Anchee Mins Katherine: A Lesson In Survival :: Anchee Min Katherine Essays

Anchee bits Katherine A Lesson In Survival Born in strike, China, in 1957, on a lower floor the rule of hot seat monoamine oxidase, Chinas communist leader, Anchee Min followed the teachings of Mao (Book Reporter). In 1974, she subject fielded at a labor camp for some time. In 1984, she came to America, and by 1994 her memoir, Red Azalea, became an international bestseller (book jacket). Katherine, her first novel, was published in 1995. Mins Katherine has been called by a Vogue reviewer, a powerful lesson in survival (book jacket). We see the central character and narrator, Zebra Wong, face many tribulations and, in the end, come out the survivor. Zebra is twenty-nine years of age, unmarried, and living in Shanghai with her parents and brother. In her native China, the Cultural Revolution has just come to an end, plainly many of her peers and fellow countrymen are still heavily influenced by the teachings of Chairman Mao Zedong and his administration. Revealing intimate de tails about her past, piece by piece, Zebra evokes suppressed opinionings I didnt want to take a amour with me, not even my clothes. Anything that could possibly be a reminder of what happened, I discarded(16). With these vague indications of something horrible having happened to her, slowly Zebras past becomes clear. Katherine, the human action character, is a teacher from America who has come to China to teach students the incline language, and along the way gives Zebra and her classmates a sense of freedom. She is a foreigner referred to by Zebra as one of the foreign imperialist we were taught to shoot(3). Even so, done Katherines guidance and benevolence, we learn more about Zebras past. Zebra opens up to her in a way she never has before. She tells Katherine that she used to work at Elephant Fields, a dangerous labor camp that frightened Zebra, where she was sent to the work with dynamite. I witnessed several fatal accidents on the job and I began to feel very scare d(81). Not only was Elephant Fields a unassured place to work, but her boss seduced and raped her (81). At the labor camp, Zebra discovers that she is carrying the small fry of the man that abused her. With Chinas strict ideas on a pregnant cleaning ladys life without marriage, In China, any woman who got pregnant before marriage destroyed her future(82), Zebras pissed desire not to bear Mr.