Becoming Madame Mao

by Anchee Min

Paperback, 2001

Status

Available

Genres

Publication

Mariner Books (2001), Edition: 1st, First Edition, 330 pages

Description

In a sweeping, erotically charged story that moves gracefully from the intimately personal to the great stage of world history, Anchee Min renders a powerful tale of passion, betrayal, and survival and creates a finely nuanced and always ambiguous portrait of one of the most fascinating, and vilified, women of the twentieth century. Madame Mao is almost universally known as the "white-boned demon" -- ambitious, vindictive, and cruel -- whose bid to succeed her husband led to the death of millions. But Min's story begins with a young girl named Yunhe, the unwanted daughter of a concubine who ignored her mother's pleas and refused to have her feet bound. It was the first act of rebellion for this headstrong, beautiful, and charismatic girl. She later fled the miseries of her family life, first to a provincial opera troupe, then to Shanghai and fame as an actress, and finally to the arid, mountainous regions of Yenan, where she fell in love with and married Mao Zedong. The great revolutionary leader proved to be an inattentive husband with a voracious appetite for infidelity, but the couple stayed together through the Communist victory, the disastrous Great Leap Forward, and the chaos of the Cultural Revolution. Min uses the facts of history and her lush, penetrating psychological imagination to take us beyond the myth of the person who so greatly influenced an entire generation of Chinese. The result is a complex portrait of a woman who railed against the confines of her culture, whose deep-seated insecurities propelled her to reinvent herself constantly, and whose ambition was matched only by her ferocious, never-to-be-fulfilled need to be loved. A daring narrative with all the compressed drama and high lyrical poetry of great opera, BECOMING MADAME MAO is the most ambitious and provocative work of Anchee Min's career.… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member RidgewayGirl

Anchee Min is an author to watch. She grew up in China's Cultural Revolution and wrote an astonishing memoir. She followed that with a novel, Katherine, about an American teaching English in China. So I was quick to pick up a copy of Becoming Madame Mao, but slow to read it. Generally, I prefer my

historical novels to concern ordinary people.

Becoming Madame Mao tells the story of Jiang Chiang, Mao's wife and leader of the infamous "Group of Four", but not in the form of a straightforward historical account. Min moves back and forth from the first person to a very close third person and restricts herself to following Madame Mao. She's an interesting, but difficult woman to follow, constantly concerned with positioning herself and with getting the attention she feels she deserves.

The writing style worked perfectly with Min's subject. Told from the first person only, the book would have been too claustrophobic to read, in the third person, I would have missed out on who she was. An actress, Madame Mao was adept at projecting the face she wanted to towards the world. This book is a fascinating picture of a time, place and person I knew very little about.

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LibraryThing member cestovatela

First, a bit of historical background. Madame Mao Jiang Ching rose from struggling starlet to first lady of China when she married Mao Tse-Dung during the second World War. Although she languished in obscurity for much of her husband's reign, she is popularly viewed as the chief architect of the

Cultural Revolution, a political purge that resulted in the torture, execution, exile and public humiliation of many of China's intellectuals and government leaders. Becoming Madame Mao is Anchee Min's attempt to explain how Jiang Ching became a woman capable of leading a society into multi-year reign of terror. The book starts off strong, describing Jiang Ching's childhood of perpetual isolation, struggle for fame and ultimate transformation into a Communist guerilla. Each chapter feels vivid and real thanks to Min's knack for bringing a setting to life. 1930s Shanghai and Mao's mountain guerilla camp are real parts of the story, not just backdrops for the action. Young Jiang Ching is also a well-done character. Cunning, manipulative and ambitious, she's clearly on the brink of selling her soul to the devil but Min's writing is strong enough that readers are still able to understand and sympathize with her longing for recognition. It's after the war that book falters. Jiang Ching's lust for power fades into the background and most chapters focus on her longing to be loved by her husband. In the end, the book seems to want us to believe that Madame Mao orders the torture, execution and public humiliation of hundreds of people just because she wants her husband to love her again. The persecution of her enemies seems glossed over with a sentence ("she felt comfortable calling the Security Chief in the early hours of the morning to add names to the execution list") and the book doesn't seem to acknowledge that putting your conscience aside to save your marriage is as reprehensible as killing out of a lust for power. These weaknesses come as a shock after the strenghts of the first half of the book and seriously undermined my enjoyment of it. As badly as I wanted to like it, I can only give it two stars.

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LibraryThing member mdobe

Found a copy of _Becoming Madame Mao_ at Carpe Diem in the Jumeirah neighborhood in Dubai. Started reading it while waiting for friends and couldn't put it down. Brilliant, captivating narrative, that brings this woman to life. Looking forward to picking up where I left off the next time I am at

Carpe Diem.

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LibraryThing member kikianika

A powerful and confusing book. i enjoyed the psychology of it, but I found the jumps between perspectives annoying, and often confusing. I'm not sure it was necessary to do it the way it was done. Still, a powerful, compelling character's story. makes me want to know more about her.

LibraryThing member arelenriel

I lucked into this at a used bookstore one day. It was signed and a first edition so I picked it up. I had read Empress Orchid and Min had impressed me with her lyrical writing style and her bluntness about the negative aspects of the politcal system in Communist China. Really excellent book.

LibraryThing member ejfertig

I was rather dissapointed by this book. In spite of its interesting subject matter, it was very difficult to read. I had particular difficulty getting into the story because the narrator changed paragraph by paragraph.

LibraryThing member kikilon

LibraryThing member autumnesf

Interesting fictional view of Mao's wife. A sad story really.

LibraryThing member jlparent

I really enjoyed the blending of fiction, biography, and history. However, I had a lot of difficulty with the constant perspective shifting. I felt the frequency was over-done and that often there was no clear delineation so that I would go back and reread to figure out who was actually 'talking'.

Still, the content was fascinating and the descriptive language was often poetic and lovely.

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LibraryThing member wagner.sarah35

I just could not get into this historical biography of Mao Zedong's wife. Jiang Qing, as she was later known, lived a fascinating life in twentieth-century China as both an actress and wife to a Communist dictator. However, while I knew a little about Jiang Qing's life, I failed to find Becoming

Madame Mao compelling. While Anchee Min does a good job of describing Jiang Qing's background as an actress and its effect on her later actions, I found the novel difficult to follow and far from engrossing. However, I would recommend this book to anyone interested in historical fiction about Mao Zedong or Jiang Qing.

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LibraryThing member dgmlrhodes

I thought the premise for this book was interesting from a historical perspective; however, there just wasn't anything for me to like about this character. Also, I felt the writing style was stilted and changed tenses and perspectives in a confusing manner

LibraryThing member BookConcierge

I thought the author was trying too hard to un-demonize Madame Mao. Just not her best effort.

LibraryThing member DianeI

Traces the life of woman who becomes Madame Mao and is imprisoned as one of the Gang of Four. Actress, opera singer, seen as ruthless by the people, but only after they adore her and Mao.

LibraryThing member snash

Presents Madame Mao as a willful power-hungry actress. The depiction of her obsessions and how they led her to her despicable actions wes interesting. As her life got more political, with plots and counter plots, keeping track of what was going on and all the people became difficult.

LibraryThing member HerbThomas

Becoming Madame Mao, by Anchee Min, although a fictional narrative, accurately portrays the life of Mao Zedong’s wife, the radical Jiang Qing, as well as Mao’s ruthless, idiosyncratic rule culminating in the Cultural Revolution. Min lived through those times, joining the Red Guards, being sent

to a labor camp, and eventually working for Jiang Qing as a film actress.

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