SOURCE: "Counterrevolutionary Sex," in The New York Times Book Review, February 27, 1994, p. 11.

[In the following review, Shapiro concentrates on the sexual relationships in Red Azalea.]

Even in today's comparatively freewheeling China of discos and dating, Anchee Min's steamy memoir of two love affairs—one with another woman, the other with a man—would be unprintable "spiritual pollution." But during Ms. Min's coming of age in China during the Cultural Revolution, nonmarital sex could be punishable by death and homosexual love was an unthinkable counterrevolutionary crime. This memoir of sexual freedom is thus a powerful political as well as literary statement.

In some ways, the story Ms. Min tells in Red Azalea is typical. Born in Shanghai in 1957, she was "raised on the teachings of Mao and on the operas of Madame Mao, Comrade Jiang Qing." She own contests in reciting from the little red book and denounced her...