Response to Revolution Is Not a Dinner Party

            There was quite a bit in Revolution Is Not a Dinner Party by Ying Chang Compestine that I found surprising and uncomfortable. I did some research on the Chinese Cultural Revolution before I read this book, but it was different reading about what happened in an educational setting than reading a book about a child who’s actually experiencing it. There’s definitely more of an emotional response when you’re reading about it through the eyes of a child. The things that struck me most were events that mirrored what happened in Nazi Germany during WWII. It was scary similar. I found it really hard to read when people were disappearing, being sent to work camps, and especially when people were being brutally punished in front of the people they knew and even in front of their loved ones, yet no one stepped up to stop them, or rarely did. Yes, that last one was probably the most difficult thing to read about. I cannot imagine having to live through something like that. The feeling of hopelessness those people felt must have been overwhelming.

            This book really made me think and look at my daily life and remind myself how good I've got it. Whatever “bad days” I've had are nothing compared to what the people who lived during the Cultural Revolution endured, suffered, and lost. Before the Cultural Revolution hit, the children must have felt the same as I do now. They must have been so unaware of what was coming for them and thought that something like that could never happen. At least it seemed that way for the main character in Revolution is Not a Dinner Party. It makes me realize the same could happen here, to me, no matter how unlikely it seems at the moment.

            Aside from how shocking some of the material in this book was, I thought it was important to know who wrote the story. I read the “about the author” section in the back of the book and was both surprised and not surprised that the book was written by a woman who grew up in China during the Cultural Revolution. I was surprised because I hadn't known it for sure and I was excited to know that this book was written by someone who experienced this first hand. It made me feel better and more confident that I had trusted her so much to tell me this story. This leads to why I was not surprised. I was not surprised because I had the sense while reading this book that the author had to have lived through the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Someone who hadn't wouldn't have been able to portray it so well. Something that carries so much emotion and weight needs to be written by someone who has experienced it firsthand otherwise the readers won’t find it as believable and it won’t have the same affect on them. A reliable author and narrator are very important things to have when it comes to a book about a real historical event, even when the book is a work of fiction. I really enjoyed reading this book because I could trust the author and the narrator and everything in it spoke so well to what I discovered in my research. I found this book very believable and eye opening to what it must have been like to be a child during the Chinese Cultural Revolution.