 Photo Credit: Lei Q. Min |
January 28 Born in Shanghai in 1957, Anchee Min was seventeen when she was sent to a Communist labor farm so poorly managed that the workers had to steal food from the fields just to survive. After three years on the farm, her working class looks led talent scouts to recruit her for a role in Madame Mao's future propaganda films. When Madame Mao was denounced after the Cultural Revolution and sentenced to death shortly after Mao's funeral, Min was declared one of her followers by the new regime. As punishment she was ordered back to the labor farm and then to work doing menial labor in Shanghai, a sentence that lasted for eight years. She came to the U.S. in 1984. Her memoir, "Red Azalea," was named a "New York Times" Notable Book of 1994 and was an international bestseller. Her first novel, "Katherine," was published in 1997, her second Wild Ginger, in 2002. "Becoming Madame Mao," a national bestseller, was written after three years of research done in China and the United States. Her second book of historical fiction, "Empress Orchid," offers a feminist correction to the traditional portrait of China's longest reigning female empress. With details drawn from thorough and sometimes painstaking research that included smuggling documents from the Forbidden City, Min weaves the tale of one woman as vibrant, passionate, and conflicted as China itself. |
