A Cadre School Life: Six Chapters

A Cadre School Life: Six Chapters by Yang Jiang. Translation by Geremie Barme with the assistance of Bennett Lee. 1984 Joint Publishing, first U.S. edition, 91 pages. Jiang was a scholar and translator, most notably of the definitive translation of Don Quixote in China, which at the time landed her in Henan to be "reformed through labor" during the Cultural Revolution. A Cadre School Life was her acclaimed memoir of those years. According to the New York Times: "Avoiding the melodramatic tone of many other memoirs of the turbulent Cultural Revolution, she relied on understated, sometimes wry prose to recount everyday life at the "cadre school" for purged officials and scholars: digging a well, tending to her vegetable plot, befriending a puppy. Her tone turned stoic, however, in recalling the suicide of her son-in-law, who had been subjected to constant criticism from his peers for showing reactionary tendencies." Jiang was 70 when her memoir was published.

Condition: VG. Some creasing to pages

"All of us knew we were going to be sent down to be reformed, yet no one had the heart to reflect on the poignancy of separation from family and home as the literati of the past had done in their poetry and writing."