I have been slow on my committment to reading my way through the works of the interview subjects in Donna Seaman's lovely Writers on the Air, but just read Anchee Min's Red Azalea and found it to be really intense - and a mind opener about life in Communist China under Chairman Mao. The memoir is hard to take at times - you can't believe the manipulation that goes on, especially such pointless manipulation. I will never understand what some people will do to remain in power or get power - it's mind blowing. But knowing that Min makes it out in the end, and achieves both personal and professional success, as well as life far removed from her childhood, makes it a story that has some elements of a happy ending (although certainly not happy for many of those she writes about).

In her 2004 interview with Donna they talked about the Cultural Revolution. She's very candid about being brainwashed - about how proud she felt to be a proletarian (this comes through in the book as well), and all of that is easy to understand. What really stuck with me about the interview is the different things Min and her generation were told then American children were told - and how completely both sides believed their government's truth:

So when Mao said the Americans were in Vietnam slaughtering the Vietcong and China was going to be next, we were all very scared and very determined to protect our country. So I felt honored to be ablt to go to the Shanghai garrison to be trained to do combat with Americans. And my dream, I think ti was everybody else's dream, too, was to be sent to Vietnam, to tie grenades on my body and to jump into American soldiers and blow them into pieces, and myself too. And I imagined over and over that my remains would be sent back home, wrapped in a communist red flag, and my parents and family would be sad, but proud.

The comparisons to today's suicide bombers and how they must be manipulated are impossible to ignore. Americans constantly wonder why they do it, how they could do it, what makes them do it. Well, Min is telling us right here how easy it is. They are brainwashed and away they go.

There is a lot in her interview to be enjoyed - her insights into her later books, Madame Mao and Empress Orchid, and the way in which women (wives, concubines, etc) are blamed for the wrongs in Chinese history. She also explored the history of the concubines - the relationships (3,000 women dependent upon the love of one man!!), the insanity of the system they were forced to be part of. It's fascinating stuff she works on and writes about and I'm certainly going to seek out more of her books.