VOA英语材料2011.6.9.doc

Author Lisa See Talks About Her New Book Dreams of Joy 2011-6-9 Photo: Lisa See, author of Dreams of Joy FAITH LAPIDUS: Welcome to AMERICAN MOSAIC in VOA Special English. (MUSIC) Im Faith Lapidus. On our program this week, we play songs from some of Broadways top musicals... We tell about a training program that is helping immigrants find employment... But first we talk to Chinese-American writer Lisa See about her new book. (MUSIC) Lisa See Dreams of Joy FAITH LAPIDUS: The writer Lisa See takes readers on a trip across the Pacific Ocean in her latest book, Dreams of Joy. It continues the story of two Chinese sisters who readers met in Sees novel, Shanghai Girls. In that book, Pearl and May escaped the Japanese occupation of Shanghai in the nineteen thirties. The sisters fled to California. In Dreams of Joy, Pearl is forced to return to Shanghai on a search for her daughter. Bob Doughty has more about the new novel and the writer. BOB DOUGHTY: Dreams of Joy takes place in the nineteen-fifties. Pearls nineteen year old daughter, Joy, is angry at her mother and her Aunt May. So she runs away to China to find the father she has never met. She not only finds him but becomes involved with the changes taking place in the country. Lisa See says this situation was not uncommon at the time. She says many young Chinese were sympathetic to the countrys new government. LISA SEE: Actually, there were a lot of Chinese going back to the Peoples Republic of China at that time, ninety-thousand in one year from Fukien Province alone. But also a lot of other people who werent Chinese, who were going to China kind of inspired by what was going on there, or even hoping to start a business. Once in mainland China, however, it was not easy to leave. Some who returned, Chinese and foreigners, became victims of political unrest. In the late nineteen fifties, Chinas government ordered major changes that caused economic problems. Here, from Dreams of Joy, the character Pearl describes t