Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    The Little Red Guard: A Family Memoir
    Unavailable
    The Little Red Guard: A Family Memoir
    Unavailable
    The Little Red Guard: A Family Memoir
    Audiobook7 hours

    The Little Red Guard: A Family Memoir

    Written by Wenguang Huang

    Narrated by Adam Verner

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    In 1973, when Wenguang Huang was eight, his grandmother became obsessed with her own death. Fearing cremation, she appealed to her family to promise to bury her after she'd died. This was in Xi'an, a city in central China, at a time when a national ban on all traditional Chinese practices, including burials, was strictly enforced. But his grandmother was persistent, and two years later, Huang's father built her a coffin. 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. Years later, Huang came to understand how much the coffin had influenced his upbringing and shaped the lives of everyone in the family.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDreamscape Media Audio
    Release dateAug 7, 2012
    ISBN9781611209266
    Unavailable
    The Little Red Guard: A Family Memoir
    Author

    Wenguang Huang

    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. He is the English translator of Liao Yiwu’s The Corpse Walker and God is Red and Yang Xianhui’s Woman from Shanghai.

    Related to The Little Red Guard

    Related audiobooks

    Asian History For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Acts of Remembrance

      Oct 22, 2020

      When the Memorial Hall of the War to Resist U.S. Aggression and Aid Korea, the only museum in the country on Chinese volunteers’ participation in the Korean War (1950-53), reopened in the border city of Dandong, Liaoning Province in northeast China,

      3 min read

    • Article

      An Unfaded Legacy

      Jan 2, 2020

      When Wen Ting walked into the International House in New York City for the first time in 2018, she felt a spiritual connection with her great grandfather Wen Yiduo, who used to live on the ninth floor of the building 95 years ago. Wen Yiduo (1899-194

      4 min read

    • Article

      Partition’s Legacy Transcends India-Pakistan Border. Can Commemoration?

      Aug 12, 2021

      Partition left deep scars in present-day India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, but few ways to mourn – and heal – together. The internet is changing that.

      7 min read

    • Article

      ‘My Prussian Relatives won't Be Forgotten’

      Oct 18, 2022

      Following the German invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939, the Nazis began destroying Jewish cemeteries and removing their matzevot (singular matzevah) or grave markers. Some were used as kerbstones or building material. Thankfully, many of these p

      3 min read

    • Article

      The Spirit Lives On

      Oct 28, 2021

      Joan Hinton never could have imagined that China would become the destination of her lifetime. She came, saw, experienced, anticipating more progress and development to occur nationwide, and then just ended up living here her whole life. In 1945, 23-

      4 min read

    • Article

      My Family’s Siberian Exile

      Sep 4, 2018

      My Family’s Siberian Exile
      17 min read

    • Article

      In Ukraine, Youth Has Ended

      Jun 10, 2022

      In Ukraine, Youth Has Ended
      9 min read

    • Article

      Kuliang, Kuliang

      Jul 13, 2023

      When a running stream showed up over a video call from China, centenarian Len Billing in the United States raised his voice with excitement. “Oh, I remember this stream,” he said over the phone. “John once fell down in there!” The 103-year-old can ha

      4 min read

    • Article

      An Outrage Sacred to the Gods

      Dec 1, 2023

      An Outrage Sacred to the Gods
      15 min read

    • Article

      Praying On A 707

      Oct 4, 2020

      Praying On A 707
      1 min read

    • Article

      Force For Good

      Apr 16, 2023

      These days, “resilience” has become a somewhat hackneyed word. But not for Inge Woolf. The Holocaust survivor, who found love, prosperity, acceptance and influence as an émigré to New Zealand, once declared that resilience was “the hope to see there

      7 min read

    • Article

      Projections of Life

      Jun 1, 2023

      Projections of Life
      14 min read

    • Article

      It’s Not ‘The’ Ukraine

      Feb 17, 2022

      It’s Not ‘The’ Ukraine
      8 min read

    • Article

      Ai Weiwei: ‘Lego Is No Different From Rembrandt Or Van Gogh’s Paint’

      May 18, 2021

      On 3 April 2011, Ai Weiwei was going through customs at Beijing Capital International Airport when he was stopped by plain-clothes members of the secret police. They told the dissident artist that they just wanted to talk, but instead they took him o

      9 min read

    • Article

      Indonesian Historian Onghokham's 'Fearless' Life As Gay Chinese Man, Java Expert Celebrated In Biography

      Jul 3, 2022

      When a prominent Indonesian personality authorises someone to write their biography, the final product almost inevitably takes the form of a hagiography. The Javanese, Indonesia's largest ethnic group, have a saying: "Mikul dhuwur, mendhem jero". It

      5 min read

    • Article

      As China Cracks Down On Uyghurs, Some Keep Their Culture Alive In The US

      Apr 4, 2019

      As part of a Uyghur crackdown, China discourages Nowruz, the Uyghur New Year. Now some in the U.S. are celebrating it to sustain their culture here.

      5 min read

    Reviews for The Little Red Guard

    4/5

    17 ratings16 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      In The Little Red Guard Wenguang Huang tells about his life growing up in China as the child of model Communists., except model Communists shouldn’t consider burial after death, at least not according to the party. However, Huang’s grandmother, born in the early 1900s is from an era of bound feet for women and a progeny of pre-communist China. She still believes in the old ways and wants to be buried in the home village next to the husband to whom she has remained faithful since his death decades earlier. So, Huang’s father, much to the chagrin of his wife, promises to bury his mother next to her husband. The only problem is how to arrange the whole thing when the practice is banned and following it is the exact opposite of the expectations of a model Communist.Huang uses the promise made by his father to his grandmother to tell his family’s story about living and working in Xi’an and, more importantly, to illustrate the clash of generations living under one roof during times of great upheaval in China’s history: the Cultural Revolution, opening and the aftermath of Tiananmen Square. Through the disagreement over this burial versus cremation issue, he illustrates, within a family, the same changes occurring throughout China—his grandmother’s embrace of the old ways and superstitions, his parents unwavering belief in the Communist party and finally his and his siblings idealism and cynicism during opening and the emergence of capitalism. Throughout the book, he indicates the impact of the promise on his family, the relationship between his father and mother, and that with his father. I thought The Little Red Guard was an interesting and easily-readable book.
    • 4/5
      Memoir highlighting the changes in Chinese culture, at the human level. Well-written, highly recommended.
    • 4/5
      Wen is a very likable and easy to relate to narrator. Living with a grandmother, who is from a time when they still bound woman's feet, he and is family try to navigate between the old customs and the new ways after Mao's cultural revolution. Burial is no longer an option, as Mao only endorses cremation, a fact that his grandmother finds horrible. The old customs dictate that she must be buried next to her husband so that they may be reunited. At the age of nine, as the oldest grandson, Wen is designated the coffin keeper and this coffin and the money needed to be saved for his grandmother's funeral plays an adverse effect on their lives. His writing style is very easy to follow and life under Mao is conveyed in ways that affected his family. When Mao dies, things change again and it is really difficult to imagine what the Chinese people have gone through in a relatively short period of time. Really found this book very interesting and showing the impact on one family made it all the more striking.
    • 4/5
      Growing up under Communist Rule. Sleeping next to your grandmothers coffin, a symbol of what your father thinks about day and night. A culture far removed from 21st century America.Great read. Could not put it down!
    • 5/5
      When I started reading The Little Red Guard, I thought I was in for just another run-of-the-mill memoir growing up oppressed by Communism. However, I was pleasantly surprised with Wenguang Huang’s fresh take on the subject; maybe the content was similar to other books covering the same time period of the 1970s, but the lens through which Huang views the era makes this a compelling and unique read. Huang’s grandmother spends years fixated on her inevitable death and funeral. In an era where traditional funerals are illegal (cremation being the state sanctioned way to go), Huang’s grandmother implores her son to prepare for her funeral in advance. The filial son’s devotion to his mother and preparations for the funeral have major ramifications on the everyday life of Huang’s family. In addition to exploring the various plans his father makes for the funeral, Huang discusses the relationships in his family - complex relationships that undergo a lot of stress thanks to the grandmother’s machinations, schools’ influences and parental pressure to succeed. The Little Red Guard is an excellent, well-written book that I would highly recommend to anyone, not just fans of history or memoirs.
    • 4/5
      I greatly enjoyed this book and read it all in one day. It was quite absorbing, a bit like sitting down with an old friend and hearing a fascinating family tale. The story begins in China, after the Cultural Revolution. Three generations of family are living together: one, Grandma, who lived most of her life before the revolution, the second, the parents, whose lives straddle the before and after of the revolution, and the third, the children, who were born into the aftermath of the revolution. The author is a member of this last generation, and poignantly describes the confusion generated by the conflicts between his schooling, which emphasizes loyalty to Mao and the revolution, and the messages from his beloved grandmother emphasizing loyalty to the old traditions and filial piety. The family itself becomes the canvas upon which these battles play out, as Grandma wants a traditional burial when she dies, which flies in the face of the new custom of cremation. These battles rage ways that are sometimes hilarious, and sometimes heartbreaking. As such, the family is a vehicle for showing the impact of the Cultural Revolution on ordinary people. It’s quite moving to learn important lessons about China’s history through the true tale of a family who lived through the upheaval of the last century. This is a well-written memoir that brings history to live with humor, compassion and wisdom.
    • 4/5
      My favorite memoirs are those where the memoir events play out against great historical events in a way that illuminates history and culture as well as telling the personal story. This is what Wenghuang Huang has accomplished in The Little Red Guard as he tells the story of his family against the background of major uphevals surrounding the establishment and relaxation of communism in China. The result is a wonderfully readable account giving insight into an era and a culture.Huang’s grandmother was the matriarch of her family. Widowed young with a small son, she kept her dead husband’s name alive by fiercely protecting her son through wars, famines and floods—once she and her son spent three days in a tree cut off by floodwaters. Her son became a man, married and had children of his own. In the Chinese way, the generations lived together. But problems arose when Grandma, beginning to fear her own death, expressed the desire to be buried beside her husband instead of the cremation which was mandated by the Communist government. Huang’s father started secretly acquiring materials to build a coffin which remained in the two room apartment for decades; family, cousins, and acquaintances were brought into the plans to move Grandma’s body to a village for burial at that misty time in the future.Discovery of the plans would have brought censure to Huang’s father by the communist party, and would have ended his career and the careers of Huangs brothers and sisters. The coffin brought them together, but also split them apart as they struggled to merge the old ways and the new as well as family loyalty love and the communist government.I found this to be a very intriguing, well written story. My only criticism is that the last few chapters felt a bit long. Recommended.
    • 4/5
      Wenguang Huang’s poignant tale of life in a multigenerational home, during the strident Communist regime of Chairman Mao’s China, is a fascinating and bittersweet look at one home’s struggle between filial duty and tradition versus the demands of an unyielding and unrelenting government rule. Huang’s memoir offers an honest and sincere look into Chinese culture both past and present and is a definite recommended read for all those interested in a broader world view.
    • 4/5
      What a wonderful memior!! I would encourage anyone with an interest in China and in family memoirs to read it -- While the Chinese family experience may be very different from your own, there are nonetheless many similarities in the relationships within an extended family. The author has a real talent for telling a story and enabling the reader to visualize the time and place and the empathize with various characters.
    • 4/5
      THE LITTLE RED GUARD, subtitled “A Family Memoir” is a domestic slice of life of Communist China. Taking place primarily in Xian, Wenguang Huang reminisces about the lives of his parents and family from the early 20th century and the events that affected his family. It is the story of survival, of a family brought so low by flood, war and governmental restrictions that at one point their horses give away their hiding place so the invading Japanese can take them away. It was a sobering contemplation to this reviewer that while I was growing up in an affluent suburb of Southern California, this family suffered earthquakes that left them homeless, repeated revolutions and numerous famines caused both by drought and by Mao’s economic policies. Walking the political tightrope of the 60’s and 70’s, weaving successfully between the Cultural Revolution and the Great Leap Forward and everything in between, required personal stamina and a kind of diplomatic finesse that one only sees at the top rung of the United Nations leadership. The thread that runs through Huang’s story is his Grandma’s passionate desire for a traditional burial at a time when such a thing was illegal. To honor her, the family faces a dilemma that will govern and overshadow their lives for decades: how to venerate the grandmother’s wishes and not violate government policy and thereby lose their hard won status in the Communist Party or worse. Along the way, there are revelations, such as the extraordinary power of superstition and ignorance; which, while they might offend our modern sensibilities and appear ridiculous, nevertheless exert their influence and must be dealt with and, to a certain extent, respected.When Huang’s father seeks the advice of a friend who has been in and out of the government’s good graces, he is given this man’s blessing, and it appears they can move forward with plans to give Grandma the burial she frantically needs to know she’ll get when she dies. However, with seven-eighths of the book yet to go, you just know it isn’t going to go smoothly. Every member of the family has a personal interest in the process and outcome of Grandma’s burial plans. Huang’s acceptance to the foreign language school and his sister’s university plans are only possible for children of “reliable revolutionary families.” Grandma’s inability to understand what her coffin has to do with the children’s future underscores the discombobulating clash between the old ways and the way of the revolution (in all its manifestations), as well as the disconnect between the individual and the establishment and what happens when any government is out of touch with the people it governs.Huang writes in a simple and elegant style. He skillfully depicts the impressions of a child’s memory without degrading those memories by lapsing into child speak. There are lighthearted and touching moments that make you laugh. When Mao’s death gets Huang thinking about his grandma’s dying (she won’t die for decades), he starts wailing during his classroom’s moment of silence and passes out. While his teacher’s are impressed by his devotion to Mao, the school nurse diagnoses a vitamin deficiency and injects him with B vitamins. There are minor editing and verb tense flaws and some awkward sentence structure that trip up the flow of the narrative, but only occasionally.During the revolution in 1989, the author faces political unrest as a young man, not a child any longer, and thinks of the many warnings of his by then late father against being too outspoken. Retreating from activism, he turns his attention once again to his Grandma, now with dementia and bedridden. This second part of the memoir gives the reader a snapshot of the changing moral landscape of the late 80’s and early 90’s. Huang’s mother, as a widow, still isn’t allowed to touch bridal gifts for fear of bringing bad luck to the bride, but his brother brings his girlfriend home for overnight visits on a regular basis without exciting the neighbors. This same brother ends up being the one who gives their mother the greatest rejection when she remarries. His basis for doing so is the contrast between what she has done in remarrying and the model of virtuous loyalty that was their Grandma who never remarried. Huang’s memoir is an example of how time works great changes in individuals, families, communities and societies; the influence of those changes working from the micro to the macro and back again. Society affects the individual and the individual, society. And the instrument hardly matters: in China, communism hammered away at tradition, but nothing like modernism has; but, in the end, the battering that traditional Chinese values took, both under the Communist Revolution and the opening of China and its people to the seductive charms of Western Capitalism and democracy, did not succeed in killing that ancient culture. At least, not in the Huang family, as one by one, Wenguang and his siblings exhibit their deep attachment to the ways of their parents and ancestors by returning to the keeping of holidays and honoring their forebears at gravesides and festivities. And while the author ends by lauding his freedom to travel far from his native land, unlike his parents and grandparents, one can’t help but take note that these liberties came to him though the wisdom of his father; and the only reason he can enjoy them without suffering the emptiness of rootlessness is due to the opportunities that today’s technologies afford him to stay connected to his family in China.
    • 3/5
      Wenguang Huang gives us a glimpse of the life of a somewhat ordinary family during the days of Chairman Mao in China. His grandmother had wished to be buried next to her husband in another province, but during the Mao regime, cremation was required; burial was not really an option. Most who attempted to honor their older ancestor's wishes would be caught and cremation would be forced. Huang's father came up with a scheme to honor his mother's wishes by getting cooperation from various extended family members, including a policeman. There was no guarantee that the burial could occur, but he hoped that his efforts would at least alleviate his mother's growing anxiety about her afterlife. Part of the plan was to build a coffin (in secret, of course). Wenguang became the keeper of the coffin, sleeping next to it in his early adolescent years. We see some changes in government and insurrections, such as the one in Tiananmen Square, in the years following Chairman Mao's death. We also see the role that this secret coffin played in the life of this family.It's a book that gives insight into a culture that few Americans know little about beyond rumors. In spite of its potential, I found that it was easy to put down and not a very absorbing story. That's not altogether bad in that life in communist China should make us uncomfortable. I do wish, however, that it had been more captivating.This review is based on an uncorrected proof provided through LibraryThing's Early Reviewer program.
    • 4/5
      I was surprised by this book. The most endearing part it the that it is a true story. Knowing this helps you connect with the author and his family.However I was a little put off by the repeating of certain reverts and the odd jumping around at the beginning of some chapters. Putting that aside I will be recommending this book to others.
    • 5/5
      I really enjoyed reading this book. The memoir of Wenguang Huang's life in communist China during the 70s and 80's was very interesting. He tells of how his grandmother becomes obsessed with having a traditional burial at her death. The problem for the family, trying to uphold communist rules and live the correct kind of communist life, have to break the law in order to give their grandmother a burial. Burials are against the law in communist China. The family has to secretly make a coffin, hide it, and collect friends and family to help with the illicit plan. The planning and money saving takes years and has a great toll on the whole family.I found the telling of daily life in China to be very interesting. I learned a lot of how hard it was to live under communist rule. It was also interesting to see the constant changes in how the government would rule and change rules throughout the history of the book. Since the author is about the same age as me it was interesting to think back on my own childhood and compare my life with his. I'm still amazed that in the 1970s they had to walk 2 blocks from their apartment to use the latrine!I can without reservation recommend this book to everyone! Thanks for the book LibraryThing!!!!
    • 4/5
      A memoir by the author as he grew up in China under the Communist dictatorship of Chairman Mao Zedong and his Cultural Revolution, and the revolutionary period after Mao’s death. Huang was a Little Red Guard during this time and was encouraged to rat out anyone he saw disobeying the law. He recounts how his grandmother was obsessed with her death and a traditional burial, something forbidden during that time, and the friction this caused in his family.One of the most interesting sections took place during Huan’s time as a student in the United States and how he slowly came to realize that all that he had been hearing about Western Civilization was indeed, just propoganda. Well written, easy to read, and gives a good picture of life in China and the sacrifices made by the average citizen.
    • 4/5
      I enjoyed this book - read it in a day. Through personal stories, it gives a face to historical events around the Cultural Revolution and how they impacted a generation. These stories need to be told so that our Western nations can understand the extreme sacrifices ordinary Chinese have faced, whether brought on by their natural environment or their socio-political environment. Not many of us have considered our badges of honor to be patches on our pants. The unifying theme of Grandma's coffin fascinated me, but sometimes seemed forced. My understanding of the time and place represented by the book has been deepened, and it could have been deeper if book was a little less choppy (The use of more dates would have helped). Considering that I often don't give more than 10-20 pages to a book that doesn't hold my attention - the above review might seem a little harsh for a book I read completely. That's why it is 3.5 stars and moving towards a 4.
    • 4/5
      Very interesting book, especially if you like memoirs. This wasn't the final edition, so hopefully the problems I found will be ironed out by the official publications. I found this very hard to follow, and I couldn't quite figure out the order of events. Once I gave up and relaxed I enjoyed it more.