Lisa See

First published 1995 · 4.2(2,503)

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