Charlie Friesen

Charlie Friesen

Factory Girls

Leslie T. Chang

non fiction

Holiday

Page 91

1. First of all, this book was written by Leslie Chang, who lived in China and met a group of girls who worked in factories around Dongguan. Right now, she is writing about Min, a girl who moved from the country-side to Dongguan. This is the story for many other young girls who come to the city looking for work. Anyways, Min was having a reunion with her old factory friends. But she admits later that she is really not friends with them. As the migrants say, you can only rely on yourself. So many girls do not have friends, and good ones are very rare. Chang also talks about Min's relationship with boys and her work. Many migrants are always thinking of leaving their factory if it is not a good one, and where I left off, Min had just quit her job, and was searching for another one.

2. This book is alright, but was only supposed to be an book that I would read because my other book had not yet come from the library. So this was not my first choice of a book. But it is actually alright. Some of it is a little tedious, but somewhat interesting. But it is not fiction. This is quite interesting to learn about the life of a factory worker, but most of the girls' stories (multiple girls are followed) so far have been the same. They do not like their old factory, so they quit and go to a new one, which is not any better.

3. A theme that I have noticed in this book is living in the present. Chang hints at this a little bit. She says that none of the factory girls ever think of, let alone remember what happened to them two weeks ago. Nothing in the past matters to them. They never feel bad about leaving friends behind, and they especially do not care at all about the factory they leave. All they can think about is what is happening right now, and planning for the future. Also whenever they get a paycheck, what is not sent back to their parents is spent mostly on clothes and other stuff. These factory girls represent China, always looking forward, never back.

4. My favorite character so far is Wu Chunming, she always seems so nice. In her diary, which Chang provides excerpts from tells a story of a girl who actually wants to get somewhere in life. She wants to go to college. Most of the girls just want to get to a higher ranking in a factory, but Wu actually wants to get somewhere. Although she did not go to college, she did end up working not in a factory, but in a job that paid well. And money is everything in China. But I mainly like Wu Chunming because of her attitude. She seemed to me to care about more things than making money. Although that is probably what she was thinking, she is still likable.

5. My least favorite character is Min. She seems to me to be the opposite of Wu. She talks behind her friends' back, and she only seems to care about money. But she does not even work in that good of a job. It seems as if Chang makes you root for the girl who is successful, and the one who is not, you consider a bit of a failure. And Min is stuck at the bottom. I feel a little sympathetic, but still, not enough to make her better than my least favorite. One argument for her though, I have no met that many characters yet.

6. What I think is going to happen next is probable what will happen. This is not such a hard thing to predict, everyone does the same thing. Min quit her job, so she will look for and find another one, but it will not be that good. She will probably get demoted back to factory worker, and not working as a secretary. So, like everyone else, she will quit her job and find a new one, which will be better. As of Wu, she has left the factory for a while, working at other ventures that eventually failed. So, it is unclear where she goes, but she might go to a higher level factory job.