Mao's Harvest: Voices from China's New Generation

In Mao's Harvest (1983), Helen Siu and Zelda Stern have gathered a collection of poems, stories, and essays from the New Realism literary movement in China. The authors of these works are part of the so-called "Mao Generation." Born in the 1940s, their entire lives have been affected by Mao's politics and policies. Mao's rule over China was highly ideological in its purported celebration of the masses and their labor, but the ninety percent of the population that was not directly affiliated with the CCP struggled to live any kind of prosperous life, let alone one that was not marred by poverty. As a result, the writers of the Mao Generation in Mao's Harvest express a deep disillusionment with the Chinese political system. Their surprisingly candid works are from 1979-1981, a period which Siu and Stern describe as "a thaw in which the usual political controls on writers were relaxed..." Thus most of the writing took place only three years after Mao died and the Gang of Four was arrested, an event which many historians consider marks the end of the Cultural Revolution. The excellent introduction to Mao's Harvest discusses the Cultural Revolution and its effects on Chinese youth at great length. Siu and Stern believe that the it created deep divisions between communities, families, and individuals, and that it epitomized the debilitating effects of Maoism not just on a person's economic or educational well being, but on their relationships to others and their views of the world. Ultimately Siu and Stern think that the New Realism movement of 1979-1981 reflects the disappointment, anger, confusion, and search for meaning that occurred among hundreds of millions of Chinese young people who lived under Mao's policies and the authoritarian structure of the CCP. Mao's Harvest is divided into six thematic parts: faith, family, love, work, politics, and an appendix of short political essays. Each part contains roughly four to ten works, with a large focus on stories and poems. Fifteen authors are represented, and their writings successfully reflect part of Siu and Stern's thesis: that the writers of the New Realism movement wrote stories and poems that show individuals struggling with the failures of the communist system. But another part of their thesis--that the New Realism movement is representative of the larger Chinese population and their disillusionment--is not entirely persuasive. But perhaps that idea is evident from the tumultuous history of China that can be read in many other books about the ongoing rule of the CCP. The writings in Mao's Harvest at least strongly suggest a profound disagreement between the people and those who led them. This is manifest by many of the stories' and poems' focus on the shattering effects of the "corruption, opportunism, and bureaucratism" on Chinese families. For example, in Part I, "Faith", Pan Xiao writes about her initial devotion to communist ideals. As a young student, she was exhilarated