My Mother, a Cleaner (Love and Work in a Chinese Megacity)

Both a deeply moving memoir and a gripping investigative work of nonfiction, this bestselling Chinese literary phenomenon tells the story of a mother and daughter navigating their relationship in the hypermodern metropolis of Shenzhen.

When 52-year-old Chunxiang leaves her rural Shaanxi province for the first time for the mega-city of Shenzhen, she moves into her adult daughter Xiaoman’s cramped apartment and takes a grueling job cleaning a luxury mega-mall. Suddenly thrust back together, mother and daughter begin to clash.

But as Xiaoman watches her mother endure rigid corporate micromanagement and arduous, endless labor, she begins to document her mother’s backbreaking daily reality, pulling back the curtain on China’s aging, invisible migrant workforce. Together, mother and daughter learn to navigate a new reality, mending the deep roots of their relationship and complex history.

Intimate and compelling, this bestselling literary phenomenon is both a powerful critique of the human cost behind an economic miracle and a poignant tribute to the unsung, essential hands that keep our modern world spinning.