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Red Azalea Anchee Min Books

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Red Azalea Anchee Min Books

My favorite book of all time. A very sad read. Brutally honest and stark. This book changed my outlook on life and made a lasting impact on my perception of many things, from when I first read it almost 20 years ago. I'm forever re-purchasing it when it inevitably goes missing after being loaned out to a friend. I can only assume they form the same deep attachment to the story as I have.


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Red Azalea Anchee Min Books Reviews

This book, to me, started out with the current book-club favorite theme of 'overcoming a significant obstacle to grow and go to another country'. Please don't mind the tongue in cheek. Anyway, as it rolled along, I did find myself becoming engaged in and with the main character and beginning to know the folks around her. I ended up liking the book. Especially because it kind of proved that not everybody goes along societal upheaval change is difficult for everybody everywhere. We don't change until we absolutely have to and even then, we do it reluctantly. What I found especially interesting is that the author and I are very close in age. Here in the United States, Black Americans were stepping up and facing the fight for our Civil Rights. In China, civil rights were diminishing painfully. I was wearing miniskirts and my afro and going to college; she, on the other hand, was really struggling to live. My family didn't have much but through education, I achieved access to whatever I wanted. Her family didn't have much but finally through education, she achieved access to whatever she wanted. I don't know that I could have lived the life she did, and she probably feels the same way.
This is an excellent, some have said definitive, autobiographical journey with Anchee Min as she goes from denouncing a teacher, to life on a Red Farm, then almost a star in a movie and finally to America where she has written two more books.

Some people have been put off by what they consider a homosexual relationship on the farm. Nothing could be further from the truth. Two sensitive people find a way to be there for each other and share their feelings, actually about men by the way. It's more about innocence than sex.
Having read Becoming Madame Mao before reading Red Azalea blunted the impact. Both essentially use the same plot background. Nevertheless, Red Azalea was a good (and easy) read. The narration almost carries a feeling of a monotone in the telling but the blunt force of the brutal Mao regime balances any intimacies. We need to remind ourselves from what the Chinese are now recovering--and that cruelty and incredible backwardness still lingers in that society. That passion which is revealed is sad, for it comes from great loneliness and lack of family.

I'm curious as to how Anchee Min got through the process of coming to the U.S. and what her life has since become. I'd like to know more about her parents and how her siblings fared. I was left hanging.
Her struggle against the revolution, her country and herself.

The part I did not like was the translation of the Chinese names to English equals which I felt that it made the story a little impersonal. Hence, the 4-star rating.

By and large, it is an achievement for a person who can't speak English to be an author of an English novel. Anchee Min's style of writing captures the nuance of the bitterness most Chinese have to go through during the Cultural Revolution.

A great read.
Anchee Min's story is astounding, not because there aren't thousands like it, but because it's written not from the perspective of "this is what happened when Mao ruled to the people at large" but from a personal, painful perspective in that Ms. Min chronicles her emotions and actions as though she were telling her diary what happened that day. The potent overtones of living a life of fear are gut-wrenching; I cannot imagine living in a place where nobody is an ally, justice does not exist, and evil men are obeyed to the letter according to their own whims. That people could live lives so ordered by terror and yet accept it to no end boggles my autonomous American mindset. A real-eye opener, so much that I can't seem to write a proper review in coherent sentences. Just, wow.
This heart-rending story of Anchee Min's early life during Mao's revolution shares her tears, sorrows and loss of hope as she grows from her mother's helper beginning at age five, to her life on a farm so her siblings can remain safely at home, and ultimately her escape from the drudgery of a peasant's hardship life to the film studios of Madame Mao. With each step, back breaking chore, loss of friends and the beginning of her questioning of Chairman Mao's messages, Ms. Min brings to life her trials behind the red curtain. Her skill for character, time and place are gifts to her readers, one that has us crying over her struggles, angry towards those who betrayed her trust and ultimately our delight that she finally realizes her own value and finds her strength to survive.
What a fantastic experience it was to read such a book. A private look into China during the sixties and early seventies which reveals a society more Orwellian than anyone could imagine. Nacho Min writes of a life filled with individual style and repression from a time when there was to be no individuality, lofty societal goals replaced by "Lord of the Flies" policies placed on billions of people. Ms Min's writing style is simplistic, consisting of short little sentences holding more power than much of the long verse I've read. You ARE Anchee Min as you read this book, which is a beautiful, brutal look at the strength of the individual.
My favorite book of all time. A very sad read. Brutally honest and stark. This book changed my outlook on life and made a lasting impact on my perception of many things, from when I first read it almost 20 years ago. I'm forever re-purchasing it when it inevitably goes missing after being loaned out to a friend. I can only assume they form the same deep attachment to the story as I have.