Revolution is Not a Dinner Party by Ying Chang Compestine

Compestine was one of the featured authors at the Second Annual Tucson Festival of Books held here this past weekend, so I read this book to get ready. While it is not a biographical book, Compestine did grow up during the Chinese cultural revolution and experienced and/or witnessed many of the scenes in the book. Reading books about terrible times in history generally depress me because of the horrible things that people can do to each other. Did you know that during the Chinese Revolution the doctors were made into janitors and the janitors became surgeons? They trained peasant boys from the fields to be surgeons and sent them into surgery after just a few weeks of training. Mao's faithful made sure that they still had access to quality surgeons even as they allowed peasants to operate on the soldiers.

The good thing about this book is that Ling is a strong character and she stays true to herself through the book.