Spider Eaters: A Memoir [Paperback]

Rae Yang (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 10, 1998 | ISBN-10: 0520215982 | ISBN-13: 978-0520215986 | Edition: 1

Spider Eaters is at once a moving personal story, a fascinating family history, and a unique chronicle of political upheaval told by a Chinese woman who came of age during the turbulent years of the Cultural Revolution. With stunning honesty and a lively, sly humor, Rae Yang records her life from her early years as the daughter of Chinese diplomats in Switzerland, to her girlhood at an elite middle school in Beijing, to her adolescent experience as a Red Guard and later as a laborer on a pig farm in the remote northern wilderness. She tells of her eventual disillusionment with the Maoist revolution, how remorse and despair drove her almost to suicide, and how she struggled to make sense of conflicting events that often blurred the line between victim and victimizer, aristocrat and peasant, communist and counterrevolutionary. Moving gracefully between past and present, dream and reality, the author artfully conveys the vast complexity of life in China as well as the richness, confusion, and magic of her own inner life and struggle.
Much of the power of the narrative derives from Yang's multi-generational, cross-class perspective. She invokes the myths, legends, folklore, and local customs that surrounded her and brings to life the many people who were instrumental in her life: her nanny, a poor woman who raised her from a baby and whose character is conveyed through the bedtime tales she spins; her father; her beloved grandmother, who died as a result of the political persecution she suffered.
Spanning the years from 1950 to 1980, Rae Yang's story is evocative, complex, and told with striking candor. It is one of the most immediate and engaging narratives of life in post-1949 China.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Born in 1950, Rae Yang came of age in a time of tremendous social upheaval in her native China. Her parents, Communist intellectuals who had been in favor with the leadership, were denounced during the so-called anti-Rightist campaigns of the 1950s. During the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s Yang, a Red Guard, traveled throughout the country spreading revolutionary fever--an exciting period, she recalls, that she had much time to reflect on while later working at a collectivized pig farm. (She named the pigs under her charge, she writes: Capitalist, Prince, Natasha, and so on.) Disillusioned by the violence, repression, and hardship all around her, Yang eventually managed to leave China on a student visa for the United States. "Lies, big and small, cannot easily hypnotize me," she writes, and her memoir paints an honest portrait of a China in suffering. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Yang, assistant professor of East Asian studies at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pa., spent her early years in Switzerland as the daughter of a Chinese diplomat, and returned to Beijing in the mid-1950s. Although her father's background was upper-class, her parents were committed Communist Party members and educated Yang to become a Maoist revolutionary. This engrossing memoir deals with the cultural revolution of the 1960s, when Yang became a Red Guard who denounced adults she considered counterrevolutionaries. With other fanatic teens, she traveled the country spreading propaganda, raiding homes and inflicting beatings on anyone suspected of political disloyalty; one of these beatings led to the death of the victim. The author also describes friends and relatives who influenced her, vividly invoking her upper-class grandmother, who shared a rich heritage of folktales with Yang. After spending several years as a farm laborer, Yang began to question the revolution and made her way back to Beijing and eventually to the United States. Photos. (Apr.) FYI: The title refers to those driven to eat anything they can find, especially during hard times such as the famine, or Three-Year Natural Calamity, of 1959-1962.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 318 pages
• Publisher: University of California Press; 1 edition (November 10, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0520215982
• ISBN-13: 978-0520215986
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.8 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #105,352 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #30 in Books > Literature & Fiction > History & Criticism > Asian

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

41 of 41 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A most moving memoir, June 3, 2000

By 

Phillippa Crossan - See all my reviews

This review is from: Spider Eaters: A Memoir (Hardcover)

"Spider Eaters" is an interesting and creative title and well matches the contents. This is a most fascinating and moving memoir. I have read several autobiographies written about the beginnings of Communism in China and the Cultural Revolution, and this is by far one of the best. Many such books these days are advertised as "belonging on the shelf next to Wild Swans". I've always felt such claims are exaggerated as Wild Swans for me was quite exceptional. But Spider Eaters truly does deserve to be in the same category.

Having just finished "Life and Death in Shanghai" by Nien Cheng prior to "Spider Eaters" I found reading the other side of the coin intriguing. Nien Cheng was imprisoned for six and a half years in solitary confinement, accused of being a British spy as she had worked for Shell company. Her beautiful home and belongings were trashed by the Red Guards. Then I read Rae Yang's account of her experience as a Red Guard. She was responsible for persecuting such bourgeois "Capitalist Roaders" as Nien Cheng. I am sure that both these women would like, admire and respect each other if ever they had met, and yet during these times they were class enemies. How sad.

If the author should read this review, I would like to thank you so much for your wonderful honesty in relating not just the events of your life, but also your thoughts and dreams. I was reluctant to finish your book as I felt I had come to know you so well. What I read almost felt like a personal letter. Your book is wonderful reading and it has long stayed on my mind. It stirred my emotions deeply. And can I just say, that I am so glad you came to love your pigs. I especially warmed to you when I read of your feelings for them and your sense of betrayal when they were sent to be slaughtered. I would have felt exactly the same. I understood completely and you certainly wouldn't have been a laughing stock to me had I been present.

I discovered Spider Eaters through Amazon and am disappointed that more have not reviewed it. Spider Eaters is far more than a memoir. It is also a literary delight. Extremely well worth reading!

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Spider Eaters, March 7, 2001

By 

"yoco" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Spider Eaters: A Memoir (Paperback)

After reading "Spider Eaters" and several books like it ("Son of the revolution", "A Woman's ordeal", "Troublemaker".. ect) I wasn't Sure how to review this one. "Spider Eaters" is a much more complex memoir than the others. "Spider Eaters" does not have the simple emotional punch of other memoirs in it's class yet as a memoir it works well. As a first person acount of mordern China it works well but the book is so much more than just a personal History. Spider Eaters is probably best described as a personal psychologial drama.

How does a poor little rich girl survive the mental abuse that is the demonicaly inspired communism of mordern day china? How does a girl with dreams and aspirations of any little girl suppress those dreams and thoughts when they conflict with the strict communist party line and exposing them can mean ruin?

Rae Yang first creates a fantasy hero, an almost Christ like figure who resuces the poor stands up for the wokers even to the point of death. Later when "politicaly correect" she transfers that figure to Chairman Moa and ultimately begins to see herself as that figure. A Savior who is betrayed by those she loved. Later still while living in the US she must find ways to reconcile all the various personalities into one functioning adult. A psychologist could have a field day with this book. Spider Eaters to me is a frighting look at the damage Communism can do to the minds of those it inslaves, and how a person can cope once freed of it's grasp.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Old China Revisited, April 4, 2000

By 

Jay Johnson (U.S.) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Spider Eaters: A Memoir (Hardcover)

Spider Eaters is a haunting and lyrical memoir of a young girl growing up during China's most violent and provocative days. Rae Yang tells a little told story of the inside view of the Cultural Revolution, Nationalist politics and the ties between men and women in her old country. The mastery of this story, is that Yang concentrates less on the history of China, but the effect of that history on it's people. She write about how the cadre's children were supposed to sympathize completely with the working class, however, how could they do that when at every chance, Yang describes them as being completely isolated from the reality of such poverty. Communism at it's height, anyone accused of speaking, or even thinking, words against the Party, could be imprisoned, tortured and/or killed. Society looked down upon selfishness and the ego. Yang's description gives us the picture of a girl torn between two worlds, between herself and her loyalty to the Party, between her loyalty to the Party and her loyalty to her parents and friends, between respect for authority and contempt for such high-handed practices as "campaigns." When the Cultural Revolution begins, Yang's story of a lost girl continues as she turns on those who had been her peers and mentors, becoming the evil that she had unconsciously fought against all her life. This story is meaningful and eerie, in that it describes fully the effect of political influence on the youth, their power over the rest of the world, and their power to change society itself. However, it better describes what this mistreatment of young people can lead to-a burden of guilt and pain surround Yang's words, a guilt that past practices continue to make her unable to fully describe, although she is not permitted to. Her real thoughts are muddled and unclear throughout the novel, leaving the reader to draw his own conclusions--a hardy, but somewhat annoying task. The real interest is in her thoughts, not what we believe about the circumstance. All in all, this book is a beautiful and eloquent novel, highly recommended to anyone interested in Chinese culture.