Red Land, Yellow River
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- $7.99
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
The amazing, dramatic, and painful autobiographical story of Ange Zhang as he came of age during the Cultural Revolution in China.
When Mao’s Cultural Revolution took hold in China in June 1966, Ange Zhang was thirteen years old. His father was a famous writer. Shortly after the revolution began, many of Ange’s classmates joined the Red Guard, Mao’s youth movement, and they drove their teachers out of the classrooms.
But in the weeks that followed, Ange discovered that his father’s fame as a writer now meant that he was a target of the new regime. When his father was arrested, he began to question everything that was happening in his country. Finally, Ange was forced to join many other young urban Chinese students in the countryside for re-education where he found the emotional space to develop his own artistic talent and to find that he, like his father, was an artist — except that Ange’s talent lay in painting and drawing.
This dramatic, painful autobiographical story is complemented by photographs, many drawn from Ange’s personal collection, as well as a non-fiction section that explains the historical period and is also illustrated with archival images.
Key Text Features
author’s note
glossary
Correlates to the Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts:
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.6.7
Integrate information presented in different media or formats (e.g., visually, quantitatively) as well as in words to develop a coherent understanding of a topic or issue.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this intense autobiography, written matter-of-factly but with deep feeling, artist and designer Ange recounts how the revolution shaped his life. A teenager in 1966, the son of Communist Party officials, Ange is among the "good guys" until his father, a famous writer, is publicly humiliated and arrested by the Red Guards, "Chairman Mao Zedong's specially chosen troops." Labeled a "black kid," he is shunned by his schoolmates. His desire to conform leads him to become involved in a faction of the Red Guard until a group from a rival faction violently beats him, and the experience unravels his idealism. When in 1968 Mao sends all students to the countryside to work as laborers, Ange discovers another source of inspiration: painting. ("I had found my own path at last, the path that would allow me to express myself as a human being.") His talent is evident in the book's shadow-dappled, realistic illustrations, which quietly convey not only revolutionary chaos but also the "color, beauty, joy and kindness" he finds in art. Interspersed family photographs and images of archival artifacts (old books and stamps) create a textured and intriguing visual mix, and endnotes offer additional details on Mao and provide important historical context. More than a history lesson, Ange's story will resonate with preteen readers; he shows that not even oppression can squelch individuality a stirring message of hope. Ages 8-up.
