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57
/100
I Index Overall Rating
Readers
34/100Critics
80/100Scholars
Author:
Tania Branigan
Publisher:
W. W. Norton & Company
Date:
May 9, 2023
Red Memory uncovers forty years of silence through the stories of individuals who lived through the madness of the Cultural Revolution. Exploring how this era defined a generation and continues to impact China today, Branigan asks: What happens to a society when you can no longer trust those closest to you? What happens to the present when the past is buried, exploited, or redrawn? And how do you live with yourself when the worst is over?
What The Reviewers Say
Compelling.
The stories the author relates are not, strictly speaking, secrets—most of the people Ms. Branigan interviews are already looking for listeners; they want to be heard, to perform, to share, to connect—and she gives them the opportunity to do that for a foreign audience. This is a book about their search for meaning, even when the search comes up short.
Red Memory creates an incisive exploration of the interplay between memory and politics, personal truth and political imperatives by detailing stories from victims and perpetrators — some willing, others coerced. Their narratives are told with sensitivity, interspersed with eloquent ruminations on memory and political erasure.
A narrative account of the period that also doubles as a meditation on how suppressed memories and trauma can haunt a society that has never had a proper reckoning with the horrors of its past.
