Anchee Min
In conversation with novelist Aimee Liu
The sequel to Min's critically-acclaimed, internationally bestselling Empress Orchid covers the decades of the last half of the 19th century, a violent, tumultuous period in China's history marked by humiliating foreign incursions and domestic rebellion, ultimately ending in the demise of the Ch'ing dynasty.
Anchee Min was born in Shanghai in 1957. At seventeen she was sent to a labor collective, where a talent scout for Madame Mao's Shanghai Film Studio recruited her to work as a movie actress. Her critically acclaimed memoir, Red Azalea, recounts her experience during the Cultural Revolution, a period she revists in fictional form in her national bestselling Becoming Madame Mao. With the internationally bestselling novel Empress Orchid , Min continued her project of offering extensively researched, highly revisionist accounts of critical female figures in modern Chinese history. Min's new book, The Last Empress, continues this masterful revisionist work.
Unless otherwise indicated, ALOUD programs take place at the Los Angeles Central Library's Mark Taper Auditorium, 630 W. Fifth Street, Los Angeles, CA 90071.
