Bette Bao Lord
| Bette Bao Lord | |
|---|---|
| Born |
November 3, 1938 Shanghai, China |
| Nationality | American |
| Occupation | Novelist, short story writer, civic activist |
| Movement | Historical fiction and biography |
| Spouse(s) | Winston Lord |
| Children | 2 Elizabeth Pillsbury Lord (aka Lisa Lord) Winston Bao Lord |
| Parents |
|
 Booknotes interview with Lord on Legacies: A Chinese Mosaic, May 27, 1990, C-SPAN
|
Bette Bao Lord (Chinese: 包柏漪, Pinyin: Bāo Bóyì; born November 3, 1938) is a Chinese-born American writer and civic activist for human rights and democracy.
Lord was born as Bette Bao in Shanghai, China. With her mother and father, Dora and Sandys Bao, and her younger sister, Cathy Bao, she 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 1949 Bette Bao Lord and her family were stranded in the United States when Mao Zedong and his communist rebels won the civil war in China.
Bette Bao Lord has written eloquently about her 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 efforts to learn English and to become accepted by her classmates and how she succeeds with the help of baseball and Jackie Robinson.
Lord went to public schools in Brooklyn and New Jersey. Lord and earned a B.A. in Political Science at Tufts University in 1959 and a master's at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in 1960.
Lord worked as Assistant to the Director at the East-West Center, in Hawai`i, and as program officer at the Fulbright Program for professors, in Washington, D.C.
In 1962, as refugees surged into Hong Kong, Bette's mother, Dora Bao, conceived and carried out a plan to get her third daughter, nicknamed Sansan (Putonghua, Sānsān, "Threethree") (Jean Bao) out of the People's Republic of China; both Sansan and Bette wanted to tell Sansan's story, so they made tape recordings, first of Sansan telling her story, then of Bette interviewing Sansan. Bette made more than 250 pages of notes, and then wrote the book, going back to Sansan with more questions and interviews along the way. Sansan was a bridesmaid at Bette's wedding to Winston Lord, a Foreign Service Officer.
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