In August 1966, a 14-year-old boy in Beijing is thrust into violence and chaos as the Cultural Revolution begins to blaze across China. Fifty years later, Red Fire is the first intimate account from someone who lived through the turbulent events. Wei Yang Chao gives readers a riveting story told with real force and heartbreaking honesty.
A classic in contemporary Oklahoma literature, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz’s Red Dirt unearths the joys and ordeals of growing up poor during the 1940s and 1950s. In this exquisite rendering of her childhood in rural Oklahoma, from the Dust Bowl days to the end of the Eisenhower era, the author bears witness to a family and community that still cling to the dream of America as a republic of landowners.
Many children growing up in the Soviet Union before World War II knew the meaning of deprivation and dread. But for the son of an “enemy of the people,” those apprehensions were especially compounded. When the secret police came for his father in 1938, ten-year-old Anatole Konstantin saw his family plunged into a morass of fear. His memoir of growing up in Stalinist Russia re-creates in vivid detail the daily trials of people trapped in this regime before and during the repressive years of World War II—and the equally horrific struggles of refugees after that conflict. Evicted from their home, their property confiscated, and eventually forced to leave their town, Anatole’s family experienced the fate of millions of Soviet citizens whose loved ones fell victim to Stalin’s purges. His mother, Raya, resorted to digging peat, stacking bricks, and even bootlegging to support herself and her two children. How she managed to hold her family together in a rapidly deteriorating society—and how young Anatole survived the horrors of marginalization and war—form a story more compelling than any novel. Looking back on those years from adulthood, Konstantin reflects on both his formal education under harsh conditions and his growing awareness of the contradictions between propaganda and reality. He tells of life in the small Ukrainian town of Khmelnik just before World War II and of how some of its citizens collaborated with the German occupation, lending new insight into the fate of Ukrainian Jews and Nazi corruption of local officials. And in recounting his experiences as a refugee, he offers a new look at everyday life in early postwar Poland and Germany, as well as one of the few firsthand accounts of life in postwar Displaced Persons camps. A Red Boyhood takes readers inside Stalinist Russia to experience the grim realities of repression—both under a Soviet regime and German occupation. A moving story of desperate people in desperate times, it brings to life the harsh realities of the twentieth century for young and old readers alike.
"Red Diapers" is the first anthology of autobiographical writings by the children of American communists. These memoirs, short stories, and poems reflect the joys and perils of growing up in a subculture defined by its opposition to society's most deeply held values. 15 photos.
Growing up in suburban Milwaukee, Wisconsin, author Tim Schilke knew that his concerns about some generally accepted suburban truths were often left unanswered. He later learned that a carefully crafted Red-suburban version of reality isolated him from nearly everything real. "Red truth" was a strange morph of God, Patriotism, and Republicans. When this uniquely Red-suburban mentality played a role in winning President George W. Bush a second term in late 2004, Schilke began an investigation into the driving factors behind his Red upbringing, which still persist and thrive today in suburban and rural America. From carefully-guarded moral relativism, to the Army's questionable recruiting techniques; from Major League Baseball's tainted home run records, to the myth of the Ownership Society; Schilke maps these current events back into the perspective of his Red upbringing. Why does Red-suburban middle-America consistently vote against its own interests in election after election? Growing Up Red attempts to show that, in Red America, it is simply the patriotic thing to do. In Red America, raw Faith trumps Knowledge. Carefully-tweaked irrational fear drives never-ending consumption. A Republican President marches arm-in-arm with God down Main Street every Fourth of July. What happens when actual reality starts to bleed through the carefully-protected fences of suburbia? Find out in Growing Up Red.
These are the stories of a girl's life while growing up in a small town called Red Bank. As they say it takes a village to raise a child And this is my village.
Micah Toub faced quite a few psychological challenges when he was growing up. And two of his best guides through them – as well as the biggest causes of them – were his parents. Part memoir, part introduction to famous and infamous psychological concepts past and present, Growing Up Jung tells the story of a boy raised by two psychologists. It's an extraordinary coming-of-age story, replete with more sexual confusion and domestic dysfunction than even the average adolescent has to endure. And through the telling of that story, Toub is able to discuss such topics as why Freud's obsession with Oedipus threatens our chances today of being close to our mothers; the methods a Jungian psychologist might use to help a young man overcome sexual anxiety; and why it is okay to sometimes let your inner-murderer out for the night. Referencing the written works of the thinkers discussed, books that have been written about them, and relevant contemporary pop culture, Toub discusses and explains such topics as Synchronicity, Archetypes, and the Oedipus Complex, as well as lesser-known corners of the psyche, such as the Ally, the Dreambody, and what Jung called Active Imagination. And he is able to weave all this information seamlessly into his own story, because if there was a psychological problem going, it went Toub's way. Call it synchronicity. And if you don't know what synchronicity is, see chapter 5.
New York Times bestselling author Da Chen weaves a deeply moving account of his resolute older sister and their childhood growing up together during the Chinese Cultural Revolution. In a small village called Yellow Stone, in southeastern China, Sisi is a model sister, daughter, and student. She brews tea for her grandfather in the morning, leads recitations at school as class monitor, and helps care for her youngest brother, Da.But when students are selected during a school ceremony to join the prestigious Red Guard, Sisi is passed over. Worse, she is shamed for her family's past -- they are former landowners who have no place in the new Communist order. Her only escape is to find work at another school, bringing Da along with her. But the siblings find new threats in Bridge Town, too, and Sisi will face choices between family and nation, between safety and justice. With the tide of the Cultural Revolution rising, Sisi must decide if she will swim against the current, or get swept up in the wave.Bestselling author Da Chen paints a vivid portrait of his older sister and a land thrust into turmoil during the tumultuous Chinese Cultural Revolution.
Women’s music legend Alix Dobkin for the first time chronicles her rise to fame as the first artist to record an openly lesbian album in 1973. Her story, however, opens much earlier in postwar New York City, where, growing up in a Communist family, she watches Jackie Robinson steal home, rubs elbows with radical Left celebrities like Paul Robeson, and comes of age under the watchful eye of the FBI. Dobkin herself joins the party at the height of the McCarthy witch hunts and offers readers a firsthand glimpse of daily life as a young person living under government surveillance. During this time she also matures as a devotee of folk music, having fallen under the spell of renowned performers such as Lead Belly and Pete Seeger. Yet it’s after she arrives on the burgeoning folk music scene of Greenwich Village, where she meets the up-and-coming Bob Dylan, Bill Cosby, John Sebastian, Buffy Ste. Marie, and Flip Wilson, among many other rising luminaries, that she achieves her first acclaim as a singer-songwriter. Her music takes on overt feminist dimensions when she joins a women’s consciousness-raising group and comes out as a lesbian. Rich in period detail, storytelling, and outspoken politics,My Red Bloodis essential reading for lovers of music and history. Singer-songwriter and producer of the groundbreaking 1973Lavender Jane Loves Women,Alix Dobkinhas six additional highly praised albums and a songbook to her credit. She lives in Woodstock, New York.