The Cooked Seed
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- 109,00 kr
Publisher Description
'Full of sorrow and humour ... extraordinary' NEW YORK TIMES
'Reckless and thrilling ... Min outwits and outworks the Western system, and this book is part underdog thriller as she claws her way to love and success' THE TIMES
The sequel to Anchee Min's internationally bestselling memoir, Red Azalea, in which she leaves China for America, and struggles to find her way, her voice and her love
In 1994, Anchee Min published Red Azalea, a memoir of growing up during the violent trauma of the Cultural Revolution. It became an international bestseller. Twenty years later, Min returns to give us the next chapter, as she moves from the shocking deprivations of her homeland to the sudden bounty of the promised land of America, without language, money or a clear path.
With the help of actress Joan Chen, Anchee applies to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She shows a portfolio of her self-taught brush paintings at the US consulate and is granted an entry visa, but once in America, Anchee finds she is on her own, forced to survive by her wits and indomitable spirit.
She teaches herself English by watching Sesame Street, has five jobs at once, sleeps in unheated rooms in desolate neighbourhoods. As well as her struggle to understand her new country – the food, the warm showers – Anchee suffers devastating violence, collapses from exhaustion, marries poorly and divorces after giving birth to her daughter, Lauryann. Despite her tough, lonely journey, Anchee finds that it is Lauryann who will save her and root her, finally, in America.
As a child, Anchee understood herself as a mere 'bolt on the great machine that was Communism'; in America she learns how to succeed in a radically different culture despite bitter hardships and countless setbacks. The Cooked Seed is an unforgettable story.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In her excoriating examination of the legacy of Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution, novelist Min (Pearl of China, etc.) offers a sharp, moving contrast between American and Chinese attitudes about human worth and dignity. Raised in Shanghai in a hardscrabble family of four children and educated parents who were denounced as "bourgeois," Min was plucked as a teenager from a labor camp in 1974 by Madame Mao's henchmen to appear in propaganda films. Min was thought to have "proletarian looks" (weather-beaten face, muscular body). However, with the swift change in the political wind, Min and her family were publicly shamed and thrown into years of poverty and ill health, sharing one room and a bathroom with 20 neighbors. Min, a hard worker, natural caretaker, and loyal to friends, managed to convince the Art Institute of Chicago that she was an artist and spoke English, though she nearly got deported once she arrived in Chicago at age 27 in 1984 because she spoke no English at all. Her memoir methodically reconstructs those painstaking first years in Chicago, living on a pittance, scrounging for work, amazed at what she considered luxurious dorm living, and guilt-ridden at her inability to rescue her family back home. Along the way, she offers candid observations on American naivet , casual waste, and lack of Chinese stick-to-itness, yet writes poignantly of being treated with decency and warmth, inspiring her to work harder. Watching Mister Rogers' Neighborhood and reading Jane Eyre helped pave her yellow brick road to literary success, as she delineates captivatingly in this work.
