Red Azalea: Life and Love in China

by Anchee Min (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  1994

  $3.36

  Anchee Min, now a painter, film-maker, photographer and writer, left China for America in 1984. She had been a prize pupil and a model member of Mao Tse-tung's Red Guard. For her dutiful work for the Party, she was awarded a place at the arduous Red Fire Farm, where she experienced - at great personal risk - her sexual and emotional awakening with the female company leader. Selected from 20,000 candidates to be a star of propagandist films, she left behind the farm and her lover, for fame and an exotic affair with one of Madame Mao's leading emissaries. In this autobiography Anchee Min reveals, through a series of relationships, both a little-known China and her own character - independent, enquiring, and anxious to grasp every experience that comes within her reach. It is an erotic autobiography which, through the dialogue and characterizations of a novel, traces her life and relationships through the political and cultural upheavals of the era.

• Used

  Paperback
  1996

  $3.51

  When Anchee Min left China in 1984 her knowledge of English was minimal. She tried to write this autobiography in her own tongue, but found it impossible. Only with the emotional freedom granted by a new language could she find her means of expression. This powerful and candid memoir immortalises her coming of age in the Red Guard, the harbouring of illicit love amidst a regime bent on human alienation and her recruitment from rural hard labour into Madame Mao's burgeoning movie industry.

• Used

  Hardcover
  1993

  $5.17

• New

  Paperback
  2009

  $11.91

  Born into a devoutly Maoist family in 1950s Shanghai and forced to work on a communal farm from the age of seventeen, Anchee Min found herself in an alienating and hostile political climate, where her only friendships were perilous and intense. Both candid and touching, this compelling memoir documents her isolation and illicit love against the backdrop of China's Cultural Revolution. From her coming of age in the Red Guard to her recruitment into Madame Mao's burgeoning industry of propaganda movies, Red Azalea explores the secret sensuality of a repressive society with elegance and honesty.