Red Scarf Girl

Red Scarf Girl
A Memoir of the Cultural Revolution
Ji Li Jiang
Scholastic Edition, 1997
285 pages


Do you remember when you still believed in...everything? Did you believe in fairies? Wishes? Happy endings? Parents were always right? Justice existed? The world was a place of balance and opportunity? When did that all end? For Ji Li Jiang, it ended at 12, in sixth grade. Red Scarf Girl is a deftly written work, clear cut in its story, with little elaboration on the gradual, tidal changes within "revolutionary" China under Chairman Mao Ze Dong (also spelled Mao Tse-tung), Chinese Communist Party leader who came into power in 1949 until his death in 1976.

It hardly needs excessive detail; the events themselves paint a picture of a hopeful China in Ji Li's eyes, who sees the future as path of success, under the waving red scarves of the teen revolutionary guards who make up the bulk of the law enforcement. Her breathy innocence spills through her honest words of amazement and admiration for these revolutionaries and Chairman Mao Tse Tung. Over a period of few months, as Ji Li witnesses how her neighbors, her friends begin to suffer under the idealist demands of a self-righteous de facto government her youthful exhuberance falters and then deadens. When Ji Li's own family is brought into question due to dubious, unsavory political connections, Ji Li's mind turns from faithful school girl to a questioning, stunned, tearful adolescent. This true story of a young lady's fall from innocence is memorable.

This edition has an interesting foreward with an introduction to Chinese pronounciation of names. It also includes a useful glossary of terms with words like "revolutionary" and "ideaology". This story would be an excellent tool in a middle school social studies class.

Overall, on the heat scale, Mighty Toasty

The Shack

The Shack

William P. Young

2007, Windblown Media, $14.00 USA, Soft Cover, 248 pages

This is an absorbing piece of writing about faith, personal accountability, and humanity's relationship with God. It was a bit melodramatic for me, but when I ignored some of the temptingly obvious tearjerking moments, when I allowed myself to imagine all of this was real and possible, it truly permeated my heart, my soul and gave me a new perspective on my personal relationship with God, heaven and the afterlife. Releasing cynicism was a small price to pay for a deeply beautiful, cathartic suggestion of how we work in tandem with the universe. The various personifications of God reminded me of the Piers Anthony series of books, Incarnations of Immortals, where Death takes on a human form and tells his story. Because I have already read books where Ideas and Beliefs talk as people, think like people and respond to the reader as people, it took me a bit to accept this story as "interesting". For some, the interesting begins when the writer describes God as a black female. For me, it began when the writer laid out a plausible line of logic about why death and horrible things happen to us, despite our faith in a loving Creator. This book is a welcome reprieve from the deluge of mysteries, romances, horror stories out there for reading. On the heat scale, Mighty Toasty.