264 pp. February 2005
paper, ISBN 978-0-8248-2903-2, $18.99
|
Keywords: |
Asia
China
biography
literature
history |
|
Sparrows, Bedbugs, and Body Shadows: A Memoir
by Sheldon Lou
Intersections: Asian and Pacific American Transcultural Studies
“People interested in the quirkiness, foolishness and courage constituting human nature will enjoy this glimpse into a period of time when young people sought to ‘amplify grain’ and to wade their way through revolution.” —Today’s Local News (San Marcos, CA), 1 May 2005
Growing up in revolutionary China, Sheldon (Xicheng) Lou was among the millions forced to adopt the goals of Mao’s new society. His captivating memoir, written against the backdrop of the early decades of the People’s Republic, offers a rare and personal look at China’s dream of a Communist paradise—from Mao’s preposterous campaign to rid the country of sparrows to the communes and backyard steel-making of the Great Leap Forward to the madness of the Cultural Revolution and its aftermath.
Sheldon Lou was born in Sichuan in 1941 and raised in Beijing. As a young graduate of Qinghua University, he spent ten months in a rural village as a working team member and returned to the capital in time to witness the birth of the Cultural Revolution. Three years later he was ordered to a factory in Inner Mongolia, where he remained, separated from his family, for six years. Lou arrived in the United States in 1980 and obtained his master and Ph.D. degrees from MIT’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. He became a research scientist at MIT and later joined the Faculty of Management at the University of Toronto. He is currently professor of operations management at California State University, San Marcos.
Read the prologue (PDF).
table of contents
|
