While Min did not win the role, she was granted a
part in the film due to her “proletarian looks.” The
death of Chairman Mao later that year, however,
turned Min’s world upside down as Madame Mao
was arrested and anyone who had even slight af-
filiations with her, as in Min’s case, was subjected
to punishment. This meant that her career as an
aspiring actress was over, and she returned once
again to manual labor at the film studio. Once
again this unfortunate series of events would pro-
vide rich material upon which Min would later
draw in her writing.
The information Min gathered from her dis-
cussions with Madame Mao’s friends and enemies
during her time working at the film studio pro-
vided the research materials that allowed Min to
write her complex historical fiction about Ma-
dame Mao’s life, Becoming Madame Mao. This
controversial work seeks to take the reader be-
yond the stereotypical, and even patriarchal, ac-
counts of Madame Mao that portray her as the
“White Boned Demon” and blame her for the ter-
rible excesses of the Cultural Revolution. Instead
Min argues that the responsibility for the terror
and deaths that marked the period of the Cultural
Revolution lies with Chairman Mao. Given this
simple fact, Min asks why Mao is revered as god-
like even to this day while his wife is reviled as a
demon and temptress.
After eight years of working at the film studio,
during which time she contracted tuberculosis,
Min left China in 1984, assisted by her friend,
the actress Joan Chen. Upon arrival in the United
States, Min attended courses at the Art Institute of
Chicago, eventually earning an M.F.A. degree. As
part of her assignments for an English class, Min
wrote essays about her experiences of growing
up during the Cultural Revolution. These assign-
ments eventually became her breakthrough book
Red Azalea, which became a New York Times best
seller and Notable Book of the Year.
In addition to Red Azalea and Becoming Ma-
dame Mao, Min’s books include Katherine (1995),
a story of an American ESL teacher in China; Wild
Ginger (2002), a love story set in Shanghai dur-
ing the Cultural Revolution; and Empress Orchid
(2003), an account of China’s last imperial ruler.
In most of her works, Min provides powerful and
insightful accounts of the tragic and conflicting
experiences suffered by people, in deeply personal
ways, during the tumultuous period of the Cul-
tural Revolution.Bibliography
Jolly, Margaretta. “Coming Out of the Coming Out
Story: Writing Queer Lives.” Sexualities 4, no. 4
(2001): 474–496.
Xu, Ben. “A Face That Grows into a Mask: A Symp-
tomatic Reading of Anchee Min’s Red Azalea.”
MELUS 29, no. 2 (2004): 157–181.
Xu, Wenying. “Agency via Guilt in Anchee Min’s Red
Azalea: A Critical Essay.” MELUS 25, nos. 3–4
(2000): 203–220.
Jeff ShantzMirikitani, Janice (1941– )
Janice Mirikitani is the author of four volumes of
poetry and editor of many anthologies. Since 1965,
as a choreographer and director of services with
the Glide Organization, founded by her husband,
Cecil, she has directed programs to revitalize the
Tenderloin district of San Francisco.
Mirikitani is a third-generation Japanese Amer-
ican whose family was interned with thousands
of others during World War II. Her family spent
several years in a camp in Arkansas, and among
her poems are many that speak to the effects this
imprisonment had on Japanese Americans and
on her family. Mirikitani’s poems often contain
violent images as she addresses issues of taboos,
incest, the Vietnam War, breaking silence, stereo-
types of Asian Americans (especially women), and
global events like Hiroshima or the decline of the
Innu in Labrador.
Awake in the River (1978) was Mirikitani’s first
published volume of poetry. The theme of vio-
lence, associated with racism and global issues of
U.S. imperialism and war, is central to the volume.
In “For My Father,” the narrator says of her father,
“The desert had dried his soul.” He forces straw-
berries to grow from a harsh landscape to sell to
white Americans, denying his children even a taste192 Mirikitani, Janice