Reading

Wild Swans by Jung Chang, the most sweeping, epic, heartbreaking and enraging book I've read in a long time. It's about Jung Chang, her mother, and her grandmother, three women who were all heavily involved in Mao's ascent in China.
See, the incredible thing about this book is that Jung manages to remain completely neutral about communism. Having grown up at the end of the twentieth century like I did, I've always had it pounded into my brain: communism=bad. But it wasn't always that way, and for awhile, communism did do many great things for Chinese citizens. Obviously Jung grew up knowing no other way but communism under Mao, something that absolutely makes me shudder. But she still describes the many things she saw and even participated in with complete objectivism.
If I were a teacher, of any subject, really, I'd give a billion bonus points to any student who read this. It's long--almost 700 pages, but soooo important. There's so many facets to other nations' governments that American citizens just do not know about, and this book opened my eyes to what communism was, the pros and cons, and how capitalism may leave many unfortunately lazy people in the dust, but it also encourages people to work hard and earn their rewards, rather than have things simply given to them. It encourages work ethic, and it also promotes individualism. You want to be rich? Awesome. Go out and do it. You don't care to be rich? Good for you. You have that option and can still enjoy life.
Honestly, I can't say enough about this book. We all know about the horrors of communism, but Jung Chang hones in on the manipulations, the terror of the Red Guards, the self-criticisms she was forced to do even as a young child, the censorship of all books, music, or art that was not directly quoting Mao...
Just read it. It's difficult to get into at first, but around page 200 it just takes off. I don't want to finish it, so I'm reading as slowly as I possibly can...
Okay, done.