Chuang Hua, an American in search of her inner China

Chuang Hua was born in Shanghai in 1931. She was still young when her family fled the Japanese invasion via Hong Kong, England and finally the United States where she grew up. In 1968, she published her only novel, The Crossing Woman, largely autobiographical. The original title, Crossings, says the crossings, the crossroads, the crossings of which his life is made. On the first pages, “the crossing woman” searches for her way in an unknown city. It is Paris but nothing indicates it. At the bus stop, a man helps the foreigner find her way between the Place, the Avenue, the Rond-Point. In the next chapter, we are in America. The siblings are reunited for the mother’s birthday. The children are so numerous that the parents have numbered them. The “crossing woman” is Jane Quatre, the last girl before the two longed-for boys.