20th century
american culture
american missionaries
americans in china
anthropology
Category=QRM
Category=QRVS4
china
chinese culture
chinese history
chinese villages
christian missionaries
emotional
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eq_isMigrated=2
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ethnography
family history
grace service
historical events
isolated communities
memoir
mission experiences
missionary communities
missionary life
motherhood
nonfiction autobiography
political turmoil
religion
religious biography
rural life
true stories
Product details
- ISBN 9780520074163
- Weight: 590g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 07 Jan 1991
- Publisher: University of California Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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"(An) engrossing memoir ...To turn everything recorded here - births, an infant death, family uprootings, civil turmoil, maintaining an American household in the interior of China - into gold requires an alchemy that only a beautiful, strong-minded, witty and loving wife and mother can hold the secret to." (John Espey, Washington Post Book World). "A wonderful, sad, moving memoir by an indomitable American ...Golden Inches not only gives many fascinating glimpses of historical events; more important, it shows us what it meant to live through those events and deal with them without rancor, resentment or facile anger and enthusiasm." (Tracy B. Strong, New York Times Book Review). "This closely observed portrait of living in isolated missionary communities and treaty ports, against the background of one of the most turbulent periods of twentieth-century Chinese history, is an important document. It is also a moving story of one family's obsessive and destructive love affair with China." (Tiffany Brown, Times Literary Supplement).
This memoir was completed shortly after Grace Service returned from China in 1937. Her eldest son, John S. Service, a Foreign Service officer in China from 1933 to 1945 and a member of General Stilwell's advisory staff, has provided historical contexts and illustrations for the events described in his mother's narrative.
