Youfeng Shen
Born and raised in Shanghai, China, Youfeng Shen lived through the most extraordinary time in Chinese history. She experienced the Great Leap Forward, the three-year Famine and the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in her youth and witnessed the Tiananmen Square massacre when she was teaching English at the Shanghai Foreign Languages Institute.
The story of her first part of life, from 1948 to 1989, was published in 2018 under the title of—A Mountain on My Back—Memoir of A Chinese Woman. Her second memoir—Embracing My New World—which chronicles the second part of her life as she entered the United States as a graduate student, was published in 2020. After earning her master’s degree in Education in 1992, Ms. Shen became a naturalized U.S citizen. She taught ESL and Chinese Language in the U.S. and in China for over 25 years and married the love of her life in their later years and lived happily in Sacramento, California until her husband passed away in December, 2024.
Her third book—Xinghua, the Woman Who Held Up the Sky—is a historical novel based on the author’s memory of her grandmother, Dong Xinghua (Apricot Blossom), and Xinghua’s two journals, which had been passed on to the author in 1983 after her grandmother’s Passing. Xinghua began to keep her journal when she was still a child, writing during the fall of the Qing dynasty and continuing to record the events of her life, changes of time, different political movements, people’s attitudes, all the way into her old age at the end of the Cultural Revolution.
Youfeng’s Published Books
Xinghua, the Woman Who Held Up the Sky
Xinghua’s journal tells the story of her transformation from a traditional, obedient young girl into a strong woman, standing up for herself, her family, and the people around her. With unusual resilience, compassion, and courage, she stood tall and unafraid on her five-inch feet. Despite some of Mao Zedong’s failed political experiments, Xinghua left a great legacy of love and wisdom for her children and grandchildren. The author has compiled her grandmother’s story into this book for her family as well as for all future generations.
Embracing My New World: My life in America
"Embracing My New World" chronicles the second part of the author's life in America, from 1989 to present. It begins as the author enters the U.S. as an international graduate student at 40, searching for opportunity in a new country, while painfully missing her family and her only daughter, whom she had to leave behind in China. She describes how she embraced her new world, a completely different environment; how she reunited with her daughter after two years apart; and her life after she earned her Master's in Education degree. It recounts her achievements and love life, as well as the challenges and struggles she faced. After pains, heartaches, and much hard work, she finally reaps the fruits of her labor -- a simple and comfortable life in America.
A Mountain on My Back: Memoir of A Chinese Woman
This memoir describes the revolution from the point of view of a woman from a working-class family. Youfeng Shen, the daughter of a Shanghai textile worker, lived through the famine, turbulent political movements and the Cultural Revolution between 1950s and 1970s. Her book tells the inside story of the unexpected opportunities the revolution brought, as well as the hardships and struggles she survived with the love and support of her family and local community. Ms. Shen also describes the cultural shock she experienced while studying in England and the failed marriage which initiated her five-year plan to leave China once again. In words from her heart, she recounts how the horror of the Tiananmen Square massacre drove her final decision to search a better life in America for herself and her daughter.
