Red Scarf Girl: A Memoir of the Cultural Revolution

Ji-li Jiang

Oct 2010 · Sold by Harper Collins

About this ebook

Publishers Weekly Best Book * ALA Best Book for Young Adults * ALA Notable Children's Book * ALA Booklist Editors' Choice

Moving, honest, and deeply personal, Red Scarf Girl is the incredible true story of one girl’s courage and determination during one of the most terrifying eras of the twentieth century. 

It's 1966, and twelve-year-old Ji-li Jiang has everything a girl could want: brains, popularity, and a bright future in Communist China. But it's also the year that China's leader, Mao Ze-dong, launches the Cultural Revolution—and Ji-li's world begins to fall apart. Over the next few years, people who were once her friends and neighbors turn on her and her family, forcing them to live in constant terror of arrest. And when Ji-li's father is finally imprisoned, she faces the most difficult dilemma of her life.

Written in an accessible and engaging style, this page-turning autobiography will appeal to readers of all ages, and it includes a detailed glossary and a pronunciation guide.

Ratings and reviews

Great Read! I actually already had a hard copy of this book. It was so good I wanted a digital copy for posterity. Simplicity of form in prose is the hardest thing to achieve. This author has that in spades. You never feel overwhelmed by the historicity of the material. Her honesty about how her childish optimism about the cultural revolution quickly confused then betrayed her nation as the rhetoric, accusations and convictions for what basically amount to thought crime began to fly. I highly recommend it!

I have to read it for school. I had read the first 50 pages and it was boring and hard to comprehend. Then the rest on is great!

This book gives the reader an inside look of how communism was in China during the 19th ' through the eyes of a 13 year old girl

About the author

Ji-li Jiang was born in Shanghai, China, in 1954. She graduated from Shanghai Teachers' College and Shanghai University and was a science teacher before she came to the United States in 1984. After her graduation from the University of Hawaii, Ms. Jiang worked as an operations analyst for a hotel chain in Hawaii,then as budget director for a health-care company in Chicago. In 1992 she started her own company, East West Exchange, to promote cultural exchange between Western countries and China.