Bette Bao Lord

Infobox Writer


imagesize = 150px
name = Bette Bao Lord
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birthdate = birth date and age|1938|11|03
birthplace = Shanghai, China
deathdate =
deathplace =
occugfgfgpation = Novelist, short story writer, civic activist
movement = Romanticism
genre = Autobiographical
notableworks =
influences =
influenced =
spouse = Winston Lord
relatives =

Bette Bao Lord (November 3, 1938) is a Chinese American writer and civic activist.

Biography

She was born in Shanghai, China with her mother and father Dora and Sandys Bao and came to the United States at the age of eight when her father, a British-trained engineer, was sent there in 1946 by the Chinese government to purchase equipment. In 1947 Bao Lord and her family were stranded in the United States when Mao Zedong and his communist rebels won the civil war in China. Bao Lord has written eloquently about her painful childhood experiences as a Chinese immigrant in the post-World War II United States in her autobiographical children's book "In the Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson". In this book she describes her struggle to learn English and to become accepted by her classmates.

Today, Bao Lord is a distinguished novelist and writer, and serves as chair of the Board of Trustees of Freedom House.

President Clinton has hailed Ms. Bao Lord as "someone who writes so powerfully about the past and is working so effectively to shape the future." Her First novel, "Spring Moon" (1981), set in pre-revolutionary China, was an international bestseller and American Book Award nominee for best first novel. "The Middle Heart" (1996), Bao Lord's most recent novel, spans 70 years of modern Chinese history, ending in 1989 with the student-led demonstrations at Tiananmen Square.

Bao Lord received an MA from Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and graduated with her BA from Tufts University. She married Winston Lord, later an Ambassador to China, in 1962 and they have a grown son and daughter.

Ms. Bao Lord is a recipient of The International Center in New York's Award of Excellence.

Selected works

* "Eighth moon; the true story of a young girl’s life in Communist China, by Sansan as told to Bette Lord", New York, Harper & Row, 1964.
* "Spring Moon : a novel of China", Boston, Massachusetts : G.K. Hall, 1982.
* "In the Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson", New York : Harper & Row, 1984.
* "Legacies : a Chinese Mosaic", New York : Alfred A. Knopf, distributed by Random House, 1990.
* "The Middle Heart", New York : Alfred A. Knopf, distributed by Random House, 1996.

External links

* [http://www.gale.com/free_resources/whm/bio/lord_b.htm Biography]
* [http://www.neh.gov/news/humanities/2005-11/bridging.html Interview with Bette Bao Lord] - Humanities magazine, National Endowment for the Humanities, November 2005 issue.