Name: Wild Ginger
ISBN: 9780618380435

Anchee Min

Narrated by Maple, a less than passionate Maoist whose father is imprisoned for a minor crime, a powerful story of desire during the time of the Cultural Revolution follows Wild Ginger, who, due to tragic circumstances, embraces Maoism and soon becomes a national model for Maoism, which prohibits romantic love, forcing her to make a difficult decision when she falls in love with a young man. Reprint.

Wild Ginger

Nico J

A long-time fan of Anchee Min and her keen insight on the Cultural Revolution, this novel rocketed to the top of my favorites quite quickly - I could not put it down and resigned to doing things one-handed. She manages to pack a punch in less words: Her descriptions of the oppressive atmosphere, the irony of the fractured solidarity of the Mao "supporters," and how swept up in fear the adolescents are, is palpable and able to be touched. It hurts to read about. Wild Ginger is portrayed in the beginning as a little curbed and broken, but her wildness emerges fast. Constantly, I was torn between pitying her and loathing her, although on the other hand, Maple as a character was irking in her acquiescence of her friend. Evergreen straddles a line of being relevant and then being just as swept up in Wild Ginger's simmering insanity. Admittedly, I didn't expect the dramatic end - and to that end, I can't resolve my feelings about Wild Ginger as a character. She's broken, different, but upon reflection, she was doomed to that wild, fiery end - a firework, an explosion, a timebomb. And she was bound to that from the beginning, even as a frustrated adolescent, rejecting her history to overwrite it with her new Maoist narrative. 

What tugs on me is how helpless Maple and Evergreen feel in her wake, and never once did it seem to have to do with the granted (authoritative) power she had over them. It had everything to do with Maple feeling guilty and simultaneously loving her. Evergreen tries to escape by proposing the teaching idea, to no avail - and I don't know how I feel about what those two do to Wild Ginger, betraying her. Hot Pepper was a great person to weave into the end of the narrative, and it had a sense of "full circle." As a reader, I almost forgot about her; but then, I bet that was the point.