Chinese-American · b. 1957
Anchee Min grew up in Shanghai, led her school's Little Red Guards at thirteen and was made to denounce her favourite teacher in front of two thousand people. At seventeen she was sent to Red Fire Farm, a labour collective on the East China Sea, where she cut cotton and had an affair with her female commander. She was picked out by talent scouts for Jiang Qing's film studio to audition for the lead in a propaganda film, and after Mao's death and Jiang Qing's arrest she was assigned to set-cleaning duties. She reached Chicago in 1984 with almost no English and studied at the School of the Art Institute. Red Azalea, her memoir, appeared in 1994 and was a New York Times Notable Book. She has since written novels about Empress Orchid, Pearl Buck and Madame Mao, and lives between California and Shanghai.