Red Sorrow

"Red Sorrow is a memoir of the Chinese Cultural Revolution by one of its children and victims. Writing with immediacy and profound honesty, Nanchu gives a searing account not only of her own family's struggle to survive those desperate years but also of a whole society thrown into upheaval by the struggle for power at the highest levels of the state.".

"At the outbreak of the Cultural Revolution, thirteen-year-old Nanchu watched as Red Guards burst into her home and arrested her parents, who were tortured and jailed. She was left alone to care for herself and her younger brother. While Mao's "red cyclone" unleashed its chaotic force on her native Shanghai and schoolchildren vandalized schools and other institutions and committed acts of violence against percieved enemies of Mao, Nanchu endured.

She withstood the taunts and fists of her peers, public humiliation, and near starvation, as well as the pressure to denounce her father. Eventually, remaining loyal to her parents but believing still in the ideals of the revolution, she herself joined the Red Guards and became a junior leader."--BOOK JACKET.