The book Red Scarf Girl by Ji-Li Jiang is about her early life in communist China. The cultural revolution is underway and Ji-Li’s life is starting to fall apart. Throughout the book, Ji-Li's perspective changes as she takes on more and more responsibilities for her family.
Red Scarf Girl is voiced by the main character, Ji-Li Jiang, who is 12 years old and lives in Shanghai, China. She is an outstanding student, as well as her family is wealthy. She has everything students want. However, her life begins to crash when Chairman Mao launched the Cultural Revolution.
The first thing invited Ji-Li persecution comes when she recognized that her family couldn’t pass the background check for the Liberation dance troupe. “Until now I had never doubted that I could achieve anything I wanted. The future had been full of infinite possibilities. Now I was no longer sure that was still true.” (Jiang, 1.79) She begins to wonder if her family has been lying to her for a long time. Ji-Li is no longer sure that she can trust her family. …show more content…
When classmates write letters about their teachers, she couldn’t find negative comments to the teachers. “To fulfill my responsibility as a revolutionary, I listed all my teachers. One by one, I considered them carefully. Unfortunately, none of them seemed to hate the Party or oppose Chairman Mao. I could not write a da-zi-bao about any of them.” (Jiang, 3.21) She should be a supporter of Chairman Mao, and she has to find something to write negative letters to show her loyalty to the revolution; however, she finds out herself that she is not the revolutionary. Later, she says, “Many friends have asked me why, after all I went through, I did not hate Chairman Mao and the Cultural Revolution in those years. The answer is simple: We were all brainwashed.” (Jiang, E.1) She starts to support his