Sue Lynn Tan’s—Daughter of the Moon Goddess*****

Xingyin lives a contented but isolated childhood with her mother, the Moon Goddess who is forbidden to leave her domain. But after Xingyin experiments with magic lights around her, the Celestial Empress visits accusing her mother of trying to escape from her imprisonment. Fearing her daughter will be discovered, she instructs Xingyin under the protection of Ping’er, to hide in the Southern Sea with Ping’er’s family. During the journey, they are attacked by Celestial soldiers and the pair are separated. Alone, Xingyin must forge a new life in the Celestial Kingdom in the hope that she can free her mother from the chains of her isolation.

Meg Rosoff’s — Bride’s Farewell *****

Pell has witnessed her mother suffer from financial hardship with too many children. With last minute nerves on her wedding day, she escapes on her horse and heads to the Salisbury Fair to begin a new life.

But as she journeys further, thoughts of her family and her abandoned lover keep pulling her back.

Chitra Banderjee Divakaruni’s—Before we visit the goddess

This is a tale of three generations of women and the mistakes and hardships they face both in India and in the U.S.

Sabitri dreams of going to college so she can rise above her mother’s poverty-stricken life. She is given the opportunity by a rich family her mother makes mitai for, but her dream evaporates because of her ill-fated love. When her daughter, Bela is in college she is distressed by Bela’s relationship with Sanjay, a political Bengali rebel. Bela abandons her studies and flees to the U.S. to reconnect with Sanjay—the second generation to forsake her studies for love. In Bela’s daughter’s teenage years, will she do the same?

Arthur Golden’s — Memoirs of a Geisha *****

When Sayuri is a child in a poor fishing village, she is sold into slavery to a Kyoto geisha house. As she grows, she is groomed to become a geisha and is soon visiting teahouses dressed in fine kimonos and competing with a jealous rival.

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