Product Description

In 1966 Ji-li Jiang turned twelve. An outstanding student and leader, she had everything: brains, the admiration of her peers, and a bright future in China′s Communist Party. But that year China′s leader, Mao Ze-dong, launched the Cultural Revolution, and everything changed. Over the next few years Ji-li and her family were humiliated and scorned by former friends, neighbors, and co-workers. They lived in constant terror of arrest. Finally, with the detention of her father, Ji-li faced the most difficult choice of her life.

Told with simplicity and grace, this is the true story of one family′s courage and determination during one of the most terrifying eras of the twentieth century.

Ages 11+

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #159539 in Books
• Published on: 1998-09-10
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: .44 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

From Library Journal
Grade 4-9-Red Scarf Girl (HarperCollins, 1997) is the memoir of Ji-Li Jiang, who grew up in China during the Cultural Revolution. Ji-Li Jiang was only 12 when Mao Zedong instituted the Cultural Revolution, and her life was greatly affected. An intelligent child, she quickly learned that her "bad" class status meant more in this new China than her scholastic successes. Her grandfather was a landlord, which caused the Jiang family many hardships. Throughout it all, Ji-Li struggled to remain loyal to both her family and Chairman Mao. She witnessed many of the humiliations experienced by people who had bad class status. Through an epilogue, listeners discover the final outcome for Ji-Li Jiang, her family, and some of the others highlighted in this memoir. Listeners are drawn into this emotional story immediately. Christina Moore's narration carries the story, conveying the emotional tensions that existed in Ji-Li's life. Moore does an excellent job of varying her tone and allowing each character to find his/her own voice, making it easy for listeners to follow the plot and distinguish the characters. This audiobook should fly off the shelf through word of mouth.
Kathryn King, Walnut Hill Branch, Dallas Public Library, TX
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal
Grade 5-9. This autobiography details the author's experiences as a teenager during the Cultural Revolution. Though wanting to be devoted followers of Chairman Mao, Jiang and her family are subjected to many indignities because her grandfather was once a landlord. Memoirs of the period are usually larded with murders, suicides, mass brainwashing, cruel and unusual bullying, and injustices. Red Scarf Girl is no exception. Where Jiang scores over her comrades is in her lack of self-pity, her naive candor, and the vividness of her writing. The usual catalogue of atrocities is filtered through the sensibility of a young woman trying to comprehend the events going on around her. Readers watch her grow from a follower into a thoughtful person who privately questions the dictates of the powers that be. She witnesses neighbors being beaten to death, her best friend's grandmother's suicide, the systematic degradation of her father, and endless public humiliations. At one point, Jiang even enters a police station to change her name in a confused attempt to dissociate herself from her branded and maligned family. She makes it very clear that the atrocities were the inevitable result of the confusion and fanaticism manipulated by unscrupulous leaders for their own petty ends. Ultimately, her resigned philosophy attaches no blame: this is what happens when power is grossly abused. The writing style is lively and the events often have a heart-pounding quality about them. Red Scarf Girl will be appreciated as a page-turner and as excellent discussion material for social studies curricula.?John Philbrook, formerly at San Francisco Public Library
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From AudioFile
Twelve-year-old Ji-li, devoted Communist follower of Mao Zedong and Liberation Army hopeful, is sympathetically portrayed by Christina Moore. As the memoir opens, Ji-li is believable in her intelligence, her self-esteem, her love of family and Communism. She is just as credible in her growing discomfort, fear, and despair when, in 1966, China's Cultural Revolution calls into question first her ancestry, then her parents' politics, and finally her own loyalty. Ji-li's voice, that of an impressionable child striving to please, grows more and more desperate as the Revolutionaries accuse her family of capitalist crimes, arrest her father, destroy her home. While Moore's first-person narration is faithful to Ji-li throughout, her voicing of other characters is occasionally forced or repetitive. Nevertheless, the reading is exceptionally engaging. T.B. (c) AudioFile, Portland, Maine