The Power of the Voice Group 4: Red Scarf Girl, a memoir of the cultural revolution: Risk Taking Researcher

Jorge Ribeiro
Risk Taking Researcher
Red Scarf Girl
Rotation 1
Prologue, Chapter 1 and 2

On the first pages of this controversial book, I found myself in need to understand of certain concepts about this book. One major concept that is in need to be understood, is the Chinese cultural revolution. The Cultural Revolution, also known as the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, was a social-political movement that took place in the People's Republic of China from 1966 until 1976. Set into motion by Mao Zedong, then Chairman of theCommunist Party of China, its stated goal was to preserve 'true' Communist ideology in the country by having remnants of capitalist and traditional elements from Chinese society, and to re-impose Maoist thought as the dominant ideology within the Party. During this procedure, millions of people were persecuted in the violent struggles that ensued across the country, and suffered a wide range of abuses including public humiliation, arbitrary imprisonment, torture, sustained harassment, and seizure of property.

Source

Another thing that must have been researched, is the background information about the author, so we know what was the reason behind her writing a book which talks about such a sensitive topic. When Ji li she was 13, her father was falsely accused of listening to foreign radio and was detained and forced to do hard labor by the Chinese government. Ji-Li was humiliated by her peers at school who blamed her for her family's "black", or "anticommunist" past, and prevented her from becoming a Red Successor, a person who will become a Red Guard when they are old enough. When the Revolution ended, Jiang, later followed by most of her family, moved to Hawaii. This information tells her about how the book she wrote, she just didn't write for no reason, there was a reason behind it, and in this case is how she got affected by the cultural revolution, how the cultural revolution influenced her ideas into producing this award winning book.