Grandma Murphy actually recommended this book to me when I was talking to her on the phone a little while ago, so I requested it from the library. Somehow, I ended up with the Young Readers Edition (whoops), but that may have been a good thing because I got through it pretty quickly and enjoyed the storyline a lot. Li Cunxin was a poor peasant boy from a rural province in China who was selected to be a part of Madame Mao's ballet company, and this memoir tells the entire story of his life, from growing up in one of Mao's communes to learning to study ballet at the cultural university they'd established. He eventually got a chance to study ballet as a cultural exchange student at the Houston Ballet Company and defected from China to stay in America, and became a huge star in the ballet world (apparently).
One of the most interesting things about this book, which was probably downplayed or dumbed down since this was the Young Readers Edition, was reading about the propaganda that the Chinese government fed to their citizens and Li's eventual realization that it wasn't all true. They were apparently told that America was a land of evil people with horrible poverty, while China was the best and richest country in the world, but once Li got to America all of those statements clashed horribly with his upbringing as a poor peasant boy living off of dried yams. All in all, this was a really interesting book because of Li's "insider perspective" as a Chinese citizen during the 60s and 70s--a time period I didn't really know much about.
No comments:
Post a Comment