The Little Red Guard: A Family Memoir

by Wenguang Huang

Overview

A Washington Post Best of 2012 pick

Three generations of a family living under one roof reflect the dramatic transformations of an entire society in this memoir of life in 20th century China

When Wenguang Huang was nine years old, his grandmother became obsessed with her own death. Fearing cremation, she extracted from her family the promise to bury her after she died. This was in Xi’an, a city in central China, in the 1970s, when a national ban on all traditional Chinese practices, including burials, was strictly enforced. But Huang’s grandmother was persistent, and two years later, his father built her a coffin. He also appointed his older son, Wenguang, as coffin keeper, a distinction that meant, among other things, sleeping next to the coffin at night.

Over the next fifteen years, the whole family was consumed with planning Grandma’s burial, a regular source of friction and contention, with the constant risk of being caught by the authorities. Many years after her death, the family’s memories of her coffin still loom large. Huang, now living and working in America, has come to realize how much the concern over the coffin has affected his upbringing and shaped the lives of everyone in the family. Lyrical and poignant, funny and heartrending, The Little Red Guard is the powerful tale of an ordinary family finding their way through turbulence and transition.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781101580660
Publisher:	Temple Publications International, Inc.
Publication date:	04/26/2012
Sold by:	Penguin Group
Format:	eBook
Pages:	272
File size:	283 KB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Wenguang Huang, who grew up in northern China, is a Chicago-based writer and translator. His writing has appeared in The Paris Review, Harper’s, The Christian Science Monitor, the Chicago Tribune, and the Asia Literary Review. Heis the English translator of Liao Yiwu’s The Corpse Walker and God Is Red and Yang Xianhui’s Woman from Shanghai.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“A gripping, lyrical memoir . . . revealing, ironic, and effortlessly elegant.”
—Chicago Tribune

“There is no overstating the profound effect of the Cultural Revolution on the lives of every single Chinese, and the Huang family’s struggles to bury their grandma is a heartrending example…perfect, moving.”
—The Daily Beast

“Lively…inspires as many laughs as it does tears.”
—The New Yorker

“Fascinating”
—The Washington Post

“A memoir centered on a coffin? Yes, and it works.”
—O, The Oprah Magazine

“A riveting, well-crafted story… at times comic and at times heartbreaking… there are plenty of fresh and unforgettable revelations.”
—Oprah.com

“An interesting look at China through the lens of family.”—
New York Post

“Powerful…poignant.”
—Chicagoist

“Mesmerizing and lyrical.”
—New Jersey Star-Ledger

“New and refreshing and adds a different perspective into the canon of immigrant literature.”
—Chicago Sun-Times

“Illuminating… Huang’s coming-of-age story eloquently describes his family coping with change and how, in a turbulent time, he made sense of the world.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“A trenchantly observed story that depicts the clash of traditional and modern Chinese culture with a powerful combination of sensitivity and mordant irony.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“[Huang’s] description of life under Mao will come as a revelation to readers.”
—Booklist

“Another interesting way to look at China, something readers crave.”
—Library Journal

"The Little Red Guard is a remarkable memoir. Wenguang Huang gave it an ingenious dramatic structure, which reveals the tensions and emotional struggles within his family. At the psychological level, the story has some universal resonance that is beyond history and culture. Huang tells it with extraordinary candor, acuity, and the cruel irony of life. As a result, the story is full of gravity, absurdity, and grief."
–Ha Jin, author of Waiting

“The Little Red Guard—his first book—establishes Wenguang Huang as a master story-teller. Vividly engaging and often surprising, this memoir of coming of age in an ordinary Chinese family amid the social and political wreckage of Mao's Cultural Revolution is uncommonly wise and deeply moving.”
–Philip Gourevitch, author of The Ballad of Abu Ghraib

“With brilliant humanistic insights, Wenguang Huang reveals how the terrors of youth, both large and small, imprint our lives with psychic markers and force us, eventually, to confront the irrational foundation on which strong character can be found.”
—Patrick Tyler, author of A Great Wall: Six Presidents and China

“Although Wenguang Huang came to the West years ago from China, memories of his native country still resonate. Through his writing, time reverses itself, and the ghosts from his past have been revived, like falling leaves returning to their roots. Just as he has done in his translated works, Wen has transformed the intimate stories of a Chinese family into a gripping book that will appeal to readers of all cultures.”
—Liao Yiwu, author of Corpse Walker – Real Life Stories: China from the Bottom Up

Editorial Reviews

The memoir is a fascinating look at unhealthy family dynamics: a wife who resents her husband's blind devotion to his mother, grandchildren who begrudge their grandmother the sacrifices she forced on them, and a grandmother who blatantly favors her son and eldest grandson. But this tale isn't just about Huang's family. Vignettes of scrounging for food when rations were scarce and forcing tears at school when Mao died so no one would question Huang's allegiance to communism provide insight into the cultural landscape of China in the tumultuous 1970s.
—Sarah Halzack

The Washington Post

In his illuminating memoir, translator and freelance writer Huang chronicles growing up in central China during the 1970s. Weaving Chinese history and culture into his recollections, Huang reveals a family striving to fulfill a grandmother’s last wish during a period of rapid societal change. At 72, Huang’s grandmother became obsessed with her own death. She cajoled her family into promising they would bury rather than cremate her, a troublesome prospect for the family. The Communists, who insisted on cremation, had outlawed traditional Chinese burials. “Grandma’s request presented a dilemma for Father, who felt obligated to give grandma the burial she wanted but feared for his political future.” For the next 15 years, the family strained under the burden of the personal and financial issues involved while keeping their plans from curious authorities. Huang’s story intersects with the country’s sweeping political changes. The food rationing system was relaxed; cultural life blossomed; TV replaced radio as the main form of information and entertainment; and transportation improved. Huang studied English at a foreign language school, followed by studies in London. “Years of Communist education became like the ancient artifacts,” Huang writes. Huang’s coming-of-age story eloquently describes his family coping with change and how, in a turbulent time, he made sense of the world. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

A gripping, lyrical memoir . . . revealing, ironic, and effortlessly elegant.”

—Chicago Tribune

“There is no overstating the profound effect of the Cultural Revolution on the lives of every single Chinese, and the Huang family’s struggles to bury their grandma is a heartrending example…perfect, moving.”

—The Daily Beast

“Lively…inspires as many laughs as it does tears.”

—The New Yorker

“Fascinating”

—The Washington Post

“A memoir centered on a coffin? Yes, and it works.”

—O, The Oprah Magazine

“A riveting, well-crafted story… at times comic and at times heartbreaking… there are plenty of fresh and unforgettable revelations.”

—Oprah.com

“An interesting look at China through the lens of family.”—

New York Post

“Powerful…poignant.”

—Chicagoist

“Mesmerizing and lyrical.”

—New Jersey Star-Ledger

“New and refreshing and adds a different perspective into the canon of immigrant literature.”

—Chicago Sun-Times

“Illuminating… Huang’s coming-of-age story eloquently describes his family coping with change and how, in a turbulent time, he made sense of the world.”

—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

 “A trenchantly observed story that depicts the clash of traditional and modern Chinese culture with a powerful combination of sensitivity and mordant irony.”

—Kirkus Reviews

“[Huang’s] description of life under Mao will come as a revelation to readers.”

—Booklist  

“Another interesting way to look at China, something readers crave.”

—Library Journal

"The Little Red Guard is a remarkable memoir.  Wenguang Huang gave it an ingenious dramatic structure, which reveals the tensions and emotional struggles within his family.  At the psychological level, the story has some universal resonance that is beyond history and culture.  Huang tells it with extraordinary candor, acuity, and the cruel irony of life.  As a result, the story is full of gravity, absurdity, and grief."

–Ha Jin, author of Waiting

“The Little Red Guard—his first book—establishes Wenguang Huang as a master story-teller. Vividly engaging and often surprising, this memoir of coming of age in an ordinary Chinese family amid the social and political wreckage of Mao's Cultural Revolution is uncommonly wise and deeply moving.”

–Philip Gourevitch, author of The Ballad of Abu Ghraib

“With brilliant humanistic insights, Wenguang Huang reveals how the terrors of youth, both large and small, imprint our lives with psychic markers and force us, eventually, to confront the irrational foundation on which strong character can be found.”

—Patrick Tyler, author of A Great Wall: Six Presidents and China

“Although Wenguang Huang came to the West years ago from China, memories of his native country still resonate. Through his writing, time reverses itself, and the ghosts from his past have been revived, like falling leaves returning to their roots.  Just as he has done in his translated works, Wen has transformed the intimate stories of a Chinese family into a gripping book that will appeal to readers of all cultures.”

—Liao Yiwu, author of Corpse Walker – Real  Life Stories: China from the Bottom Up

From the Publisher

Huang's grandmother wanted not to be cremated but buried, a practice banned by China's government as backward-looking. Huang's father finally built her a coffin and appointed the author (at age eight) to be its guardian. Now a Chicago-based translator, writer, and NPR commentator, Huang began reflecting on how his coffin guarding and his family's 15-year-long focus on his grandmother's death must have shaped his life. Yet another interesting way to look at China, something readers crave.

Library Journal

Writer and translator Wenguang Huang's candid memoir about growing up in the turbulent aftermath of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. In 1973, Mao's ruthless political campaign sought to bring an end to all "decadent" traditional practices. But the author would remember the year for a different reason--it was a time when his 71-year-old grandmother "became obsessed with death." Afraid that she would be cremated and rendered unable to reunite with her dead husband in the afterlife, she made her son, Wenguang Huang's father, promise that he would give her a traditional burial. Her son agreed and built a coffin, knowing that if he was discovered, the Communist Party would punish him and his family for disobedience. He made the author the official "coffin keeper." For the next nine years, he dutifully slept near what the family would refer to as Grandma's "longevity wood." In the end, the coffin really did become a kind of longevity talisman because the grandmother would live to be 87. Throughout the 16 years leading up to her death, the family often became embroiled in bitter battles over how they would inter the grandmother, who demanded a traditional Chinese burial next to her husband, whose grave was far from the family home. The one family member who suffered the most was the author's father, who passed away a year before his mother. A "filial son," he had made his mother's obsession his own, to the point where it "sucked him dry until there was nothing left but his own corpse." A trenchantly observed story that depicts the clash of traditional and modern Chinese culture with a powerful combination of sensitivity and mordant irony.

Kirkus Reviews