Leaving Mother Lake: A Girlhood at the Edge of the World

This widely acclaimed memoir transports us to the remote reaches of the Himalayas, to a place the Chinese call “the country of daughters,” to the home of the Moso, a society in which women rule. According to local tradition, marriage is considered a foreign practice; property is passed from mother to daughter; a matriarch oversees each family’s customs, rituals, and economies. In this culture a young girl enjoys extraordinary freedoms—but the impulsive, restless Namu is driven to leave her mother’s house, to venture out into the larger world, defying the tradition that holds Moso culture together.

Leaving Mother Lake is a book filled with drama, strangeness, and beauty. Yet for all the exoticism, Namu’s story is a universal tale of mothers and daughters—the battles that drive them apart and the love that brings them back together.