China has more than 114 million migrant workers, which represents the largest migration in human history.
In Factory Girls, Leslie Chang tells the story of two such workers: two young women who she befriends over the course of three years. Interspersing their account of life and migration with the story of her own family's migrations, Chang paints a vivid portrait of world where you can lose your boyfriend and your friends with the loss of a cellphone; where lying about your age, your education, and your work experience is often a requisite for getting ahead; where a few computer or English lessons can catapult you into a completely different social class. Factory Girls offers a previously untold story about the immense population of unknown women who work countless hours, often in hazardous conditions, to provide us with the material goods we take for granted.
A book of global significance, it demonstrates how the movement from rural villages to cities is remaking individual lives and the fates of families, transforming our world much as immigration to America's shores remade that society a century ago.