Anchee Min
Anchee Min
Anchee Min or Min Anqiis a Chinese-American author who lives in San Francisco and Shanghai. Min has published two memoirs, Red Azalea and The Cooked Seed: A Memoir, and six historical novels. Her fiction emphasizes strong female characters, such as Jiang Qing, the wife of chairman Mao Zedong, and Empress Dowager Cixi, the last ruling empress of China...
NationalityChinese
ProfessionMemoirist
Date of Birth14 January 1957
CountryChina
children self america
The self was a very strange concept to me until I came to America, and my child was born with that entitlement, and that just thrilled me.
There are a lot of things that immigrants, especially Chinese-Americans, want to share with their children, but there are a lot of things they don't want to share.
anyone came girls magazine seen smile women worry
When I first came to America, you know, I would look at the newsstands and see the women on the magazine covers. I had never seen anyone smile the way these girls smile! It's like they have nothing to worry about!
english understood
I understood that without English I would never get far, so my dream was to become a receptionist, and so I started to learn English from watching 'Sesame Street.'
giving-up thinking giving
I think about giving up. I almost do.
memories loneliness struggle
My mind swirled with memories of the life I had led. The constant struggle to keep up appearances, the pretenses, the smiles that had been met with tears. The long sleepless nights, the loneliness that cloaked my spirit and turned me into a true ghost.
good-luck tree luck
The sun doesn't just hang on one family's tree
kind prisoner command
I was happy not to be in his place. He could command my death, but not his. But then, what kind of power was his? He was a prisoner of himself.
parent pairs harmony
My parents lived likeas the neighbours described thema pair of chopsticks, always in harmony.
community chinese matter
No matter how American I become, I'm considered part of the Chinese community by my own family.
book orchids evil
There have been 50 or 60 books written about Empress Orchid, but none of them bothered to really examine the period in China when she lived. I was taught that she was evil; it's in all the textbooks.
mother fighting fighter
If you can't go back to your mother's womb, you'd better learn to be a good fighter.
struggle chinese together
When Chinese get together - what's buried stays buried. We don't even discuss our embarrassing early days struggling in Chicago.
frustration order mind
We were meant to survive because of our minds' ability to reason, our ability to live with frustration in order to maintain our virtue. We wore smiling masks while dying inside.