[SQZ]⇒ [PDF] Factory Girl eBook Josanne La Valley

Factory Girl eBook Josanne La Valley

Download As PDF : Factory Girl eBook Josanne La Valley

Factory Girl eBook Josanne La Valley

If you thought you understood how awful cheap-labor factories in Asia must be, think again. This hair-raising story follows a young Uyghur girl from Northwest China, as she is forcibly conscripted into indentured servitude to prevent the authorities from seizing her father's farm. Given the news this very week about the Chinese government "relocating" a million Uyghurs into concentration camps, the book is extremely timely -- and terrifying.

The book is written in a very simple and engaging style, appropriate given that the viewpoint character is from a village and knows nothing about the outside world. We watch as she is ripped from her family, made to work 16 hour shifts, fed slops, housed on a plywood bed with no mattress, beaten, and denied both pay and time outside of the factory. She is little more than a slave, and is not allowed to contact her family. It's horrific, and heartbreaking.

I recently bought a dress online for $10, just because I wanted to see what kind of a garment a person could possible get for so little. It was, surprisingly, a pretty good dress. But how could anybody procure fabric and thread, pay someone to sew, ship it all the way from China to the US, double the price for mark-up, and then sell it for $10? Well, now I know. Free labor. It makes me ashamed for being a participant in the entire system -- even while knowing how it's next to impossible to avoid buying anything made in Asia these days.

Every American ought to read this book.


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Factory Girl eBook Josanne La Valley Reviews

Roshen is a sixteen-year-old Uyghur girl living in northern China who has a good life and big dreams for her future. She is a good student who wants to continue her schooling and become a teacher; she has a family and a boyfriend who love her.

The last day of one term of school, just before her older sister’s wedding, Roshen’s teacher must tell her that she has been ordered by the Chinese government to work in a factory in southern China for at least one year. Whether Roshen goes or refuses to go (or her parents refuse to permit her to go), all her dreams are now dashed. Roshen’s father even offers the family farm for sale to try to keep her at home. Roshen doesn’t want her father to sell their farm, so she goes away to work at a garment factory. Even the journey to the factory is perilous; the bus breaks down (tire blowout) and the girls are exposed to asbestos as they pass a factory on the way to their destination. At the factory, the hours are long; the work is very hard. The factory girls are treated very harshly and watched constantly; even whispering one word in Uyghur, the first language of many of these girls, rather than speaking in Mandarin, meant demerits and a reduction in pay. Attempts to escape could lead to being sent to a “reeducation center” or prison. Roshen doesn’t know which of the other girls might be friendly or which might be informants, so she makes friends, but cautiously.

The style La Valley uses does help readers see Roshen’s world – what the Uyghur people consider proper conduct, what she must do to maintain that code of conduct, and more. The characters are well-developed and realistic. La Valley’s biography states that she lived in the Uyghur homeland and knows her stuff, making this an engaging novel, but I do wish there were more information about how La Valley knows her stuff and a good list of nonfiction resources in the back matter for those who want to learn more.

As I see it, the intended audience for this novel would be about ninth grade or up; harshness keeps me from going for any younger. This and the lack of further resources mentioned in the previous paragraph lead me to give this work the highest possible four-star rating, almost five stars.
This was a great eye opener albeit a sad read on what’s going on with the Uyghur and how they’re being treated by the Chinese government. They’re not a very well known group of people and after finishing this book it’s an eye opening experience.

Throughout the novel you follow the narrative of Roshen, who’s left her family behind and a potential fiance to work in a factory. As a reader you already have an idea on how this is going to go as factories over there are usually sweatshops with grueling horrifying conditions. What I was not expecting, and because I didn’t know much of these peoples is they’re on the bottom rung of the ladder everywhere they go. Since they don’t look like your average Chinese, they stick out as a visible minority and because their beliefs are very much different, they get treated horribly and are pretty much slaves.

You follow Roshen and a group of Uyghur girls as they toil through the factory under horrible conditions. You can feel their fear and mistrust, even amongst themselves because anyone can become an informant. What I was not prepared for, was for Hawa’s character. You already had an assumption about her because of her behavior but when she does something completely unspeakable on behalf of Roshen it was a complete blindside. The negative feelings you had towards Hawa disappears completely and is replaced with a kind of respect for what she went through.

Definitely recommended to read. It’s horrifying what these families and girls go through, and awareness is key.
If you thought you understood how awful cheap-labor factories in Asia must be, think again. This hair-raising story follows a young Uyghur girl from Northwest China, as she is forcibly conscripted into indentured servitude to prevent the authorities from seizing her father's farm. Given the news this very week about the Chinese government "relocating" a million Uyghurs into concentration camps, the book is extremely timely -- and terrifying.

The book is written in a very simple and engaging style, appropriate given that the viewpoint character is from a village and knows nothing about the outside world. We watch as she is ripped from her family, made to work 16 hour shifts, fed slops, housed on a plywood bed with no mattress, beaten, and denied both pay and time outside of the factory. She is little more than a slave, and is not allowed to contact her family. It's horrific, and heartbreaking.

I recently bought a dress online for $10, just because I wanted to see what kind of a garment a person could possible get for so little. It was, surprisingly, a pretty good dress. But how could anybody procure fabric and thread, pay someone to sew, ship it all the way from China to the US, double the price for mark-up, and then sell it for $10? Well, now I know. Free labor. It makes me ashamed for being a participant in the entire system -- even while knowing how it's next to impossible to avoid buying anything made in Asia these days.

Every American ought to read this book.