Maos last dancer autobiography summary definition

Li Cunxin’s memoir tells his incredible story of rising from extreme poverty and the politics of fear in Communist China to becoming one of the world’s most well-known ballet dancers.

Mao's last dancer netflix

His story is made all the more impressive by his tenacity, evidenced in the fact that he defected from China while in the United States, thus defying the Chinese government in a public showdown that reached international acclaim.

The sixth son of Chinese peasants, Li was born in 1961, after Mao’s Great Step Forward but right before China’s Cultural Revolution changed the landscape of the country on a national and global scale.

The memoir details Li’s experiences while living in extreme rural poverty. As a child, he witnessed firsthand the brutality of the government under the guise of Communist purification. One example Li gives is witnessing the horrific murder of fifteen individuals who had been deemed “counter-revolutionaries” by Mao’s Red Guards.

Despite his poverty and the