A deeply personal and shocking look at how China is arriving at terms using its conflicted former as it emerges right into a contemporary, cutting-edge superpower.

Through the stories of three generations of ladies in her family, Karoline Kan, a former New York Times reporter based in Beijing, shows how they navigated their way inside a country beset by poverty and often-violent political unrest. As the Kans move from calm villages to congested cities and through the urban streets of Beijing searching for a about Under Red Skies: Three Decades of Life, Reduction, and Hope in China better life-style, they are compelled to confront the past and break the chains of tradition, especially those compelled on women.

Raw and uncovering, Karoline Kan offers gripping stories of her grandmother, who struggled to make a method for her family during the Great Famine; of her mother, who defied the One-Child Policy by giving delivery to Karoline; of her cousin, a footwear factory worker scraping by on 6 yuan (88 cents) each hour; and of herself, as an ambitious millennial striving to find a job–and accurate love–during a period rife with bewildering cultural change.

Under Crimson Skies can be an engaging eyewitness account and Karoline’s search to understand the rapidly evolving, shifting sands of China. It’s the initial English-language memoir from a Chinese millennial to become published in the us, and a fascinating portrait of the otherwise-hidden world, created from the perspective of these who live there.