Excellent Book

I just finished reading a great book and I highly recommend it.  Factory Girls is a book about workers who have migrated to Dongguan, Guangdong, China to work in factories.  Most of the goods manufactured in China come from factories in Dongguan.  Most of the population in Dongguan are factory workers.  Most of the factory workers are young women.

Erin Joy is from Dongguan.  I often wonder about her birthmother.  More than likely her birthmother was a factory worker.  

I can't even begin to imagine the working conditions in many of the factories.  The author talked about a shoe factory with 70,000 workers.  With all the complaints of "sweat shops" and "cheap labor," the conditions in the factory have improved greatly.  Instead of working 7 days a week in 14 hour shifts, they now work 6 1/2 days a week in 11 hour shifts.  The money they make is minimal.  This factory supposedly has some of the best working conditions in Dongguan.  The factory makes shoes for Nike, Adidas, and other name-brand shoes.  I will never look at a pair of shoes the same way again.

Dongguan is also know for prostitution.  The author spends a chapter talking about the girls who have chosen that path.  Prostitution pays better than being a factory worker.  Much better.  The hours are better.  The work is easier.  Many girls migrate to Dongguan and become prostitutes after having a hard time working in a factory.   They lie to their families back in their home villages and tell them that they are working in factories.

My only complaint with the book is that the author interrupts her story to talk about her family's history, which is interesting, but has nothing to do with the factory workers in Dongguan.  She should have written a separate novel and just stuck to interviewing factory girls.  The book is mostly about two girls that the author follows and interviews for three years. During that three years time, she also visits places from her family's past and visits with relatives.  She was born in America and interested in her roots, but she should have saved her story for a different book.

Anyway,  if you have a child from Dongguan, you should definitely read this book.  If you are interested in the migration of village girls to the cities in China, you should read this book.