No Tears for Mao: Growing Up in the Cultural Revolution - Hardcover

Niu-Niu

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0897334108 ISBN 13: 9780897334105

Publisher: Academy Chicago Publishers, 2004

Synopsis

Niu-Niu (NOO-Noo) was four years old when, amidst the rubble of charred books and tattered curtains that had been her comfortable "bourgeois" home, she watched the mindless beating of her helpless parents, and saw them, bloody and with shaven heads, taken away for what seemed like forever. That traumatic day marked the end of Niu-Niu's innocent childhood. Two days after she was born, on May 16, 1966, Mao Zedung began his "Great Cultural Revolution," which caused untold suffering. Niu-Niu's "intellectual" family was among the tens of thousands of Chinese people cruelly persecuted and even murdered in the name of the "Social Revolution." For the next nine years, Niu-Niu's life became a nightmare in which human kindness and reason all but disappeared, where violence and hunger were the order of the day. Even after the end of the Cultural Revolution, when Niu-Niu attended university in Beijing, she found Chinese society rigid, puritanical and small-minded. This direct eyewitness account of one of the world's most shocking social upheavals is told vividly and compassionately. It is a chronicle readers will not forget.

About this title

From the Publisher

An eyewitness account of a shocking social upheaval

Niu-Niu was four years old when, from admist the rubble of charred books and tattered curtains that had been her comfortable "bourgeois" home, she watched in horror the mindless beating of her helpless parents and saw them taken away, bloody and with shaven heads, for what seemed like forever.

That traumatic day marked the end of Niu-Niu's innocent childhood. Her "intellectual" family was among the tens of thousands of Chinese people cruelly persecuted and even murdered in the name of Mao Zedong's "Great Cultural Revolution," which began on May 16, 1966. For nine years, Niu-Niu lived in a nightmare world where human kindness and reason all but disappeared, where violence and hunger were the order of the day. Even after the Revolution, she found university administration in Beijing to be rigid, puritanical and small-minded.

No Tears For Mao was first published by Robert Laffont in France in 1989, where it became a bestseller. Niu-Niu now lives in Paris.

"An important depiction of recent Chinese history too quickly being forgetten in the rush to seek trade with China...This excellent translation does justice to this remarkable story." --Kirkus Reviews

"Her account should take its place as one of the finer examples of the growing number of life-under-Mao testimonies." --Booklist

"...passionate testimony told in simple yet vivid language. An overwhelming pathos is conveyed through the innocent tone of a child." --Library Journal

Synopsis

The author recounts how she, then four years old, and her grandparents survived after their home was destroyed, and her parents were dragged off, beaten and bloody, during the Cultural Revolution, and describes the changes--and the lack of change--in China since then.

Edition details

• Publisher: Academy Chicago Publishers
• Publication date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0897334108
• ISBN 13: 9780897334105
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 288