《暴风雨中一羽毛》简介
關於「文化大革命」前後，中國老百姓以至知識分子的遭遇，今天年輕一輩可能已印象模糊。《暴風雨中一羽毛》是他們不可不讀的文獻。
── 喬志高, 美國華人作家
等待和希望
他們已經像革命暴風雨中的一根羽毛，
在每次運動中被吹來吹去，
對自己的命運沒有一點選擇。
總有一天，這一切磨難都會結束。我們會過上好日子。很難說什麼時候，但一定會的。現在，你很難想像這一天，但是要有信心，你不會在山裏呆一輩子。
這本帶有史詩色彩的自傳，記述一個天真無辜的小女孩，在中國當代反右、大躍進、文革、上山下鄉等政治運動中教人心酸的成長歷程。其間，她的家庭不斷受迫害，她被打罵、侮辱、強姦，父母下放農村，她住進臨時收容所，目睹好友的媽媽上吊自殺。後來全家被下放到窮困落後的村莊，她繼而到深山老林裏當知識青年。失望、希望、死亡、等待一直環繞?她的童年。作者用簡潔如詩的語言，哀而不怨的口吻，娓娓憶述小時候在逆境中頑強地堅持而存活下來的真實故事。
通過一個天真無辜的小姑娘的長年受難，《暴風雨中一羽毛》真實而生動地重現毛澤東統治時代史無前例的荒誕與殘暴，為中國近代史作出獨特的見證。
── 余英時, 著名歷史學家
這篇豐富多彩、自成一格、令人心碎的故事，它涵蓋人的殘忍、愚蠢和善良，歸根究底是對百折不撓的人的堅韌和生命力的見證。
── 哈金, 美國1999年國家圖書獎得主
這是一本「文化大革命」期間成長的勇敢的少女感人肺腑的回憶錄，充分反映毛澤東假借進步的名義所犯下種種殘暴無比的罪行。
── 鄭念,《上海生死劫》(Life and Death in Shanghai)作者
“This gripping and moving memoir of a courageous young girl growing up during the Cultural Revolution points up the fantastic atrocities committed by Mao in the name of progress.”
- Nien Cheng, author of Life and Death in Shanghai
“With passion, candor and restraint, Feather in the Storm tells a young girl’s story of growing up in a violent, revolution-battered China. It reveals the terrible suffering of its people, some of whom perished and many of whom survived. This rich, unique, heartbreaking narrative is about human cruelty, foolishness and decency, and is ultimately a testimony to indomitable human tenacity and vitality.”
- Ha Jin, author of Waiting, winner of the National Book Award
About this book
“It is my hope that this memoir may serve as a reminder and a memorial to all of the children who were lost in the Chaos,” Emily Wu writes at the beginning of Feather in the Storm.
Told from a child’s and young girl’s point of view, Wu’s spellbinding account-which spans nineteen years of growing up during the chaos of China’s Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution-opens on her third birthday as she meets her father for the first time in a concentration camp. A well-known academic and translator of American literary classics, her father had been designated an “ultra-rightist” and class enemy. As a result, Wu’s family would be torn apart and subjected to an unending course of humiliation, hardship and physical and psychological abuse. Wu tells her story of this hidden Holocaust, in which millions of children and their families died, through a series of vivid vignettes that brilliantly-and innocently-evoke the cruelty and brutality of what was taking place daily in the world around her. From watching helplessly as the family apartment is ransacked and her father carted off by former students to be publicly beaten, to her own rape and the hard labor and primitive rituals of life in a remote peasant village, Wu is persecuted as a child of the damned.
Wu’s narrative is poignant, disturbing and unsentimental, and, despite the nature of what it describes, is filled with the resiliency of youth-and even humor. That Emily Wu survived is remarkable. That she is able to infuse her story with such immediacy, power and unexpected beauty is the greatness of this book. Feather in the Storm is an unforgettable story of the courage and silent suffering of one small child set in a quicksand world of endless terror.
