Flowing with the Pearl River: Memoir of a Red China Girl

Amy Chan Zhou’s searing memoir about growing up in rural Communist China features descriptions of pastoral beauty and tales of the simple joys of raising farm animals or catching fish in a local river. However, her childhood is scarred by the primitive conditions, her family’s everyday struggle to obtain food, and the horror of witnessing relatives being tortured on a stage during “public denouncing” meetings.

As the Communists take control of China in 1949, we follow the harrowing experien...