A captivating account of a complex chapter in Chinese history.
In this debut memoir, Wang recounts life in northeast China during the turbulent years of Chairman Mao’s Cultural Revolution and his attempts to find purpose in the wake of its disintegration.
The author’s family suffered under the tyranny of Red Guard harassment, especially Wang’s mother, who was labeled an enemy of the state as a result of her privileged family background. Nonetheless, the author was an eager devotee of Mao’s philosophy and “ready to assume my role in emancipating humankind.” In 1975, as a teenager, he was sent to TianXi (the name means “heavenly happiness”), a peasant village in Inner Mongolia, for radical reeducation, an experience designed to destroy any allegiance to authority, including his family’s, that competed with Mao’s. However, his encounter with this “naturally harsh landscape and difficult lifestyle” was never fully realized; the revolution died with Mao less than a year later, and China’s new leader, Deng Xiaoping, ushered in a new regimen of reforms aimed at modernization. Wang was brainwashed by this “gigantic vortex” of political ideology, a predicament lucidly depicted by the author: “My inner voice served to suppress any encroaching doubts even before they could surface. I, like millions of others all over China, honestly believed in this course, the one that would lead to a better world for humankind.” The author would have to reinvent his own sense of purpose as well as his understanding of the character of his homeland, an especially difficult undertaking since he moved to the United States to pursue his studies—a “culture-crossing expedition”—and settled with a wife and child in North Carolina.
Wang’s remembrance is a deeply thoughtful one, communicated in prose full of studious concentration and careful precision. His reflection on the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution on China is well considered and searching, and he exposes the nuanced, myriad ways it left an indelible impact on the tenor of Chinese daily life. “In the post-Mao era, this social rift has grown into a subtler, but more profound phenomenon: aloofness between people. It is present between almost any two people. For instance, when you go to a restaurant in China and the waitress comes to you with a stern face, do not take it personally. Emotional distancing was—and still is—a norm within the country.” His life is both inspiring—he eventually finds success in American corporate life—and cinematically eventful. Swallowed by the forces of history and then unceremoniously spit out, he finds his own destiny. The best of Wang’s memoir is his consideration of the abrupt shift from one newly adopted cultural identity to another and the subsequent feelings of dislocation and distrust. The author avoids any political proselytizing. In fact, he expresses a respect for the intentions of Mao, however disastrously executed. This is not principally a political tract but rather a personal one, though it deftly raises questions of a grand cultural and historical nature.
A captivating account of a complex chapter in Chinese history.Pub Date: Aug. 19, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-948598-51-4
Page Count: 205
Publisher: Open Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An erudite plea to not give up on truth.
A film director addresses the assault on truth.
“All my life, my work has been involved with the central issue of truth,” Herzog writes in this brief collection of essays. Like many others, he is worried about the ease with which people can be deceived into accepting falsehoods as reality, such as the seemingly real online chat between him and a Slovenian philosopher “in which our voices are mocked up very accurately, but our conversation is meaningless twaddle.” That some of these threats have their positive side, Herzog writes, makes the problem even more vexing. AI, he notes, can help with “improvements in the design of vaccines,” but it also presents “the possibility of comprehensive, mass supervision, of disinformation, of manipulation on a vast scale.” In these impassioned pieces, he offers his insights into the threats to the concept of truth. Fake news, he points out, is nothing new. One can trace the phenomenon back as far as 1275 B.C.E. and the falsehood that, at the battle of Kadesh, Ramses II was a great conqueror, when in fact “Ramses was not triumphant, [and] the battle was inconclusive at best.” Herzog presents many examples of delusion, including the flat earth theory, the “technical possibilities of producing fictive ‘truths’” with Photoshop and TikTok, deepfake porn on the internet, and more. He is especially animated over “the foolish belief that equates truth with facts,” reserving particular scorn for cinema verité, “an antiquated form of cinema that offers no profound insights.” Little is original here, but Herzog is an engaging ally, and he isn’t above cheekily harmless deceptions of his own. When he was in Panama and dressed in missionary garb for his role in Harmony Korine’s film Mr. Lonely, a local approached him and wanted to confess. Herzog listened to the man’s confession and “granted him absolution in Latin.”
An erudite plea to not give up on truth.Pub Date: Sept. 30, 2025
ISBN: 9780593833674
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: July 31, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The lessons to draw are obvious: Smoke more dope, eat less meat. Like-minded readers will dig it.
The chef, rapper, and TV host serves up a blustery memoir with lashings of self-help.
“I’ve always had a sick confidence,” writes Bronson, ne Ariyan Arslani. The confidence, he adds, comes from numerous sources: being a New Yorker, and more specifically a New Yorker from Queens; being “short and fucking husky” and still game for a standoff on the basketball court; having strength, stamina, and seemingly no fear. All these things serve him well in the rough-and-tumble youth he describes, all stickball and steroids. Yet another confidence-builder: In the big city, you’ve got to sink or swim. “No one is just accepted—you have to fucking show that you’re able to roll,” he writes. In a narrative steeped in language that would make Lenny Bruce blush, Bronson recounts his sentimental education, schooled by immigrant Italian and Albanian family members and the mean streets, building habits good and bad. The virtue of those habits will depend on your take on modern mores. Bronson writes, for example, of “getting my dick pierced” down in the West Village, then grabbing a pizza and smoking weed. “I always smoke weed freely, always have and always will,” he writes. “I’ll just light a blunt anywhere.” Though he’s gone through the classic experiences of the latter-day stoner, flunking out and getting arrested numerous times, Bronson is a hard charger who’s not afraid to face nearly any challenge—especially, given his physique and genes, the necessity of losing weight: “If you’re husky, you’re always dieting in your mind,” he writes. Though vulgar and boastful, Bronson serves up a model that has plenty of good points, including his growing interest in nature, creativity, and the desire to “leave a legacy for everybody.”
The lessons to draw are obvious: Smoke more dope, eat less meat. Like-minded readers will dig it.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-4197-4478-5
Page Count: 184
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2021
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