RED MEMORY The Afterlives of China's Cultural Revolution

Mao Zedong's ten-year Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) forever changed Chinese society and family structure. With a deliberate, evenhanded delivery, Asian American narrator Rebecca Lam traces the origins and repercussions of the attempt to purge bourgeois and capitalistic thoughts and tendencies from hundreds of millions of Chinese minds. A million people died, millions more were jailed, and thousands of churches and cemeteries were looted and destroyed. There's a feeling of sadness and disbelief in Lam's voice as she describes children betraying parents, gangs of students beating citizens in the streets, and the capricious political demands that just kept changing. The author reports that the Chinese people have attempted to forgive and forget, but the memories of those cruel times remain vivid and relentless. B.P. © AudioFile 2024, Portland, Maine [Published: APRIL 2024]