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Adeline Yen Mah Wikipedia

Adeline Yen Mah (zh-cp|c=馬嚴君玲|p=Mǎ Yán Jūnlíng; Yale (Cantonese (linguistics)|Cantonese): ma5 yim4 gwan1 ling4) is a Chinese-American author and physician. She grew up in Tianjin, China, and now lives in California. She is married and has two children.

Mah was born in Tianjin, China. After her birth, her mother died due to medical complications, and she was subsequently labelled "bad luck" by the rest of her family. One year later, her father married a Eurasian woman who was half French and half Chinese. The woman doted upon Adeline's father and her own two children, while mistreating the rest of the family, particularly Adeline. This childhood conflict, involving emotional abuse and Mah's attempts to gain her father's affection, are detailed in her second novel, Chinese Cinderella.

At fourteen, as her autobiographies state, Mah won a writing competition, and convinced her father to let her study in England. She completed a medical degree, and established a medical practice in California. In her free time, however, she continued to write about the tragedies that had overshadowed her life. Her first novel, Falling Leaves, relates her full life story. It begins by relating her emotionally deprived childhood under her stepmother's cruelty, and goes on to recount how, after her father died, her stepmother prevented his children from reading his will until her own death two years later.

Falling Leaves sold over one million copies worldwide, prompting Mah to quit medicine and devote her time to writing. Her second novel, Chinese Cinderella, was an abridged version of her autobiography for children, and sold equally well. She has since written Watching The Tree, a book on Chinese philosophy, One Thousand Pieces of Gold, a book of Chinese proverbs, and Chinese Cinderella and the Secret Dragon Society, her first fiction book, based on events in World War II.

Last Modified:   2005-11-07