Girl Under a Red Moon: Growing Up During China’s Cultural Revolution
The author narrates this novel-like memoir depicting how, when he was a child, he and his conscientious older sister Sisi were forced to flee their mountain village after she was denounced as a landlord’s daughter during China’s Cultural Revolution. After being humiliated at a school assembly because her family were landlords, Chen Sisi finds a sort of refuge at the middle school in Bridge Town, and her little brother learns to grow yams. But the reach of the revolution follows them, and Sisi soon falls under the sway of a young commissar of the Communist Party.
Ranging between these two villages in a small corner of southwest China at the tumultuous height of the Cultural Revolution, Da Chen’s memoir is striking in how little it can reveal. His sister is the main character, but his younger self is the narrator. As a result, most of the important action takes place “offstage”. This gives the memoir an oddly displaced feeling, as though the main action is missing. Young Da grows from his experience somewhat, but the reader is only given his impressions of how his sister has been affected.
Girl Under a Red Moon is a lyrical novel of spare prose in which small details reveal a lot. Fans of Ji-li Jiang’s Red Scarf Girl will find this memoir to be very similar, just told from a different perspective.
