From what I've read about Chinese culture, the ties that bind a family together are one of its strongest and most enforced traditions. "Bound Feet and Western Dress" is an interesting memoir for the fact that it does not read like a memoir at all. It is the story of a great-aunt told to her great-niece, who mixes in her own observations about her aunt's life and her experience as a Chinese-American among her narrative.

"Bound Feet and Western Dress" tells the story of the author's great-aunt, Chang Yu-i. Born in 1900, Yu-i was the first woman in her family to refuse to have her feet bound. Despite being modern in this aspect, she is stunted and traditional in her upbringing, her education, and the way she acts in her first marriage. She is famous for having perhaps the first "modern" divorce in China and is determined to make it on her own from that point on. No one in her family truly knows her story until her great-niece asks her to tell it.

What passes between the two of them may not be a ground-breaking, fascinating story but is rather a quiet reflection on growing up in a changing time. Yu-i struggles through a great majority of her life to be both modern and traditional, to do what is 'right and expected' and to do what she wanted to do. She is an inspiration to her great-niece, a first generation Chinese-American who feels at home with neither nationality. The intersections of the author's remembrances of past encumbrances fit nicely with Yu-i's struggle to bridge the past with the new. "Bound Feet and Western Dress" offers a poignant look at the role that women have played in China and how they are defining themselves today.

The idea was good but Natasha simply didn't have the talent to put it in written and understandable text. She switches all the time the "I", got me confused about who she was talking about, her or her aunt.She mixed both stories, suddenly she wants to explains her "great destiny" (narcissism) at the same time as she tells the strory about her great aunt. Those second, third, fourth, xth brother's wife, sister, uncles, all irritating narrative. I really tried to like the story, to pick and read and just gave me headaches trying to figure it out whose story she is talking. Go back to school. I don't know how the editor accepts this kind of book to be published, need a lot of editing. Maybe someone in the publishing house is her relative.