Heading: (1947 Scarce autobiography of Chinese-American Woman Doctor and classic cookbook author)
Author: Buwei Yang Chao
Title: Autobiography of a Chinese Woman, put into English by her husband Yuenren Chao
Place Published: New York
Publisher:John Day
Date Published: 1947
Description:

First Edition. Original cloth binding. Illustrated with photographs. 327pp.+2pp. of maps. A very scarce sequel to Chao's best-selling Chinese-American cookbook, published two years earlier.

Buwei Yang Chao is best remembered in the United States as author of the first classic Chinese-American cookbook (see 1945-49 listing above), while in China, she was respected by both Nationalists and Communists as a feminist and pioneering woman physician. Married to an eminent Chinese-American linguist, a Harvard Professor during World War II, while at Cambridge she began cooking meals for her husband's fellow instructors in a US Army language program, leading to publication of her famous cookbook.

This autobiography of her eventful life before and after her marriage, which appeared two years later, while the Chaos were moving to Berkeley, where her husband became the first Professor of Oriental Languages at the University of California, attracted little interest. Professor Chao - who translated this memoir for his wife - later remembered that the publishers, "anticipated it would be a best seller", like the still-popular cookbook. But it sold few copies, probably because in 1947 the American reading public was sated with books about Civil War-torn China. A Chinese-language edition, published in China in 1967, was widely read, while this American edition has become very scarce.

Some wear to jacket, otherwise very good.