Little Green
Growing Up During the Chinese Cultural Revolution
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- ¥1,200
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- ¥1,200
発行者による作品情報
I was born in a small city near the East Sea,
when the Great Cultural Revolution began.
My name is Little Green,
my country Zhong Guo, the Middle Kingdom.
When I was ten years old,
our leader had died and the revolution ended.
And this is how I remember it.
When Chun Yu was born in a small city in China, she was born into a country in revolution. The streets were filled with roaming Red Guards, the walls were covered with slogans, and reeducation meetings were held in all workplaces. Every family faced danger and humiliation, even the youngest children.
Shortly after Chun’s birth, her beloved father was sent to a peasant village in the countryside to be reeducated in the ways of Chairman Mao. Chun and her brother stayed behind with their mother, who taught in a country middle school where Mao’s Little Red Book was a part of every child’s education. Chun Yu’s young life was witness to a country in turmoil, struggle, and revolution—the only life she knew.
This first-person memoir of a child’s view of the Chinese Cultural Revolution is a stunning account of a country in crisis and a testimony to the spirit of the individual—no matter how young or how innocent.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This memoir told in free verse poetry recounts Chun Yu's childhood experience until the age of 10, when Communist leader Mao died and "the revolution ended." The strongest poems offer an authentic childlike insight into the ideals and contradictions of the cause. When she was four for instance, she describes the propaganda being blared into her grandmother Nainai's home in the country, "The loudspeaker of the radio would keep on talking,/ but after a while we didn't hear it anymore"; she recalls her father's hopeful musing about the promises of Communism ("Wouldn't it be nice if all this came true?"); and in a poem called "Political Classes for an Eight-Year-Old," Little Green memorizes teachings from Mao's Red Book, though "I had no idea what this meant." In "Little-Person Books and a Story About the Forest," Chun Yu effectively contrasts the revolutionary tract forced upon young people with the lure of the contraband "children's books confiscated and burned at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution." However, because the poems offer episodic glimpses of Little Green and her family (much like the family photos that accompany the text), readers may feel distanced from the players, including the narrator herself. Still, Chun Yu delivers an unusual and at times memorable perspective on this turbulent period. Ages 10-up.
