RAS BOOK CLUB
Monday, 17 March 2014 at 6.30 pm
Venue: RAS Library, Sino-British College
The RAS Book Club will meet to discuss:
BECOMING MADAME MAO
by Anchee Min
Published by: Mariner Books
Publication Date: April 2001
330 pages
Copies of the book will be available at RAS events prior to this meeting. You may also obtain a copy of the book by contacting the RAS Book Club (see below).
Entrance: RMB 70.00 (RAS Members) and RMB 100.00 (non-members) including a drink (tea, coffee, soft drink, or glass of wine). Those unable to make the donation but wishing to attend may contact us for exemption, prior to this RAS Book Club event. Member applications and membership renewals will be available at this event.
N.B. RESERVATIONS ESSENTIAL AS SPACE IS LIMITED AT THIS EVENT.
THE BOOK (Written by Book Reporter)
Anchee Min has written a moving, painful, poetic and visceral novel about a woman's life, a real woman's life, but explained with such loving reverence for the struggle she experienced as a woman and as an icon that you will find it as hard to read as it is hard to put down. Becoming Madame Mao is a remarkable achievement and destined to be a classic of historical fiction.
The Madame Mao of the title is, the "White-Boned Demon," the wife of China's legendary ruler. We are spared no detail in understanding the physical and emotional difficulties of life in the spotlight as well as life as a Chinese woman. In the first few pages, after a particularly graphic explanation of how Madame as a young girl tore apart her almost-bound feet in rage at the horror of what was being done to her, we see that her life is not going to follow the path predetermined by her mother.
But Min spares us nothing as she delves into the personal details of this woman's life. Yet, at the same time that she is giving us such deep historical information, she is also chronicling for us the pains and joys and disappointments and successes of a real woman, flesh and blood..
Min has a way with words that is at once crude and transcendent. "Surely almost everyone is drawn to deception," she realizes at one point, and it is true in many forms in Becoming Madame Mao --- it is true for us, as sometimes we are deceived by the narrator's calm tone when all hell is breaking loose around her, the same way the nation is being deceived by these rulers who offer so much and expect so much in return. Becoming Madame Mao is a powerful and moving portrait of a woman's life.
THE AUTHOR (written by Barclay Agency)
Like every child of her generation, Min was taught to write “Long Live Chairman Mao!” before she was taught to write her own name. She believed in Mao and Communism.
At the age of 17, Min was sent to a labor camp near East China Sea, where she discovered the truth of Mao’s calling. She endured mental and physical hardships. She worked for three years before talent scouts spotted her toiling in a cotton field.
Madame Mao, preparing to take over China, was looking for a leading actress for a propaganda film. Min was selected for having the ideal “proletarian” look. Mao died before the film was complete, and Madame Mao, blamed for the disaster of the revolution, was sentenced to death.
Min was labeled a political outcast by association. She was disgraced, punished, and forced to perform menial tasks in order to reform herself. In 1984, with the help of a friend overseas, Min left China for America. She spoke no English when she arrived in Chicago, but within six months had taught herself the language.
Min has written seven works of historical fiction: Red Azalea, Katherine, Becoming Madame Mao, Wild Ginger, Empress Orchid, The Last Empress, and Pearl of China. The books attempt to re-record histories that have been falsely written.