THE RED MIRROR: Children of China’s Cultural...

THE RED MIRROR: Children of China’s Cultural Revolution by Chihua Wen (Westview Press: $14.95; 168 pp., paperback original). Wen has compiled first-hand accounts of life under the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution: children who saw their parents and teachers abused, beaten, deported to the countryside and worked to death. Many of her subjects took part in actions against members of their own families. The students who joined the Red Guard believed in Mao Zedong Thought like a religion; years later, they are haunted by the bitter realization that they were never more than pawns in a larger power struggle. The sorrows of these men and women stand as a dire warning of dangers of fanaticism, even in a “just” cause.