Red Azalea Is the Memoir

Red Azalea is the memoir of a Anchee Min, an American immigrant from China, about her life in the People's Republic of China during the Cultural Revolution. The book is in the form of a first-person narrative, detailing the events of Min's own life under Mao. A major theme is the abuse of power under Mao's regime and the sexual repression that Min herself felt as comrade carrying on a passionate same-sex love affair with another comrade.

Min wrote her memoirs during her first eight years in America in order to show her readers what life was like for an artistic and ambitious young woman who was loyal to Mao and the Communist ideology. Min was also something of a party insider, at one time being close to Mao's madam. She aims to present information about the Cultural Revolution that perhaps was not widely known at the time of its release in 1994.

Anchee Min was a bold and passionate young artist living in Mao's China. After becoming disillusioned with Communist ideology and its governing apparatus, Min fled to the United States in the 1984. Upon her arrival, she started work on her memoirs, which she finished and published in 1994.

Analysis

The defining theme, expressed partly through metaphor, the betrayal of China by the Party's politicians. This is exemplified in the betrayal of stalwart female comrade Jiang Qing by Mao Zedong, who sent her to Moscow for political reasons. Anchee Min ties the story around the State-sponsored play glorifying Comrade Jiang Qing, of which Min was to play the title role. Anchee's eventual dismissal from the play is the cause of her disillusionment with PRC.

Love is a key element of Red Azalea. The forbidden love that Anchee has for a fellow actress, Yan. The naive love that Jiang Qing had for the party and for Mao Zedong. Most of all, the love that the Chinese people once had for the Communist Party of China, so ardent and devoted yet betrayed

Anchee suffers the most intense betrayal as a zealot of Maoism. Anchee was the leader of the Little Red Guards in elementary school and wore red in honor of the Cultural Revolution. (3). Her father was a professor and her mother was a middle school teacher who taught whatever the party told her to teach. (3).

For Anchee, the Cultural Revolution brought out the worst in people. Swept away by the rhetoric of fairness, the family of eleven who lived in a one-room dwelling downstairs, was embittered by the fact that Anchee's family of six lived in a four-room dwelling. (5). To recompense themselves, they poured excrement on Anchee's dwelling every day and threatened Anchee with an axe. (5-6).

Min, because of her educated background as well as her uncommon insight and sensibilities as an artist, is accused by a rival actress at the studio of being corrupted by bourgeoise influences. (272). Min understands that the accusations come from basic human jealousy, just as her childhood neighbors or Commander Lu's accusations did. (274-75).

The Cultural Revolution was hugely disruptive to society. Min casts it as a period where the powerless received the political authority to punish people, especially educated or well-off comrades, at their whim. They punished these people on the pretext of disloyalty or bouergoisie behavior, when their actual grievances seemed to arise from human jealousy, bitterness, and wrath.

Min also emphasizes the worship of Mao which dominated the era of the Cultural Revolution. Many people during this period used newspaper to wipe themselves after going to the bathroom. However, Min's mother was sent to hard labor because she happened to use a newspaper with Mao's image on it. (27).

Throughout the memoir, Anchee's ambition to be perfect and to please comes into conflict with her understanding of right and wrong. When her elementary school teacher Autumn Leaves, a Chinese-American who had come to China to teach, is accused of being a spy for the Imperialist Americans, Min is pressured to testify against her at a public trial. (42-3) Though she knows that the accusations are false, Min gives in to the pressure applied by comrade Secretary Chain and furiously berates Autumn Leaves. (46). Min never forgives herself for her betrayal of a devoted teacher who was not only innocent, but had cultivated a love of learning in her.

Min portrays the Cultural Revolution as a time where the model comrades, who wanted to do their best, also had to do things which they knew were wrong. Min enthusiastically goes to the Red Fire Farm in order to prove her willingness as a city girl to do the hard work of the proletariat. (52). While there, she meets a similarly zealous and ambitious woman, Comrade Lu, who continually shows off her knowledge of the Party and her own Party credentials. (60-65).

In contrast to deputy commander Lu, commander Yan is not only a model comrade, but a strong, selfless, and compassionate leader. A tall, handsome, "conqueror"-like woman, Yan never tried to prove her credentials as a party comrade. Min remembers, with affection, how Yan would trek alone to the well and carry back two 80 lb buckets of water on a pole, balancing it on her broad shoulders. (117). Yan's presence was so great that she did not even need to tell the other comrades to get back to work.

In a sense, Min looked at Yan as the embodiment of the Maoist proletariat ideal. Yan was the woman on the party propaganda posters, doing her work love, enthusiasm, and a smile on her face. Mao's Socialist utopia would be populated with Yans. Min's love affair with Yan appears to be motivated not merely by sexual attraction, but personal admiration for her virtues, so rare during the Cultural Revolution.

Min uses Yan to illustrate the betrayal of the virtuous comrade by the party's political opportunists and the effects of such betrayal. Commander Yan is accused of disloyalty by Deputy Commander Lu, who covets her position. (145). Yan is sent to prison and returns a cowed and neutered spirit. She attempts to conform to society's expectations of her and asks Min to arrange a liasion between Yan and a male actor, Leopard Lee.

Yan, the embodiment of courage, selflessness, and willpower, is beaten down by her party's injustices. She no longer possesses the love of life and strength of will that she had when Min first fell in love with her. Yan's request of Min to arrange the heterosexual liason was her attempt to tell Min that they can no longer be together, though she does not have the heart to tell Min directly. When Min skips out on theatre duties for the sake of visiting her, Yan unequivocally expresses her desire for their relationship to end. (287).

Yan's termination of the relationship marks the theme of betrayal than runs throughout Min's memoir. Yan, a model comrade, has to break her passionate, homosexual relationship with Min or risk ostracism from the society that she loves with full ideological zeal. Min, an ambitious model comrade herself, understands this decision on a practical, political level but feels betrayed on a deeper emotional, spiritual level.

The injustices of the Maoist regime are eventually avenged by the Party members who have been wronged by the Red Guards under Mao and his wife, Madame Mao. When Mao dies and the excesses of the Cultural Revolution are publicly recognized, the Maoists are repressed and stripped of their positions in the party. Min, who stayed loyal to the Maoists despite the injustices she suffered, shares in the punishment as well.