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"  Anchee Min&amp;#039;s best-selling 1994 memoir, Red Azalea, and a \u00ADseries of historical novels have estab\u00ADlished Min as a preeminent chronicler of women&amp;#039;s lives in China&amp;#039;s \u00ADill-starred Cultural Revolution. In The Cooked Seed (Bloomsbury), she continues the story of her struggle to find her place\u2014as an immigrant, a writer, a daughter, and a mother. After Madame Mao&amp;#039;s fall in 1976 (remember the Gang of Four?), Min, a 19-year-old propaganda-film actress, became a &amp;quot;cooked seed&amp;quot; with &amp;quot;no chance to sprout.&amp;quot; But a friend in L.A. (Joan Chen, of Twin Peaks fame) encouraged her to apply to art school in the U.S. After Min managed to bluff and lie her way to Chicago, her roommate asked her, &amp;quot;Mao who?&amp;quot; There, Min worked five jobs and met her first husband, a Chinese artist who rejected American materialism. To practice English and channel her flood of memories, Min began writing: &amp;quot;I lost myself in chasing the images. When the ink touched the surface of the paper, I felt alive.&amp;quot; Writing empowered Min to once again seek a happier life for herself\u2014and for her daughter, Laury\u00ADann. Her duties as storyteller and parent have helped her make peace with the memory of her mother, whom she feels she failed. &amp;quot;Not until I had you did I start to understand my mother,&amp;quot; she tells Laury\u00ADann. &amp;quot;I love the real you, the one who keeps hitting the steel wall and hoping that it will turn into a wall of flowers.&amp;quot; We get the satisfaction of seeing Min embrace her true self as her family and career \u00ADblossom. A wall of flowers, indeed. Liked this story? Get it first when you subscribe to ELLE magazine. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.elle.com/culture/books/reviews/a13821/the-cooked-seed-memoir-anchee-min/?click=main_sr>