CHIMACUM — Where the country sought to bandage its past, Anchee Min unraveled the tape and prodded the wound.
Min’s award-winning memoir “Red Azalea” recounts her experience as Little Red Guard Leader in China’s Cultural Revolution.
Writing offered her a laboratory in which to study humankind, she said. And Min spared no details.
She wrote of starvation, coughing blood, denouncing her favorite teacher as a reactionary, spreading pig manure at a labor collective, witnessing an innocent man’s execution, living in forced segregation from men — so engaging in a secret affair with her female squad leader — and finally fleeing from Mao Tse-tung’s China.
It was lauded by American journalists yet banned in China, Min said.
“They say, ‘You don’t poke a wound that’s too deep to heal.’ For me, not taking care of the wound, not treating the past — it’s betrayal,” Min said. “It’s infected. It’s wounded deeply.”
Because China gained no reflection on what happened to itself, the “cancer” will spread, Min said.
“The beauty of American culture is to kill the cancer,” she said. “You don’t bandage it.”
In this spirit, Min will speak at the Jefferson County Library’s 16th annual Huntingford Humanities Lecture in Chimacum High School’s auditorium, 91 West Valley Road, at 6:30 p.m. Thursday. There is no cost to attend.
Her lecture will delve into her two memoirs, “Red Azalea” and “The Cooked Seed” — the story of Min’s escape to the U.S., and offer insights into the American literary scene, she said.
“Red Azalea” ends abruptly when Min flees her homeland. With the help of American actress Joan Chen, and no small amount of indomitability, she managed to obtain a passport and arrived in America in 1984 to become a student at the Art Institute of Chicago.
Between working five jobs, Min’s sleep fell captive to flashbacks of Communist China until she began recounting the memories in writing.
The first sentence she understood in English was a line on Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood: “I feel the greatest gift we can give to anybody is the gift of our honest self.”
That got her thinking, “Do I mean something?”
“Before I left China, I was a piece of trash,” she said. “In America, I’m a gift.”
Eventually, Min adopted an “American perspective” in her writing and outlook, she said — one she defines as honest and humane.
“Chinese children are raised to cover all ugly things,” she said. “In America, the truth can be cruel, but it can be the most beautiful thing.”
She no longer felt remorse in describing her parents as a pair of chopsticks “fighting” to lift a piece of food, though appearing to move in harmony.
She relented Chinese sensibilities and aimed to objectively narrate her life, faults and all.
“It’s a conversation with your soul,” she said. “You have to be honest. Here, you were greedy. I’ve faced my weakness and moments of ugliness.”
And when she published “The Cooked Seed,” Min “swallowed” her siblings’ words when they told her they were ashamed.
“They said, ‘Why can’t you write about your glorious time on the best seller’s list? Why do you have to write about all those terrible things?’ ”
Min wrote for those who did not survive the Cultural Revolution. Without shedding light on such terrible things, their lives would pass in oblivion, she said.
“I’m not coughing blood anymore. I’m not dying,” Min said. “Those people who didn’t survive — their stories are hidden.”
So, as Mr. Rogers said, she gave her honest self as a gift.
Writing with such candor allowed her to “pay back” America for accepting her as an immigrant, she said.
In addition to her two memoirs, she has written six works of historical fiction: “Katherine,” “Becoming Madame Mao,” “Wild Ginger,” “Empress Orchid,” “The Last Empress” and “Pearl of China.”
Min now lives in California with spouse and author Lloyd Lofthouse.
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Reporter Sarah Sharp can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 56650, or at ssharp@peninsuladailynews.com.
