ABSTRACT
In the 1960s, when the slogan ‘personal is political’ was gaining popularity in the West amongst feminist activists, the East, namely China, was burning with the vigour of Mao Zedong’s Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. Anchee Min’s tryst with the supervisor is another instance of depicting the undeniable homosexuality quotient; the attraction for his masculine side is solely her yearning for power, but the aspect of him which pulled her closer was his androgynous, highly feminine side. Min’s memoir, pregnant with dissidence as far as Mao’s Communist ethos and the Chinese Cultural Revolution are concerned, was received with great acrimony in her homeland. Red Azalea is an attempt to address a mass psychosis that was inherent to Mao’s China. More than just a memoir about the politics of the Chinese state, it also portrays the politics of the gendered self as well as its many discourses.
