Memoir: THE COOKED SEED by Anchee Min

Title: The Cooked Seed: A Memoir by Anchee Min
Published: May 7, 2013; Bloombury USA hardcover

The date was August 3, 1984. It was China's midnight and America's morning. I was about to drop out of the sky and land in Chicago. What made me scared and nervous was that I didn't speak English and had no money. The five hundred dollars I had folded in my wallet was borrowed. But I could not let myself be frightened. I was twenty-seven years old and life had ended for me in China. I was Madame Mao's trash, ..., which meant that I wasn't worth spit. For eight years, I had worked menial jobs at the Shanghai Film Studio. I was considered a "cooked seed" - no chance to sprout. (opening paragraph from the Advance Reading Copy)

Publisher's description:
In 1994, Anchee Min made her literary debut with a memoir of growing up in China during the violent trauma of the Cultural Revolution. Red Azalea became an international bestseller and propelled her career as a critically acclaimed author. Twenty years later, Min returns to the story of her own life to give us the next chapter, an immigrant story that takes her from the shocking deprivations of her homeland to the sudden bounty of the promised land of America, without language, money, or a clear path.

It is a hard and lonely road. She teaches herself English by watching Sesame Street, keeps herself afloat working five jobs at once, lives in unheated rooms, suffers rape, collapses from exhaustion, marries poorly and divorces.But she also gives birth to her daughter, Lauryann, who will inspire her and finally root her in her new country. Min's eventual successes- her writing career, a daughter at Stanford, a second husband she loves- are remarkable, but it is her struggle throughout toward genuine selfhood that elevates this dramatic, classic immigrant story to something powerfully universal.

Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by MizB; choose sentences from your current read and identify author and title for readers. First Chapter, First Paragraph is hosted by Bibliophile by the Sea. Opening sentences in a book can help readers decide if the book is one they would continue reading. 

Based on the opening paragraph of The Cooked Seed, would you keep reading?

Thanks to the publisher for an ARC of this book. 

Teaser Tuesday: Pearl of China by Anchee Min

Teaser Tuesdays, hosted by MizB, asks you to choose two sentences at random from your current read. Include the author and title for readers.

Pearl of China: A Novel by Anchee Min (Hardcover - March 30, 2010)

"You stole my father's wallet!" Pearl yelled.
No, I didn't." I imagined the food the money in the wallet could buy. (ch. 2) .

 Publisher's description: "In the small southern China town of Chin-kiang, in the last days of the nineteenth century, two young girls bump heads and become thick as thieves. Willow is the only child of a destitute family. Pearl is the headstrong daugher of zealous Christian missionaries. She will grow up to become Pearl S. Buck, the Nobel Prize-winning writer and activist, but  for now she is just a girl embarrassed by her blond hair and enchanted by her new Chinese friend....Pearl of China celebrates an incredible friendship and brings new color to the life of Pearl S. Buck, a woman whose unwavering love for the country of her youth eventually led her to be hailed as a national heroine in China."

About the author: Anchee Min was born in China in 1957 and endured the Cultural Revolution. She was sent to a labor camp, was recruited there by Madame Mao's talent scouts to be come an actress in propaganda films. She moved to the U.S. in 1984.

Her first book is the memoir, Red Azalea, which became an international bestseller.  

I've read Pearl Buck's The Good Earth and am really interested in the novel about her childhood in China, especially the history of the turbulent period of the time. The cover, the title, and the information on the book jacket caught my attention at the library. Author Anchee Min's memoir, Red Azalea, is also on my TBR list.