Beautifully, yet minimally, written, the lives of Maple, Evergreen, Hot Pepper and Wild Ginger unfold tragically. Wild Ginger is an exquisite, but flawed, anti-heroine who destroys herself with her overwhelming need to "belong" to Mao's cultural revolution. Her desperate actions destroy her's, and her friends', chances at happiness. The writing is spacious, portraying perfect the honesty of youth and the confusion of growing up in a controlled culture, where the natural physical and idealistic explorations of adolescence are suppressed. The simple beauty of life and the grandness of the political rallies, however, come alive in their full glory and horror. (

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nicolachampagne | Dec 10, 2008 |

In the microcosm of American high school, you will see all walks of life. Jocks, gear-heads, artists, nerds, cheerleaders, smokers, and occasionally an individual who is just too different to fit in any group. It’s natural for us to split along the personality fault lines, for like to seek out like.

During the Chinese Cultural Revolution, there was no chance to be different. The people worshiped the Chairman and spied on each other.

The main character is a teenaged Chinese girl, a good girl but not one who is especially enamored with the enforced homogeneity of the times. She befriends Wild Ginger, who is automatically outcast because of her Anglo father, a Frenchman now deceased. Wild Ginger possesses a passion and ferocity that knows no bounds, and she has decided that she will become the embodiment of a good Communist. She will be the example for all Chinese citizens to live by.

It was hard for me to read this book because it turned the idea of individuality on its ear. In this world, success meant becoming like everybody else and failure meant severe punishment, in any form from ostracism to hard labor to death. As Wild Ginger throws herself into being successful, she does so at the expense of her friendship with people around her. Ironically, the very ferocity with which she worked to be a good example marked her as different, though in a completely different way. (

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Pippette | Mar 13, 2006 |

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Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0618068864, Hardcover)

The beautiful, iron-willed Wild Ginger is only in elementary school when we first meet her, but already she has been singled out by the Red Guards for her "foreign-colored eyes." Her classmate Maple is also a target of persecution. It is through the quieter, more skeptical Maple, a less than ardent Maoist whose father is languishing in prison for a minor crime, that we see this story to its tragic end.
The Red Guards have branded Wild Ginger's deceased father a traitor and eventually drive her mother to a gruesome suicide, but she fervently embraces Maoism to save her spirit. She rises quickly through the ranks and is held up as a national model for Maoism. Wild Ginger now has everything, even a young man who vies for her heart. But Mao's prohibition on romantic love places her in an untenable position. Into this sexually charged situation steps Maple, creating an uneasy triangle that Min has portrayed with keen pychological insight and her characteristic gift for lyrical eroticism.
In Anchee Min's previous three books she returned again and again to the devastating experience of the Cultural Revolution, which defined her youth. Here, in this slim but powerful novel, she gives us a moving story that goes closer to the core of that experience than anything she has written before, and brilliantly delineates the pychological and sexual perversion of those times. Ultimately, WILD GINGER has the clean lines of a parable, the poignancy of a coming-of-age novel, the sexiness of a French blue movie, and the sadness of a truly tragic love story.

(retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:18 -0400)

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