An Evening with Chun Yu, Author of Little Green: Growing Up During the Chinese Cultural Revolution
Chun Yu and the Cultural Revolution were born the same year--1966. Her parents named her Xiao Qing--Little Green--the title she in turn gave her book in which she captures her experiences as a child during a chaotic and unpredictable decade. Tuesday February 13, 2007, Chun Yu spoke before an audience of some 70 people in an event co-sponsored by the Board of Trustees of Primary Source and Families of Children from China, New England. She described how she struggled to master English as she pursued her doctorate at Rutgers: she read the New York Times cover to cover and looked up every word she didn't know. She shared the day she began to "sneak words into her lab book at MIT" (where she had a post-doctoral fellowship in biomedical engineering)--words that would evolve into a book of verse where she poignantly evokes moments of childhood normalcy, times of absurdity, instances of courage... "We need to remember, [to ask] what made those things [the violence in the Cultural Revolution] happen, and to discover "the spirit that kept families together." When her editor at Simon and Schuster read the manuscript, she said she was deeply moved by what Chun Yu said and what she did not say. Ms. Yu explained she was harking back to the Tang dynasty poetry her father used to read aloud in their home. In the best of Chinese poetry, she reminded the audience, one should "express as much as you can in as few words as you can." Then she read a few excerpts from Little Green, drawing listeners into her childhood world. To find out more about Chun Yu and her remarkable book, visit www.chunyu.org. |
Educating for Global Understanding
