KDL Recommends

Red Scarf Girl: A Memoir of the Cultural Revolution

ISBN: 0060275855

Title: Red Scarf Girl: A Memoir of the Cultural Revolution

Author: Ji-li Jiang

KDL Description:

A child’s-eye view of the fear, hardship, and persecution of the Chinese Cultural Revolution recalls the political reign of terror that led to the persecution of the author’s family, her father’s arrest, and her own struggle to choose between family loyalty and her future.
Lexile Level: 780
Guided Reading Level: Z

Amazon Description:

In 1966 Ji-li Jiang was twelve years old. An outstanding student and a leader of her class, she had everything: brains, ability, the admiration of her peers — and a shining future in Chairman Mao’s New China. But all that changed with the advent of the Cultural Revolution, when intelligence became a crime and a wealthy family background invited persecution or worse. For the next few years Ji-li and her family were humiliated and reviled by their former friends, neighbors, and colleagues and lived in constant terror of attack. At last, with the detention of her father, Ji-li was faced with the most dreadful decision of her young life: denounce him and break with her family, or refuse to testify and sacrifice her future in her beloved Communist Party.

Told with simplicity, innocence, and grace, this unforgettable memoir gives a child’s-eye view of a terrifying time in twentieth-century history — and of one family’s indomitable courage under fire.