Anchee Min

Anchee Min is a Chinese-American author whose memoirs and historical novels draw heavily on twentieth-century Chinese history. Born in Shanghai in 1957, she grew up during the Cultural Revolution and was sent to work at a labour collective at seventeen. She was later recruited by the Shanghai Film Studio as an actress, but her career was disrupted following Mao Zedong’s death and the fall of Jiang Qing. Min moved to the United States in 1984, and her experiences under Maoist rule became the basis of her acclaimed first memoir, Red Azalea.

Her fiction frequently examines the lives of women caught within China’s political and imperial power structures. Becoming Madame Mao portrays Jiang Qing, while Empress Orchid and The Last Empress recount the life of Empress Dowager Cixi during the final decades of the Qing dynasty. Min’s other novels include Katherine, Wild Ginger and Pearl of China, a fictionalised account of the relationship between Pearl S. Buck and a Chinese childhood friend. Her work combines personal experience, biography and historical reconstruction, with particular emphasis on survival, ambition and the effects of authoritarian rule.