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Xueping Zhong , Wang Zheng and Bai Di (editors); Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, New Jersey, and London, 2001, 224p, ISBN 0-8135-2969-7
£15.50 (Pbk); ISBN 0-8135-2968-9
£40.50 (Hbk)
At last, Anglophone readers have an alternative to the stereotypes of suffering and persecution that dominate the numerous autobiographical accounts of the Mao years. Mao's rule involved crimes on a scale and of an order that have still not been properly accounted for. The experience of many who grew up under Mao's 'red banner', including those contributing to this volume, does not deny this, but it suggests a much more complex history than the accepted narratives of the 'victim' genre offer.
Some of Us is a collection of nine memoirs written by Chinese women, mostly from privileged urban families and now working as academics in the United States. Some were members of Mao's 'sent down youth', whose adolescent years were spent thousands of miles away from home in distant villages and state farms. Often left at home to fend for themselves during years when their parents were sent away to undergo political training in 'cadre schools' during the Cultural Revolution, they tell of the delights and difficulties of dealing with the independence that political circumstance gave them. The bare 'facts' of their adolescent experiences are not too different from many of those who have written the familiar mainstream accounts. Yet wanting to account for their past from their detached position in the States, they offer an appreciation of the powerful effects of the Mao era in shaping their cultural and personal identities. In their memories of...