My Goodreads and Amazon review of The Girl Who Taught Herself to Fly by Kwan Kew Lai (Rating 5) – Not Her Mother’s Life. Kwan Kew Lai’s memoir, The Girl Who Taught Herself to Fly, is a soaring account of her flight from childhood poverty in Malaysia to college and medical school in America, a prelude to her subsequent work as a physician and global medical human rights activist. Amenities most people take for granted — one’s own bed, new socks, sweets — were to Lai pleasures reserved for royalty. Yet she doesn’t indulge in self-pity for the hardships she suffered, or her father’s dismissal of daughters being as worthless as “spilled rice.” It’s pointless to waste time feeling sorry for yourself when there is so much to do to escape the fate of her mother and countless women like her, consigned to bearing many children and struggling to feed them. Filled with evocative recollections of her family and country of birth, Lai’s writing propels readers forward much as she spurred herself. She soon realized that education was her ticket out. To her own credit, Lai was smart and hard-working. To the credit of others, a few family members and teachers encouraged her, and Wellesley College took an academic and financial chance on her. While rejecting her mother’s life, and her father’s attitudes, Lai is remarkably nonjudgmental. As a writer myself (see my Amazon author page and Goodreads author page, I appreciate Lai’s ability to bring this compassion for difficult characters to the page. The Girl Who Taught Herself to Fly is a stirring and inspirational tale of what is possible from a grateful and talented author.
