By Ji-Li Jiang
4RBooks: 5/6, grades 6-8
Amazon rating: 4.5/5, grade level 6-8
Good Reads: 3.78/5
Common Sense Media: 4/5, ages 12+
263 pages of story, 42 pages of epilogue, glossary, and pictures.
Synopsis:
Ji-Li Jiang is a 12-year-old girl living in Shanghai, China. The year is 1966. She lives there with her mother and father, younger brother and sister, and her grandmother. Ji-Li is a good student, class leader, and is looking forward to getting accepted to one of the best middle schools.
Chian is led by Chairman Mao and his communist party. He is a hero to most Chinese children, including Ji-Li. During her 6th grade year, the Cultural Revolution of China begins. It is meant to eradicate the “four-olds” of society (old ideas, old culture, old customs, and old habits). Ji-Li and her friends are excited by the changes, but soon learn they come at a cost. People are singled out and ridiculed, friends turn against each other, homes are ransacked and looted by government officials, and people from “bad” families are disgraced.
Ji-Li starts to see her world fall apart around her. She is considered a “black whelp” because of her grandfather (who she never met). She is bullied at school and loses opportunities for special groups and projects. Her home is searched and ransacked twice as they look for evidence against her father who has been imprisoned on false charges. In turn, she is pressured to turn against her family and testify to their crimes. Can she stay loyal to her family and her country?
Parental Guidance: medium-high
There is regular use of mild expletives.
Smoking is common.
There are moments of torture, some witnessed: beatings, hard labor, an old
woman and old man forced to kneel for hours, a woman had half of her hair shaved
off, many examples of psychological pressure.
An older woman commits suicide by falling out of a window. There is blood and
someone asks about her brain.
Ji-Li mentions her sanitary belt.
Ji-LI is pressured to act as a witness against her father.
Ji-Li faces a constant inner struggle over loyalty to her family and loyalty to Chairman Mao.
Ji-Li, and other members of her family, think about suicide to end their pain.
Recommendation:
This is an older book than I usually review, but I saw it on a bookshelf at Warwicks in La Jolla, CA, and picked it up. I am very glad I did. It portrays a particularly difficult period of history from the perspective of a 12–14-year-old girl in similar ways to The Diary of Anne Frank, Zlata’s Diary, and I Am Malala. It was an emotional read at times, and some students might find it difficult to handle the pressures and abuses heaped on Ji-Li and her family. Students without a knowledge of the cultural revolution will have trouble comprehending everything that is going on, and why it is important.
Because of that, I think this book is best suited for middle school and high school. It would be a great classroom read in 10th and 11th grade history classes when studying Communist China and Chairman Mao. I would not recommend this book for elementary students, but a mature reader with help from their parents could learn much from the author’s story. People who survived the Cultural Revolution might find this a good book to help their grand children and great grand children understand what they went through.
The book ends a bit abruptly, and while there is an epilogue, more information on “what happened next” would have been appreciated. Maybe there should have been a follow-up.
There are a series of discussion questions at the end, but the best question might be “Could this happen again…. and is it?”
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