A somewhat long but highly readable and historically valuable memoir of China.
In this lengthy memoir, a Hong Kong–based entrepreneur and investor recounts his life in China under the totalitarian Communist regime of Mao Zedong.
Zhang (The Golden Road, 2012, etc.) creates an alter ego, Shanghai-bred Zhuang Xiaoping, to serve as the protagonist of his ambitious retelling of the mass insanities during Mao’s reign. The book traces the almost unimaginable travails of the crafty, resilient Shanghai-bred Zhuang and his relatives, friends and acquaintances as they strive to survive a stultifying, terrifying epoch, when failure to revere Chairman Mao could be fatal. The book focuses on the period from 1949, when Mao took power, to 1977, after Deng Xiaoping succeeded him and the social turmoil of the Cultural Revolution had finally abated. The young Zhuang is burdened by a “bourgeois” background that constantly causes people to suspect him of capitalistic sentiments, but he learns early on to keep his mouth shut. Later, he becomes the target of party functionaries and fellow students during humiliating political “struggle” sessions in college. Later, he adjusts to zealous Red Guard teams ritually ransacking his home in search of counterrevolutionary evidence. Only in 1979, when Zhuang is on the brink of middle age, do he and his family finally slip into Hong Kong using forged papers. Zhang’s writing is serviceable throughout, but he particularly excels at reproducing mind-numbing Maoist jargon. However, a more detailed recounting of Zhuang’s obligatory political sessions at college might have added to the narrative. The author’s use of fictional characters may make readers wonder how closely the story adheres to his actual life experiences. That said, he still delivers a satisfying portrayal of the tenor of existence under Mao.
A somewhat long but highly readable and historically valuable memoir of China.Pub Date: June 13, 2013
ISBN: 978-1477428719
Page Count: 552
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Aug. 21, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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