Red Memory records dark recollections of the Cultural Revolution in China, revealing its
lingering impact on Chinese politics and society.

Tania Branigan's Red Memory is an astounding and often harrowing study of Mao's China. A
lead writer for The Guardian, Branigan spent seven years in China as a foreign correspondent.
Her experiences there led her to embark on a project recording people's memories from the time
of the Cultural Revolution, a dark period in the country's history when the nation turned on
itself. Despite the devastating impact of the events of this era and their outsized importance in
understanding the political and social psychology of China today, memories of the Cultural
Revolution remain taboo. Contemporary Communist Party officials have repressed mention of
it in museums and history books, reforming the historical narrative into "a gentler, happier tale
of historical inevitability under the Party's benign leadership." Many citizens are equally
reluctant to relive the era, as acknowledging and processing the trauma they experienced can
also mean facing up to their own participation in the horrors that unfolded.

What Branigan has achieved is no mean feat. Through a series of interviews with people who
experienced the Cultural Revolution first-hand, she preserves the reality of one of the darkest
and yet most elusive chapters in China's recent past. Branigan combines the interviews with
scholarly analysis, tying individual memories to the larger movements of history that enfold
them. She also reflects on how the figure of Mao continues to cast a shadow over the
present-day Communist Party. Overall, it's a fascinating portrayal of a nation at war with its
own history. The events of the Cultural Revolution continue to divide Chinese society; fear,
nostalgia, and guilt are felt in equal parts. Branigan captures this complex psychology with a
narrative voice that is clear, poetic, and urgent.

The interview sections of the book are personal and intimate. Rather than big-picture history,
it's history from the ground. Her subjects are varied; some were attracted to the Chinese
Communist Party via parental lineage, others by their own youthful idealism. Most were
teenagers during the 1960s, when the events of the Cultural Revolution took place. As each
recounts their memories, the line between victim and perpetrator shifts and blurs – those
initially drawn to the Red Guards by genuine belief in their cause find themselves witnessing
beatings, or being beaten themselves. One thing that struck me was the naivety that comes
through in many of their early memories of Party membership; there's a sense of individuals
swept up in larger forces of history, over which they could have no foresight or control. This is
a credit to Branigan's narrative style, which humanizes its subjects without denying their
responsibility. The book is flinty-eyed about China's leadership, both old and new. But its
attitude towards the people is different – though there's no absolution, it reflects the deep
confusion and dystopian horror of what they went through.

Branigan's analysis of current political leadership in China is equally compelling. As she
recounts, the present-day Communist Party can't criticize Mao without destabilizing its own
mythology. The Road to Rejuvenation exhibition at the National Museum in Beijing presents a
grand historical narrative in which the Communist Party liberated China from its imperial past
and foreign oppressors, restoring its former glory and turning it into a global superpower. A
recognition of the atrocities of the Cultural Revolution would upend this narrative, and so it
must be repressed. As Branigan writes, "The truth is what the Party says, it is what the Party
chooses to remember." This legacy of censorship continues under the leadership of current
President Xi Jinping, who, despite serving seven years of hard labor in exile following his
father's purge from the Party during Mao's reign, maintains Mao's portrait in Tiananmen Square.

As Branigan is careful to point out, China is not unique in whitewashing undesirable aspects of
its history. Western nations routinely downplay the centuries of imperialism, slavery and
exploitation that are the foundations of their modern wealth and security. Yet, as Branigan also
poignantly notes, Western forgetfulness comes easier. Citizens of Western nations often have
the luxury of being somewhere far away from the source of their most shameful barbarities,
which were carried out abroad (though of course there are exceptions). As fewer people
witnessed or participated in the atrocities first-hand, they are more easily swept under the rug.
The enforced repression of the past in China is in part due to the impossibility of such
ignorance. The victims of the Cultural Revolution weren't strangers, but neighbors and family.
The perpetrators were too. Everyone was caught up in the violence – there is no way of
minimizing it, or of pretending that it was somehow ultimately a force for good (in the way that
the British, sometimes, think of the empire in terms of railroads, Shakespeare and cricket). As
Branigan writes, "We had chosen not to look, but the Chinese had to pretend they had not seen,
a far harder task."

"Red Memory" is an exploration of how the Cultural Revolution continues its impact on the population of China, and the many ways in which Chinese citizens continue to try to reckon with it. Tania Branigan's nonfiction account is a series of encounters with those who experienced the CR (and even actively participated in it) as well as pushback from the modern authorities.

What's good: For a topic lesser discussed in modern American classrooms, this book is an excellent primer to the chaos and violence unleashed by the Cultural Revolution.

What's iffier: For those looking for texts for 1000-level classrooms, this is probably a bit too much. Perhaps a selection from it would work; otherwise, I see this as being more upper-level reading.

With gratitude to Netgalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read this ARC in exchange for an unbiased review.