Anchee Min has been out there for a while now and the accolades have seemingly died off. This is unfortunate but mirrors the way American readers, at least, tend to mostly get caught up in the whatever is newest thing. Initially enthralled, we may now sadly have become inured to the way, like many of the Chinese writers of her (our) generation, Anchee Min will no doubt have to bear the burden of the cultural revolution for the rest of her days. That her books are one of the ways she works this out is inevitable. Infinitely and intimately personal, Min helps us to see our own fearful blindness, greed, lust, and envy, while simultaneously challenging us with hope. Red Azalea is just one of the true life stories she uses to capture what it is like to try and be a human being in our world in which, after all, no country is more than a generation away from yet another "cultural revolution." Would that we all could be so courageous.