May Book of the Month, Part 1

The first book I read last month (May) was Red Azalea. I think the problem, for me anyway, with Red Azalea was that I read and LOVED Wilds Swans. They are period pieces, set in the same main time frame, the Mao time. The end of formal Feudalism and the true embracement of communism in China. A time of MASSIVE change in a very short time period.

Unfortunately, Red Azalea was way too hard for me to get through. It was only about a 1/3 of the length of Wild Swans but it missed so much of the detail, of the rational and logic behind "why" things were happening the way they were in those decades of change.

Red Azalea was the story of one woman, about her life, her thoughts, her relationships. About the almost suffocating impact of communism in China on the 'self', the 'individual' and on even regular thought and reason at times. For me though, if I hadn't read Wild Swans first I would have been scratching my head throughout the book wondering what the heck was going on and why OR worst yet, assuming China was always that way and 'odd' because of it.

China changed, over the course of the last 4-6 decades in ways very different from teh US, in that short a time period. DON'T GET ME WRONG, I'm not putting the change or current status of the US above or below China, I'm just saying that "culturally" China has changed so much in just the last few decades, yeah, our life time. Some better than the past, some worse, mostly it depends on your perspective, your values, and your judgement system.

Since I dove head first into cultural change in China through other book reviews and some Friday Facts posts I won't go into that detail here.

Back to Red Azelea, not my favorite book so far but I am glad I read it.