The Great Leap Backward: Forgetting and Representing the Mao Year ...

as poetic allegory because past events and experiences are conveyed or generalized through symbolic figures and actions. Allegorizing memory thus creates a double-distancing effect on a particular historical moment and gives the allegorized memory an even more elusive quality of resemblance to that moment. The novel’s allegorization renders memory a ghostly counterpart—a doppelgänger—of history. Although Yan has professed that The Four Books is meant to be a testimony of the Great Famine calamity, the novel reveals itself to be more of the author’s personal crusade in seeking redemption and transcendence.

Another important ethical issue is found in memory-lite writings. In chapter 5, I concentrate on popular Anglophone Cultural Revolution memoirs by members of the Chinese diaspora, in particular, Wild Swans by Jung Chang; Red Azalea by Anchee Min; and Some of Us edited by Xueping Zhong, Wang Zheng, and Bai Di. This chapter tackles how memory is used to serve identity reconstruction and the use of suffering in the name of remembrance. This chapter also brings in popular memory production in mainland China as a way of providing a comparative perspective to the Anglophone memoirs of the Cultural Revolution. I seek to illustrate that the use and/or abuse of memory can easily be grafted onto the writing of history or the construction of identity, simply because by invoking memory of personal experience of “having been there,” one can claim legitimacy and authority. The epilogue considers the ethics of remembrance and the possibilities of constructing a field of Mao-era studies similar to Holocaust studies, with the critical vocabulary and theoretical methodology to address the true nature and dire conditions of the Mao era. The full impact of the Maoist atrocities cannot be fully understood if we do not go beyond the archival to examine the psychological, the behaviorial, and the sociocultural ramifications of such deep historical trauma.