Red Azalea by Anchee Min: Cultural Revolution Memoir Analysis

Overview of Red Azalea

Red Azalea is the memoir of Anchee Min, an American immigrant from China, about her life in the People's Republic of China during the Cultural Revolution. The book takes 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 experienced as a 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 readers what life was like for an artistic and ambitious young woman who was loyal to Mao and Communist ideology. Min was also something of a party insider, at one time being close to Mao's wife. She aims to present information about the Cultural Revolution that was perhaps not widely known at the time of the book's 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 1984. Upon her arrival, she began work on her memoirs, which she finished and published in 1994.

Betrayal as a Central Theme

The defining theme of the memoir, expressed partly through metaphor, is the betrayal of China by the Party's politicians. This is exemplified in the betrayal of the 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, in which Min was to play the title role. Anchee's eventual dismissal from the play becomes the catalyst for her disillusionment with the PRC.

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).

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 (42–43). Though she knows 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 betraying a devoted teacher who was not only innocent, but had cultivated a love of learning in her.

The Cultural Revolution's Disruption of Society

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 became embittered by the fact that Anchee's family of six occupied a four-room dwelling (5). To recompense themselves, they poured excrement on Anchee's home every day and threatened her with an axe (5–6).

Min casts the Cultural Revolution as a period in which the powerless received political authority to punish people — especially educated or well-off comrades — at their whim. They punished these people on the pretext of disloyalty or bourgeois behavior, when their actual grievances appeared to stem from jealousy, bitterness, and wrath.

Min also emphasizes the cult of Mao worship that dominated the era. Many people during this period used newspaper to wipe themselves after using the bathroom. However, Min's mother was sent to hard labor because she happened to use a newspaper bearing Mao's image (27).

Min, because of her educated background as well as her uncommon insight and artistic sensibility, is accused by a rival actress at the studio of being corrupted by bourgeois influences (272). Min understands that the accusations arise from basic human jealousy, just as her childhood neighbors' behavior and Commander Lu's accusations did (274–75).

Min portrays the Cultural Revolution as a time when model comrades — those who wanted to do their best — were also compelled to do things they knew were wrong. Min enthusiastically goes to the Red Fire Farm to prove her willingness as a city girl to perform the hard labor of the proletariat (52). 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).

Conclusion: A Record of Insanity and Human Wickedness

Min's account does not appear to have a political purpose. The Cultural Revolution was already over by the time she started writing, so it is unlikely that she intended the book to encourage any particular course of action. Rather, it appears to be a self-reflective account of the period by a Maoist zealot herself. Nor does the memoir appear to be self-serving: Min openly admits her complicity in the injustices and excesses of the Cultural Revolution. She does not cast herself as a political dissenter, but as a heartbroken lover — of Yan as well as of the Maoist regime.

Min's memoir reads instead as a record of the insanity, fear, and human wickedness that pervaded the Cultural Revolution. During this period, bad people found ways to commit wicked deeds and even earn society's approval and political advancement from those deeds. More importantly, good people — even those who were strong, like Min and Yan — were pressured to give in and act against their own moral convictions.