It's hard to imagine more complex subject matter. I enjoyed reading the book but found some difficulty because of many characters involved. She was the fourth wife of Mao Zedong, the Chairman of the Communist Party and Paramount leader of China. It combines three things I love; China, historical fiction, and a strong female lead. They meet frequently and finally become lovers. I kept thinking about trying to exist in such an atmosphere. What I found disturbing was the all-too vivid portrayal of the politics of China during this period. We’d love your help. But its told in three different voices -- often on the same page -- which makes it difficult to follow and not very engaging. Anchee Min's book takes a step into the heart and soul and humanizes this woman seen as many to be the epitome of evil. Sure, I knew about the Cultural Revolution, but I never wondered about Mao’s personal life or about the personal life of Madame Mao. The author does not excuse her actions, but does help explain them. She switches from third person to first person throughout the book and it becomes confusing. In Mao's final months, Madame Mao is desperate for him to name her as his successor or at the very least to give a definitive statement that she represents him. In September 1976, Mao dies at the age of 83. Every character existed in real life, and the protagonists’ letters and poems have been translated from original documents. Do all Chinese write in this lyrical fashion? However, Jiang Qing has never lost her ambition to be powerful and loved and noticed. In fact, I disliked her writing style in Madame Mao so much that I didn't even finish it. In Shanghai she had some success in playing Nora in Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House, and the author clearly parallels Nora's strength and inability to be controlled with Lan Ping's strong personality and need to be in control and the center of attention. Instead, you are left hating the so called heroine of the book and wondering if it will. Min, who is bold enough to attempt literature in an adopted language (and audacious enough to do it well), redoubled her boldness and took on the task of creating a novel about Mao's most despicable consort. Also, joining the Communist revolution seemed to be a common choice for young discontented students and others in their 20s. The first half was fantastic. Many writers have engaged in the project of rescuing female figures from history, but few have tackled such an unsympathetic character as Anchee Min does in her historical novel Becoming Madame Mao. Showing 1–6 of 6. I liked the way the book was written, I got lost in the story. Advanced embedding details, examples, and help! The book is a fictionalized account of the rise of an actress, the girlchild of a last concubine, to the role of the powerful Madame Mao in China. Start by marking “Becoming Madame Mao” as Want to Read: Error rating book. When Mao's will is eventually found, he has named Hua Guofeng, a provincial governor from his home province, as his successor. Around 70% it lost me. Mao is still married to his second wife He Zizhen (his first died as a revolutionary), who is in Russia and mentally unstable, but by the time she returns to China, Mao and Lan Ping have married and she is put in a mental hospital. Madame Mao is born to a very poor family around 1910 (early enough to have had her feet bound although due to a severe infection the bindings were taken off). Jiang follows Mao everywhere, even to the field, and becomes his secretary when he is sick. She begins slowly to reemerge from the shadows and spends some time in Shanghai building up a network of actors and producers (her great passion is still opera and theater). A human side to Madame Mao. Finally, Mao and Jiang decide to launch a student-led army called the Red Guards that she would be in charge of. She says: ' I should have known that my husband was doing the two-faced trick. Mao's feelings about her fluctuate, and he toys with her emotions so much that she becomes paranoid, mean-spirited, and vindictive. But Min's story begins with a young girl named Yunhe, the unwanted daughter of a concubine who ignored her mother's pleas and refused to have her feet bound. Madame Mao's dream is to become an actress but she only achieves mediocre success. At one point Mao invites a bunch of the 'old boy's over for a meeting without inviting her. He gives her some permission to carry on her activities and develop some propagandist plays that exalt him. There are no discussion topics on this book yet. I kept thinking it read like someone wrote a synopsis for every chapter, and then decided to publish that interspersed with some first person narrative. The book does not offer much explanation for the switch from actress to countryside revolutionary except that she certainly had been involved in revolutionary elements (anti-Japanese plays, etc.) And, sadly, this is history folks. Madame Mao is almost universally known as the "white-boned demon" -ambitious, vindictive, and cruel-whose bid to succeed her husband led to the death of millions. After the People’s Republic was founded in China in 1949, the communist government used poster campaigns to promote women’s liberation. This was a tough read, and not for just the contents alone. At the end she is a bitter old woman, made that way by her constant attempts to win Mao's love. Called the White Boned Demon by many, she has born the brunt of blame for the Cultural Revolution and other evils. Anchee Min deserves credit for her efforts. But its told in three different voices -- often on the same page -- which makes it difficult to follow and not very engaging. 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