“Tofu Quilt”

by Ching Yeung Russell.  This is a middle-grade autobiographical novel-in-verse appropriate for grades 3 and up.

Told in spare verse, the young girl growing up in Hong Kong in the 1960’s experiences prejudice as a female.  Girls are not expected to go to college. Girls are expected to be submissive to their husbands and take care of the home.  Ching Yeung is about 5 years old when the book begins and a teenager by the end.  Luckily, her parents defied the protests and grumblings of other family members and believed she should have higher education.  The short book reads like a connected collection of poems providing a glimpse of life as a young girl growing up in Hong Kong 50 years ago.